Marc Wong

This week we've learnt a lot about using ICT to teach writing skills. The website I like most is www.toondoo.com, which allows users to create their own comic strips. The most appealing feature is that students can can compose a story without any restrictions and no drawing skills are required. Users can just choose the characters and other props and tell their stories. Procedures in the Classroom 1. First, I'll show the students how to create an account and log in. 2. Then, I'll teach the ideas about the structure of a story, including background, development, climax and resolution. 3. Students need to compose a 4-panel comic strip by dividing them into background, development, climax and resolution. 4. Students will submit their work to me via the intranet. 5. The most creative ones will be shown to the whole class. This activity encourages students to be creative and write their stories. At the same time, it can arouse their interest in English.

Today we've learnt about some websites which can help students improve their reading skills. The one I find the most useful is www.loudlit.org.  Users can pick from a variety of texts, including poems, short stories, novels and speeches.  When they read the text, an MP3 is played simultaneously to show the students the pronunciations of the words.  By using this website, students can know how to read the words they've not learnt before. Procedures in the Classroom: 1. An excerpt of a passage from the website (around 200 words) is given to the students. 2. Students need to log on to the website and listen to the recording. 3. In the next lesson, a student is picked randomly and he or she needs to read out the passage in class.  With this tool, a lot of reading time is saved in the classroom and the teacher can focus on other aspects in the curriculum. 

Last week, we learnt about the software Hot Potatoes, which enables teachers to generate clozes, matching exercises, crossword puzzles, etc. I think this application is useful for teaching vocabulary as I can create vocabulary exercises easily. For example, for a lesson about tourism in Hong Kong, first I can extract the essential words from the textbook, e.g. tram, the Peak, tourism. Next, I will write a hint for each word and use Hot Potatoes to compile a crossword puzzle. During the lesson, I will first introduce the words to them. Then, I will distribute the crossword puzzle to them. The exercise will be conducted in the form of a competition. The first three students will be awarded with a small prize. In this way, students' interest in the learning materials can be aroused.

Grammarly: Basic errors can be detected, such as third person singulars, tenses, etc. However, the system fails to recognise “Chinglish errors”. Ginger: More grammatical mistakes can be located. Nonetheless, the “rephrase” function is sometimes misleading as additional meanings are added to the sentence. In general, these tools are useful for English learners as most of their mistakes are pointed out. However, my concern is that if some errors are not detected by the system, then students might consider that correct and use them in their writing.

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