Sarolta's Personal Blog

Moved

2005-11-23T18:57:00.000+01:00

Sorry, this is just to inform you that I moved blog. You can find me here. A new blog, a kind of new start. Wishful thinking? Keep your fingers crossed.

Money Values

2005-10-26T08:37:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Nate, I've learnt the value of my blog - in money. I'm neither surprised nor disappointed.

My blog is worth $564.54.
How much is your blog worth?

Autumn

2005-10-26T08:19:00.000+02:00

Nate worried this summer about the silent members of the association he was a member of. The association of LSP teachers that I am a member of (there are about 50 of us) suffers from the same problem. I like to think about it as a natural state: two thirds of members are as silent as they could be. We were surprised to learn from a survey that the association’s reputation is very good and is actually regarded as the one that is really in the forefront of LSP in Slovenia. All the other public institutions and higher education institutions were lagging far behind.

This drove us into trying to strengthen relations with members with a community blog (I wrote about it in my previous post). After we informed members of its existence, the visitation rate increased from 20 to 84 within a week. However, only 2 silent members left comments or a post. I understand that being a silent member is a safe position but being one of the active ones can be lonesome at times. But we must carry on, right?

Time flies

2005-10-09T11:31:00.000+02:00

Time for putting down my reflections is scarce when I am busy doing things. Just a quick catch-up this time.

I went to the local IATEFL conference and gave a presentation on blogging in the EFL class. The result: out of the 15 teachers present two teachers have started a classblog, one has started a teacher blog. Someone from the Ministry of Education asked me to modify the presentation slightly for a group of computer specialists who are engaged in the field of education.

I also started a blog for the Slovene Association of LSP Teachers. At present, I’m still the only one posting, but hopefully this will change when all the members are notified about its existence.
I created a teacher blog for every class I teach this year and have asked the students to blog too.

I moved on to a wiki as well. My luck with Webcollaborator was not as good as that of Bee, Aaron and Graham. I can’t access my files in it and this has been going on now for almost a month (I can’t get the owner reply my help messages). Instead I now moved to a free wiki farm at www.pbwiki.com. It seems a lot more reliable. I’ll ask my students to use it for documenting their projects (minutes of meetings, writing the project report and other documentation). These are the same students that I blogged with last spring. They just listened to my explanation and seemed to be willing to start this adventure. We’ll see.

I also followed Aaron’s advice and created a Bloglines blog with travel and tourism industry news. I must admit that I don’t like this blog because you can’t just click on a link to the original news article. Instead you have to click first to get to the post’s URL and only then you can click on the news URL. Of course it may be that I can’t get my settings in Bloglines blog right. What’s more, I was somewhat hoping for short summaries or introductions in the individual news items. Unfortunately the majority have only a title. I’m not sure this is long enough to catch my students’ interest. Will have to find a better solution.

And now I have to start making Sunday lunch for my family. Perhaps I'll find some time for Sunday baking as well.

P.S.
I really don't know what's going on with this blog: how come there's such huge space between the post title and the post. I might change the layout one of these days or move to Edublogs.

Learning styles

2005-08-10T23:19:00.000+02:00

Following Nancy's steps I finally figured out my own learning style. I could never make up my mind so far. Well, the answer from the quiz did not come as a surprise: I belong to the vast majority (50-70% of the population) who combine learning styles. My scores were:

Visual: 2
Aural: 5
Read/Write: 6
Kinesthetic: 4

Thank you Nancy.

P.S.
My computer has got a new hard disk.

Hard disk failure

2005-08-07T19:12:00.000+02:00

Well, some of us learn lessons the hard way. At least now and then. My hard disk has broken down. Just like that, without any warning. And yes, I'm one of those who keep forgetting to make a backup of their files. I haven't made one for more than a year and the last one disappeared. Yes, months of work have gone into thin air: the coursebook I was writing for my fist year students, one third of my MA thesis, a corpus of research articles covering a time span of 35 years, at least 5 more specialized copora, one of which went into tens of millions of words. Not to mention all the text resources I had carefully collected for materials writing. I hate to think of it.
My mind plays tricks on me: all the files still exist in my memory - I still know where to look for a particular file, what the texts look like, etc. I don't like changes that happen overnight. Turning a new leaf. Starting everything from scratch. I prefer building slowly over the long term.
I somehow hope that computer specialists will be able to recover at least some of the files. Mind you, it'll hit my pocket. It's a lesson that I hope I've learnt now.

Summer readings

2005-08-01T19:02:00.000+02:00

I was ill for the past five days and watched the telly extensively. I was impressed by some of the programmes that BBC World has broadcasted lately, especially the ones in the series Africa Lives on the BBC. Educating, enlightening, and deeply moving.

