No matter how much we can read about chatting or any other communication tools, it is always helpful to actually try using them. This Tuesday was the first time I tried chatting with multiple users. Before I tried it, I had a more positive attitude towards this kind of chatting. Of course I read about the negative sides, such as difficulty to managing multiple topics, or difficulties associated with not being able to see people you’re talking to.
The biggest (and probably the only) source of frustration for me was the topics. Either we were discussing several different topics (even though we had one task) and at times and it was hard to follow the discussion because it was fragmented, or when one topic prevailed, not all of us were interested in talking about that particular subject, so we ended up watching 2 people chatting, etc. However, this problem could be eliminated by having fewer participants. And I also can see how this may be helpful when all participants are interested in the same area of studies but have different amount of experience.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
On reading authentic (digital) materials
This entry is not on chatting but on reading digital texts. Reading Levy and Stockwell’s (2006) book CALL Dimensions (NOT for our class) where they discuss various CALL applications (including WebQuest and Web Inquiry Projects) made me think about the level of exposure of Chinese learners to authentic Chinese texts. It usually happens pretty late – during the 4th year.
The Chinese language not being an alphabetic language makes it very difficult to read authentic materials. So there is this constant worry about overloading students with authentic reading because if they don’t know the pronunciation of a word, they can’t look it up (which is relative fast and easy) in a dictionary. In this case they would have to check a dictionary for a word by strokes or radicals which take a lot of time if there are a lot of characters like that. Another problem is that if learners don’t know a good number of words in a given text, they will have trouble identifying where the word boundaries are (there is no space between characters, so it’s hard to tell where a word begins and where it ends).
However, there are downloadable programs that allow relatively easy reading. One needs to copy and paste a text into the program/document, then point at any word with the cursor and the definition/definitions and pronunciation of the word will be provided. It makes unfamiliar reading so much easier.
My question is then based on your experience and on what I wrote above, do you think let’s say 3rd year students of Chinese should be exposed to unformatted original texts (news articles, interviews, etc. from online news websites, for instance) since they can easily read them if they (assuming they use the software for reading Chinese texts)? My take on this is that it is beneficial and it should be done, but what’s your take on this? Can you predict any problems with it?
And if you are a Chinese speaker, do you know of any such software/dictionaries that I can download? Thanks.
The Chinese language not being an alphabetic language makes it very difficult to read authentic materials. So there is this constant worry about overloading students with authentic reading because if they don’t know the pronunciation of a word, they can’t look it up (which is relative fast and easy) in a dictionary. In this case they would have to check a dictionary for a word by strokes or radicals which take a lot of time if there are a lot of characters like that. Another problem is that if learners don’t know a good number of words in a given text, they will have trouble identifying where the word boundaries are (there is no space between characters, so it’s hard to tell where a word begins and where it ends).
However, there are downloadable programs that allow relatively easy reading. One needs to copy and paste a text into the program/document, then point at any word with the cursor and the definition/definitions and pronunciation of the word will be provided. It makes unfamiliar reading so much easier.
My question is then based on your experience and on what I wrote above, do you think let’s say 3rd year students of Chinese should be exposed to unformatted original texts (news articles, interviews, etc. from online news websites, for instance) since they can easily read them if they (assuming they use the software for reading Chinese texts)? My take on this is that it is beneficial and it should be done, but what’s your take on this? Can you predict any problems with it?
And if you are a Chinese speaker, do you know of any such software/dictionaries that I can download? Thanks.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Not to Overuse Technology
This posting is some thoughts on teaching a FL after having read some of the article in our class.
I think it is understood/accepted that the best any FL course can do is to prepare students for studying in the country of the target language. In other words, having a degree in a FL (BA or MA) alone without having experience of studying overseas does not make learners proficient in the FL at all. The majority (if not all) of MA students have studied in the country of the target language. However, it seems that with the correct use of all the available technology (including some of the tools covered by the 'Reports' that we've read), it is realistic and possible to achieve the same results (if not better, if we are only talking about linguistic competence) if a learner went to the country of the target language. Of course the question is how to implement technology into the FL classes wisely (some of the doubts abou 'unwise' use of technology are expressed on Tanya's blog).
I think it is understood/accepted that the best any FL course can do is to prepare students for studying in the country of the target language. In other words, having a degree in a FL (BA or MA) alone without having experience of studying overseas does not make learners proficient in the FL at all. The majority (if not all) of MA students have studied in the country of the target language. However, it seems that with the correct use of all the available technology (including some of the tools covered by the 'Reports' that we've read), it is realistic and possible to achieve the same results (if not better, if we are only talking about linguistic competence) if a learner went to the country of the target language. Of course the question is how to implement technology into the FL classes wisely (some of the doubts abou 'unwise' use of technology are expressed on Tanya's blog).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)