So today, when I finally managed to sit long enough at my desk, I visited BBC World online to check whether there’s anything more about this series of programmes. I managed to find a couple of things. But just like ususal, my information hunt on the web lead me astray to other topics.

I came across an article ("Catholic podcast makes waves") about a catholic priest who blogs and uses podcasting for communicating about religion (Vatican is waiting to see what’ll happen).

Then I found another one ("Rewriting the rules of publishing") about an online publishing venture called Lulu. What
they basically do is this: authors upload their manuscripts onto the site and these are then printed individually anytime someone wants to buy them. The book or CD is then posted to the buyer. 20% of the price is kept by the publisher, 80% goes to the author. Unfortunately, Lulu is still US based, but they promise to set up business in Europe in six months. If the project team I’m part of (we introduced problem-based teaching of English in Slovenia) doesn’t get the funds to publish our book, Lulu might be our choice.

I couldn’t help and check the latest developments on the Learning English site. I haven’t visited the site for months and I was amazed by the goodies: learning quizzes, vocabulary and listening exercises, interactive activities and especially the Keep Your English Up to Date by Professor Crystal. Good hunt. And now I've got to dash off.

Summer

2005-07-18T10:27:00.000+02:00

The busy exam period at the college is over and I decided to take a summer break in my tutor blog and switch back to my personal blog.

I started studying for my exam in English linguistics. I’m into semantics right now and it feels OK - I’m quite familiar with it. At the same time I’ve started updating my corpus of tourism abstracts. My MA thesis will focus on their discourse. I’m looking forward to working with concordances again. They look like this:

They remind me of the times when I developed black and white photos myself. That intense feeling of expectation and the magic of an image appearing on a piece of white paper in front of you! I feel pretty similar when I load my files in my concordancer and set the search word and then the lines of words start appearing. There’s some kind of magic in it. The image words create can tell you so much about them. Yeah, I’m fascinated by words and the magic they can create.

Flickr and students

2005-06-06T09:29:00.000+02:00

I happened to introduced Flickr to my second year students (only those who were interested to learn about it) on Wednesday. Within a day the number of posts in their class blog has dramatically increased. The first ones were without a text, but they received immediate feedback from mates. Later on that same day, the first post with a text and photos was posted.

In his recen post, Aaron writes about a similar experience and says:

I just introduced the students to Flickr for the first time on Tuesday, which has generated noticable intrigue amongst the group. I think the use of photos should be encouraged in student webpublishng projects, for it gives students a non-verbal way to express themselves, which can help to provide support and relief to those who are struggling with communicating soley in text. I look forward to seeing how they choose to work with Flikr over the remaining seven weeks of the semester. Will they continue to use it after the course is finished?

Yes, this is what I am hoping for too.

One more quiz

2005-05-31T22:15:00.000+02:00

Bee started it, Nate and Lesley followed in her footsteps and here I am doing the same. Guess what? I'm a postmodernist. This definitely did not come as a surprise.

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist

69%

Cultural Creative

50%

Existentialist

50%

Romanticist

44%

Modernist

38%

Fundamentalist

31%

Materialist

25%

Idealist

25%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

Losing direction?

2005-05-25T18:18:00.001+02:00

Some time ago, Bee wrote about her wish to be more reflective than action oriented. I think I can live with fuzzy ideas that put me in action mode. The latter brings greater satisfaction.
This blog of mine is losing direction and is not regularly updated. I don't want to quit writing. But I need a reason to write. And I noticed that I post more regularly to another blog, the one I keep for my second year students. They stopped writing posts in their own blogs, but they keep visiting my blog and the class blog. They don't send posts to the class blog, but they leave short comments in mine. I believe they are still interested in what is going on, they even follow my links to the articles that I write about in my posts. There's still hope for them. Especially because they have learnt a few lessons this spring.

First of all, they realized that they missed the opportunity for being read by their peers and getting comments. They did enjoy getting comments from me.
Next, they realised that reading is important and that you can improve your reading skills if you keep reading regularly.
They also found out that they can write in English. They've written short summaries of articles about tourism, short reports, and even a 4-page assignment based on three sources and with a proper introduction, conclusion, reference to their sources and all. I told them how proud I was of them (I really am!).
They realised that doing homework is helpful.
And finally, keeping a portfolio does reflect the progress they've made. They can see it now.

My goodness, isn't this the thing that makes us teachers satisfied and proud of our students? Now I'm just hoping their progress will show in the results of the exams.

Friends and friendships

2005-05-22T22:34:00.000+02:00

I was in Ljubljana a couple of days ago and went for a walk down a street where I used to love to walk as a student. However, the houses have changed, the students I met seemed terribly young. Still the chesnut trees were as beautiful as ever. The trees reminded me of a friend, Andreja, who lives now in Australia. I called her but her phone was dead. She probably moved house and forgot to let me know about it.
I decided to find her. The Internet wasn't very helpful, but eventually I managed to find her brother's telephone number in the online directory and he gave me hers.
When I heard Andreja's voice, it felt so good. She didn't change. It was as if time didn't go by. We were both glad to hear each other.
It's such a pity when we allow losing contact with a friend. It happened this January that a childhood friend of mine died. Just like that. We used to meet every day sharing our stories and secrets for years. She got married first and had children. I found work in another part of the country and moved house. Then I fell in love and had children too. We saw each other from time to time. We both knew we kept the other in the heart. We promised to find time and visit each other. Have a long talk. And then she was gone. I miss Marjetka a lot.

Learning English or learning in English?

2005-05-04T22:22:00.000+02:00

The British Council's SearchEnglish web site has a link to an article published in the Guardian Weekly recently on the topic of content and language integrated learning (CLIL), which is basically lecturing college course subjects in English and expecting that students, to whom English is a foreign language, would learn both the subject and the foreign language without language classes. The lectures are given by subject specialists (native speakers or lecturers to whom English is a foreign language?). Wow, how trendy! And how economical!

Is this a promotion of English as a second language in the new borederless Europe? A promotion of English as the lingua franca of modern times? A neo-colonial project in which English plays again the main role? Or is it just a way to provide new jobs for the increasing number of jobless, young, English speaking academics (native or non-native)?

At the same time, the number of students entering tertiary education with their English on A2 or B1 is on the increase at least in Slovenia as a result of "modern" trends in elementary and secondary education. How on earth are these young people going to cope with subject specific academic English which is 2-3 levels above their level of foreign language proficiency? Genre and variation studies have been showing us the subtle and less subtle differences between general English and discipline specific Englishes. There are things we've learnt about language and about foreign language teaching in discipline specific contexts. How can language teachers ignore that in the name of a new educational non-linguistics-based trend?

Scripta Manent

2005-04-11T22:11:00.000+02:00

I got a message today from the National University Library. Scripta Manent, the new peer-reviewed journal of the Slovene Association of LSP Teachers, has received its ISSN assignment! So what, you might say.
I’m editor of this journal and I spent months with the editorial board devising the journal’s aims and policies. And we are reasonably satisfied with the results so far. Time has now come to make the next step and go public.
The name of the journal comes from the Latin saying “Verba volant, scripta manent” (spoken words fly away, written words remain). On the one hand, we’d like to encourage LSP teachers to record and share their observations and reflections on the practical aspects of LSP teaching and this way contribute to the development of the discipline as well as help teachers gain respect for what they’re doing. On the other, we’d like to open up a much needed dialogue between LSP teachers.
I’m not sure we’ll manage to reach our aims. That depends now on LSP teachers in Slovenia and elsewhere.
Well, whatever the outcome, I’ll know that I’ve done my best to make an idea that I felt passionate about come true. And that counts too.

Back again

2005-04-10T19:59:00.000+02:00

I’m sorry for this long absence. I’m still hanging around, still reading blogs and thinking about blogging. Actually, I’ve been experimenting with my second year students, trying to share my enthusiasm for learning and for English. (You can read the posts that I shared with my students here.)
Unfortunately, I’m not very successful at making students blog. I took them to the computing lab three times, and they seemed to like it. The majority was proud of their blogs. However, the number of posts in their blogs is really small.
I know that I should have demanded that they respected the deadlines for the individual posts. Instead I tried to attract them to writing by giving them a reason to write. Obviously, this wasn’t a good idea. It’s difficult to motivate students if they are not motivated themselves. The computing lab was also closed for students too often. Under such circumstances the process of making students blog takes longer, I guess. But I’m not giving in. There’s another semester in October and I’ll make sure we’ll start blogging on the very first day. And I’ll introduce deadlines and book the computing lab for them at least twice a week. Perhaps that’ll do the trick.

Life goes on so fast. There’s so much to do. One thing is really important to me: I need to take time off on a regular (that is daily) basis to enjoy my children. Spring is here, so we go for a walk by the sea, work in the garden (my daffodils are in bloom), draw, play games, bake cakes ... and argue loudly about their duties (tidying their room, putting things back to where they belong and other daily trivia). And when I tuck them in their beds in the evening, I’m exhausted. But they’re worth it. I think I’ve become a better person because of them.

Spring is here

2005-03-16T20:37:00.000+01:00

Hellebore

I went for a short walk with my sons in the woods this afternoon and it was great. You could feel spring in the air. We came across some hellebores. Spring feels like a promise of new life, don't you think?

Silly but fun: Following Nathan's and Nancy's steps

2005-03-13T10:23:00.000+01:00

Nathan added a link to a quiz (he's d10). Nancy tried it out twice and found out she was d6. Guess what: I took the quiz twice too and got the same surprising result: I was romantic, creative and unsusual. Well, although my little son keeps telling me I'm "romantic" when I kiss him, I really didn't like the result. So I took the test the third time (I couldn't give up the 31 flavors of ice cream though) and I was d6, that is, plain, predictable, conservative, average, ordinary and downright boring. I liked that result better.
You can take the quiz at dicepool.com.

Culture and foreign language teaching

2005-03-07T22:35:00.000+01:00

I’ve been reading articles about cross-cultural communication these days and there are some typical words I’ve come across that I want to comment on.

My background is multi-cultural. My father was a Slovene born close to the Italian border who could also speak Italian, Serbo-Croat, Hungarian and a bit of German. My mother is Hungarian and she learnt Serbo-Croat and Slovene, and since she has access to satellite TV channels, she loves watching Italian, French and Spanish channels about art and culture although she doesn’t speak the languages.

I was born in a region where over 20 languages were spoken (Vojvodina). In earlier times, people there used to send their kids for a summer holiday to the neighbouring villages where a different language was spoken so that kids could learn a new language and meet a different culture. Cultures thus coexisted in tolerance to the benefits of the whole society. It’s no longer like that in those parts, unfortunately. When my family and friends gather though, you can still hear a number of languages spoken: Slovene, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, German, Italian, English and even Spanish. It feels great to be part of a group of people who interact with such eagerness even if they cannot speak the mother tongue of the other.

I still recall the stories my father used to tell me about his childhood. He went to school when Slovene was not allowed to be spoken in public places, and Slovene kids were allowed to speak only Italian at school. The pain in his voice when speaking about those times and the anger at one of his teachers who looked down on the Slovene language and culture are still vivid in my memory. Don’t misunderstand me, my father liked the Italian culture - history, music and literature - regardless of the circumstances he had to grow up in. He just loved and respected his own culture enough to know that no culture is superior to other cultures and therefore you should never look down on a culture just because it is different.

The point I am trying to make is connected with teaching foreign languages. In the times of my father’s youth (early 20th century) culture was obviously taught together with language. His teachers didn’t use a “modern approach” to foreign language teaching and they didn’t discuss “intercultural communication competence”. However, they still managed to help their students learn a foreign language and to understand and appreciate the culture of the people who spoke it. Language and culture go hand in hand - they obviously always have. And then I came across these words:

"Recent tendencies in language education show that language learning is becoming largely determined in cultural terms. Therefore learners are assigned a variety of new roles - for example - ‘cultural mediators’, ‘border crossers’, ‘negotiators of meaning’, ’intercultural speakers’. All these names imply that language learning has changed its orientation and priorities." (Rose)

I really don’t think language learning has changed its orientation at all: we still learn a foreign language to be able to communicate with people who speak it, just like in ancient times. What has changed is the names dominant ideologies assign to learners in order to show socially acceptable and rewarded practices. And typically words such as these are used to describe foreign language teachers:

"For too long, we have been concentrating on structures and forms and producing materials that may help our students to have perfect diphthongs or a flawless command of the third conditional while leaving out anything approaching real, valid, meaningful content. Major ELT publishers have produced materials so carefully caculated not to offend anyone that they far too often end up being vacuous if not completely meaningless. If our students are to have any hope of using their language skills to genuinely comprehend and communicate in the global village, intercultural awareness is crucial." (Tsvetkova and Karastateva)

Are these people aware of how demeaning their generalizations are?

Obviously I agree that teaching a foreign language involves teaching a culture as well. But it makes me furious to see that people look down on foreign language teachers and their practices in class just to justify their own positions and sell an old idea as new. Or to place themselves in “the forefront of modern FLT development”. Or to get EU funds for another meaningless project.

Culture is far more complex than these articles tend to present, and far more precious for those who appreciate it. One would expect critical thinking of a greater range from those who tread the paths of intercultural communication competence. If nothing else, they could at least drop this demeaning attitude toward foreign language teachers and their practices!

Smarties

2005-03-04T21:16:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to get the computing lab for an hour and a half. Things moved on really fast. Students worked in pairs, some in groups of three. The introduction to setting up a blogger account turned out to be a good first step: students found setting up a blogger account simple enough. Those who felt less easy about computers needed my help most of the time and felt relieved that I was around. I also noticed that a few students soon started helping the less skilful, which was great. .oO (Thanks, Bee.)
The majority also wrote their first posts (the Proust questions were very helpful - thanks, Lesley). Some of the students were reluctant to publish their first posts immediately so they saved them as a draft to finish them off later in peace. It was great to see how impressed they were when they saw their own texts published on the web. I didn’t expect that.
We agreed to set up a class blog and they chose the name for it: Smarties (because they are so smart, they said). I promised to set it up for them. And I did. (My kids bought a package of Smarties, my husband photographed them and I used an idea from Mandarin Design to incorporate them in the blog. You can see it here.) 18 students have already sent me the link to their blogs and some of them have posted new posts to their blogs. Most of them didn’t use the spell checker though. I’ve sent a comment to each blog and one of the students started to do the same. Most encouraging. I’m proud of them. .oO (Nancy’s post on passion and caring.)
They’ll be absent for 10 days (they’re off to the tourism fair in Berlin). I asked them to keep on posting from their field trip. We’ll see.
Overall, it feels goooood.

A blogging project with my tourism students

2005-02-28T17:00:00.000+01:00

What follows is a sketch of a blogging project I prepared these past few weeks. My students are in their second year at the College of Tourism, their English is on CEF B2 and they are twenty years old.

Aims of the English course

help students discover the culture of the disciplinary community they are going to belong oneday by guiding them through a number of different professional genres (reports, news, articles,abstracts, etc.);
encourage students to read professional texts in the field of tourism and develop their reading skills;
encourage students to engage in simple professional writing and learn to take notes, describe and define simple tourism related phenomena, summarize, compare views, write short reports, etc.;
encourage students to engage in discussions of tourism related issues, share summaries of articles they have read, present their views, etc.;
encourage students to enlarge their professional vocabulary and deepen their knowledge of words;
help students become autonomous learners of English.

Blogging project outline
I expect my blog will guide my students through the activities that are designed mainly as homework. I am planning to spend two sessions (90 minutes each) in the computer lab and help students to create their individual blogs and a class blog which will feature their recommendations, annotated lists of links to useful / good tourism-related Internet sites and posts they would like to share with the rest of the class. At the end of the semester students will be able to print out a selection of posts they have written and comments they have sent to their mates and include these in their assessment portfolios. I will then discuss these with them during the oral exam.

The assessment portfolios were planned for this academic year and the students were informed about them during our first meeting in October. Blogging will introduce change our plans only slightly: students will send their homework to their blogs instead of placing it in a folder, and they will read their mates’ blogs and comment them (peer review is believed to be very efficient). I have decided to add a few writing activities that have nothing to do with tourism to encourage their creativity (I slightly adjusted the Proust questions - Lesley thank you very much for the idea, and will also ask students to post the photo of a mug and its story - thank you, Sergei, for the idea, review the blog of an American journalist living in Slovenia and share their reactions to a poem).

Assessment
I decided to regard blogging as a tool for developing students’ professional English, so blogs will act as an aid to the learning process. I will regularly use a short self-assessment questionnaire to raise students’ awareness of the learning process and help them to focus on the quality of their own involvement (their contribution to the learning process and personal growth). Students’ self-assessment will also serve as feedback to me (it will help me to introduce possible modifications to my blogging projects in the future).
Only a selection of products (individual posts) will be assessed together with their presentation / discussion at the oral exam.

The end of the sixth week Or Blogs and self-development of teachers

2005-02-27T22:32:00.000+01:00

I remember reading a book by Julian Edge way back in the 1990s on cooperative professional development. He suggested an alternative approach that teachers could use with the help of a colleague. Self-observation and reflection played key roles in the teacher’s professional development process that led to action and growth. The colleague’s role was lending an ear and helping the teacher to focus.

Blogs can easily be used as journals in which we reflect on our teaching practice. It is easier to reflect on what is going on when we write. Writing helps us to focus better and build our awareness: it helps us to discover more about the situation and about ourselves. As long as it is taken seriously, reflection truly leads to action, learning and growth. Our blogs are plain evidence for this. Blogs are a great tool for any teacher who is commited to professional growth.

But there is a difference: the colleague’s place is taken by a community of teachers who also blog and share ideas, reflections and reactions. And who are also committed to professional growth. And believe me, that feels a whole lot better.

Dear Bee, Aaron and Graham, dear colleague bloggers. These past six weeks were wild! The experience is unsurpassed in intensity of learning, reflection, action and professional growth! Thank you for sharing it with me. Let this be just an end of week six and tomorrow week seven will start.

P.S.
He who has never blogged will blog tomorrow, and he who has blogged will also blog tomorrow.

Audioblogs in ESP

2005-02-19T10:15:00.000+01:00

Joel raised an interesting question yesterday when he asked why people choose to use audio files and whether they would include different things in the audio file than they might if they had written the text out instead.

Nathan suggested that ”the decision to use audio has to do with determining whether there is a legitimate message to be made that extends beyond the mere text of the piece. If a transcript carries the message, there is no reason for audio.” He also sees timing, tonality and dialect as the major advantages of audio files over texts.

Tom agreed and added a link to an article on digital storytelling. It describes the various uses of digital storytelling in education. Basically, this is what happens: students record their personal stories, then they mix the recording with drawings, photos and music and the end product seems to be a multimedia presentation. Bonds between people are strengthened as a result, students master a new self-expression and may even gain in self-respect. It sounds great, but I’m not so sure of the value of such activities in the EFL/ESP class (at least not on tertiary level).

John then came up with more ideas: students could listen to themselves from the archives or they could run an Internet radio. Both ideas are good.

However, I think Lesley was the one who started to streamline our ideas towards EFL matters by raising the issue of our teaching aims. She said that in ESL classes we are “preparing people for real life situations in which they might not have any textual/visual input.” I couldn’t agree more.

Aaron then stressed that the purpose of the site will affect our choice and suggested that “the potential to bring the myriad spoken voices of the world into the classroom itself, both synchronously and asynchronously, adds an exciting dimension to the learning activities that occur there.“ True.

I keep thinking of my own students and I'd like to suggest another possible use of audio files which may help to enhance learning a foreign language. Students who learn EFL at tertiary institutions tend to focus on English used in their future professions, i.e. ESP (at least in Continental Europe). They have to rely on written sources of information most of the time (especially on levels B2 and onward). The reason is very simple: radio stations and television channels, which often serve as great input source, rarely feature programmes for professionals. Do you remember the number of things we need to learn about new words before we really know them? ESP students can find the meaning of professional words in glossaries or even encyclopedias, they can see how words are used in context and learn their forms and their collocates, however, they may have great difficulties finding out how these same words are pronounced. Encyclopedias, glossaries and terminology dictionaries don’t provide pronunciation information. English dictionaries for advanced learners provide pronunciation information, but unfortunately tend to exclude highly specialized words. Teachers could help, but students rarely approach us with questions about pronunciation. Hearing the new words in class a couple of times is usually not enough for students to remember them later when they want to use them independently in a discussion of a professional issue.

I see audio files as a teacher’s opportunity to provide audio resources that can help students improve their pronunciation of discipline-related words as well as their listening comprehension skills for professional purposes. And it’s definitely an advantage if the passage (short news items, short reports, interviews with professionals, etc.) is read by a native speaker of English. I can easily envisage pronunciation exercises as well, for example, the type that requires students to match the words they hear to the list of written words. However, I agree wholeheartedly that we have to follow the rules of sound material design as
well as the aims of the curriculum.

I don’t think digital storytelling of students’ personal experiences would solve the problem. However, recording the summary of the professional articles the students have read seems to fit into ESP more easily.

Lesley also raised the question of why we would include an audio file in a blog rather than on a web page. I can think of a number of reasons. First, a blog is easier to maintain: the teacher is in charge of the blog and does not need to contact a third party to alter it (at the college where I work I cannot alter my webpage whenever I want - I need to contact the person in charge of the college’s IT system first and put up with his moody nature. Sometimes it takes days before the new webpage is uploaded).

Next, comments are not something web pages allow us to incorporate easily, but they are common in blogs. They open up the space for a dialogue with our students or dialogue between students. Students can add their own comments to what they’ve heard based on their own readings and knowledge and this could add new dimensions to an audio file: a different point of view, a comment in a different (written) medium of communication, etc. However, I’m sure many of my students would be equally happy with a web page that would provide only listening comprehension and pronunciation activities without the comment sending facility.

All in all, the decision to include audio posts in EFL/ESP blogs (or web pages) should be based on our students’ needs (learner and future professional) and the audio activities adjusted to the aims of the curriculum that we want to achieve.

Photoblog post: My family's summer holiday

2005-02-13T12:20:00.000+01:00

Move the cursor over the pictures to learn about my family's holiday.

Now it's your turn. Tell us about your summer holiday. :-)

P.S.
Sorry, this seems to work only in Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Audblog entry: The latest news from Russia

2005-02-12T23:11:00.000+01:00

Listen to the recording and indicate whether the statements below are true (T) or false (F).
You can listen to the recording twice. ;-)

1 Orient-Express has invested in a hotel in the centre of St. Petersburg.
2 The Grand Hotel Europe is of the same size as the Ritz in Madrid.
3 Orient-Express is planning to buy the Ritz in Madrid too.
4 The number of business people wanting to stay in a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg will grow.
5 In summer, the guests in the Grand Hotel Europe will be tourists.

Tulips in my garden last spring

2005-02-08T21:41:00.001+01:00

This photo was taken with my husband's new digital camera last spring. I must say that I prefer my old Olympus - it feels more comfortable. The photo reminds me of spring. Soon the almond trees will start to bloom and in no time I will be able to enjoy my cup of coffee on my terrace. Carnival time is over. It is time for spring to come.

This and that

2005-02-06T19:32:00.000+01:00

I found Elderbob's post from the other day a little disturbing. I have a feeling that he wants to protect both blogs and kids, which is nice and cute as I'm sure he likes them both. That's something only a caring person would do. I understand and respect that. On the other hand, this also implies that both blogs and kids need to be protected from some sort of danger (an overenthusiastic teacher?). I'm not sure I understand this.

I see blogs both as a tool in foreign language teaching and as a means of self-expression. However, it is clear to me that self-expression is something I can control only if the blog is mine. I don't want to make bloggers out of my students (that's definitely not on my agenda). They'll become one if they want to and when they want to. They'll express themselves through blogs only if this method of self-expression suits them. And this has little to do with me. It'll be their choice. I don't think potential bloggers would start hating blogs just because their teacher sets blog writing as a requirement. I'm pretty sure potential bloggers would grab blog writing as an opportunity and sooner or later open an account of their own. Perhaps they'd stop writing after a month or a year, perhaps not. But they'd surely blog until they felt the need for that. As a teacher I can't change that. I don't even want to.

Take our group as an example. I'm personally not sure that I'm a blogger. I hated the idea of keeping a blog in the beginning of this course (and I know from other participants' posts that I'm not alone). It reminded me of the times when I kept a personal diary. Those times are long gone, my life and self-expression have changed. Why would I take up something I've given up? But I'm still hanging around - writing comments to unknown people (whom I'm getting to know slowly through their blogs and comments). At first I posted to my blog only because our tutors required it from course participants. I followed their instructions because I knew I had to trust them: either you blog or you never find out what blogging is about. And now after three weeks I feel that I'm not lost in the blogosphere any more, on the contrary, I'm slowly finding my place and my voice thanks to our tutors, guests and fellow course participants although blogging is far from being the only means of self-expression that I'm capable of, that I use or that I find satisfying. I suspect this change is the result of my increasing awareness of what blogging involves both knowledge-wise and community-wise.

I also think of blogging as a possible tool for improving my students reading and writing skills in English. It won't suit everybody, I know. However, that won't stop me from using blogs in my teaching. I also know that there's no perfect teaching tool that would suit every child. Let me illustrate this. Kids don't like grammar. Fine, does that stop us from teaching it or from raising their awareness about it? My children don't like vegetables. Should I stop offering them vegetable dishes? Why would we do only what we like or what suits us? It may sound awful to some people but teaching is not just knowledge transfer. It's also socialization: learning what we like and what we don't, what's proper and what's not, the various opportunities that are out there, the obligations, responsibilities, perseverance, etc. The only thing wrong would be if we kept giving our children vegetable dishes and nothing else, teaching only grammar in EFL classes or teaching English only by writing a blog. But we are not doing that, are we? I don't remember anybody saying we should. Equally wrong would be giving up a teaching tool only because some of the kids didn't immediately take to it.

If we decided to use blog writing in our classes, we would do that only because we believed it would enhance our students' reading or writing skills. If the students learnt to like it, fine. If not, they'd know they'd tried it but it wasn't their cup of tea and they'd stop the moment the school year was over. Fair enough. Knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you like. Hopefully, by then they would have improved their reading and writing skills, whether they wanted it or not.

Blue Guitars, Jars and Plums

2005-02-02T23:39:00.000+01:00

I was reading participants' blogs in Bloglines when I came upon a link to Hector J. Vila's blog, went onward to the Artswriting Experiments blog at Middlebury College and came across Wallace Stevens' "Man with the Blue Guitar". It immediately reminded me of the times I spent at the University of Ljubljana, of Dr Reagan and Dr Peck, who were enthusiastically broadening our horizons with American poetry.
It also reminded me of another poem - William Carlos Williams' "This is just to say". For years I read these poems to every new generation of secondary school students and invariably got a very positive response from them. My goodness, why did I stop?
Can teaching ESP involve writing short comments on poetry?

A Comparison of Blog Providers

2005-02-01T23:23:00.000+01:00

I chose three providers of free blogs: Blog-City, LiveJournal and Bravenet. At first I also considered including Free ESL-Blogs, but I found their blogs too simplistic and therefore dropped this provider. I opened accounts with these providers and created the following blogs:
http://sarolta.blog-city.com/, http://www.livejournal.com/users/sarolta_gv/ and
http://sarolta.bravejournal.com/.
Setting up the accounts with the providers was not too difficult. However, I do prefer Blogger`s user-friendliness in three steps.
From experience I know that my students tend to have difficulties with setting the language of their documents and using a spell-checker. Therefore a spell-checking facility would need to be provided. Unfortunately, beside Blogger only LiveJournal provides this facility. Does that mean the others do not care? Perhaps their customers spell their words correctly.
Editing your entry is important. Students may want to change their posts, correct a mistake they notice after the post was published, etc. However, you cannot edit your posts in Blog-City - at least I could not find the way to do it.
All companies provide options for adjusting the template of your blog to your likes: Bravenet offers the widest option. Among other extra facilities they also offer the facility to incorporate your photos in the blog, including images, lines and tables in your posts. However, a Bravenet blog comes with a package: the blog is packed with advertisements for free Bravenet products. I could not get rid of them. They are distracting the reader from the blog`s contents.
A calendar is included in Blog-City and LiveJournal blogs. Getting one free with Bravenet should not be a problem as it is widely advertised. Getting one in Blogger though seems to be a problem.
Both LiveJournal and Bravenet provide information on and services for your friends. They seem to be more suitable for the journal type of blogs, especially as they provide either descriptions of your mood or smilies that symbolize the way you feel when you are writing. Many a journal writer would definitely appreciate that, I guess.
Blog-City posts could not be written with my Netscape. They seem to prefer Microsoft Explorer. However, they provide simple statistics on visitor traffic, which is nice.
All in all, this was a healthy exercise. It helped me learn about some of the other free blog providers and appreciate the user-friendliness of Blogger even more.

Report on my first week

2005-01-23T10:24:00.000+01:00

Task 1
I’ve opened an account at Blogger.com. That was easy. However, I had difficulties with posting my picture. It turned out that users of Mozilla can’t see all the details of either blogger backgrounds or photos. My husband, who knows a lot more about computing than I ever will, told me the reason for the letter could be the fact that photos are stored elsewhere. I had no difficulties with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In order to be friendly towards Microsoft incompatible people (I’m one of them) I chose a template Mozilla has no difficulties with. However, I still don't know hoe to format my paragraphs: I'd like to add a bit of space between them.

Task 2
I posted my introduction to the group as my first entry. Probably because I personally have difficulties matching the details from participants’ introductions with their personal blogs. I hope this will help. I am trying really hard to picture you all as real people.

Task 3
I’ve managed to open an account in Blog EFL/ESL wiki and added my Blogger URL.

Task 4
I joined Group 1. I’ve read the majority of the articles from the extensive list our tutors suggested. I sent a single entry though, but I am planning to send more.

Task 5
I attended the Tappedin session with Ann. I’d never been to a chat room before. At first it felt just like racing a car in my sons’ computer games (everything went so fast).
I had difficulties when logging in. I was in my office at the college and the firewall on the college server didn’t allow me to do what I wanted. A frantic rush followed when I was trying to find the technician. I was lucky and managed to participate. I got a personal message from Aleyandra. Thank you very much. However, I couldn’t answer it. This is something I still have to learn.

To blog or not to blog

2005-01-22T21:28:00.000+01:00

I'm used to sharing my ideas with the people I know or at least can see, whether that's my family, my students or colleagues. Cyberspace is beyond my comprehension.
Although I've checked the names and photos of the participants more than a couple of times, I can't really imagine who I'm writing for. They all seem nice, but distant, not familiar.
I was wondering, does the fact that we're writing for a faceless audience bother anybody?
Seeing so many blogs of the journal type makes me think people enjoy it. Those who don't obviously don't blog or use the blog for different reasons.
I suppose this changes when a blogger starts getting comments from regular readers and a contact is created.
During the chat with Ann, I raised the issue of students' lack of interest or even downright refusal to blog. Bee said she spends quite some time in the computing lab with her students. I can understand that now. Observing my own reactions to the unknown audience, I can sympathize with my students. Yeah, it's probably wise to stay with them longer, at least until two-way communication started and their audience started to get its shape.

Introduction

2005-01-22T13:33:00.000+01:00

My name is Sarolta ("S" is pronounced as "Sh" in Shelley) Godnic Vicic and I come from Korte, a little village in the coastal region of Slovenia, Europe (time zone: GMT+1).
I'm an ESP teacher at TURISTICA - College of Tourism in Portoroz. I like teaching and I like working with young people. Although I find teaching English for tourism challenging and rewarding, I keep looking for new ideas and approaches that would make my teaching more efficient and my students more active.
I'm interested in discourse analysis, corpus-based methods, problem-based learning, teaching writing and CALL.
I've joined the group because I'd like to learn more about using blogs and wikis in EFL classroom contexts.
I've tried creating a blog. It wasn't difficult. I've played in a Wiki sandbox. No big deal. However, making blogging a meaningful activity to students has so far proved to be an impossible task for me. So I really hope that by the end of these six weeks I'll have developed a deeper understanding of blogs and wikis, which will in effect help me engage my students in activities that would help them improve their writing skills in English.