Week 3 Realisation!!!

“PrtSc”

Though I have been using computers for the past four years, I have never realised that such key exist on my laptop keyboard. The third class of resources served as an eye-opener for me to become aware of the existence of the key and its use. Thanks, ma’am.

The task of the day was to download the last song of Michael Jackson. Frankly typing, I have never downloaded any English song before and I was completely lost when the lecturer asked to download search the song in the Google search engine and download the song. Luckily, there were some good-hearted people who shared their suggestion of the webpage aloud. TQ buddies. From that, I learnt how much peers would be helpful in me exploring and conquering the ICT skills.

After sometime searching, I got the webpage my friends suggested and proceeded with the downloading process. “That’s a shortcut!” The sentence moved via the air and entered my ears before rang an alarm in my brain.

What does the lecturer mean by that???

Go and check!!!


A simple monologue started to take place in my heart and the fear of making mistake urged me to approach the friend who got the comments. OMG!!! All these while, I have been doing that and it is not the correct way of downloading. I should not press on the song before left click and ‘Save target as’. Luckily, my intuition forced me and again thanks for that enlightenment ma’am.

After saving the steps on word document, we were asked to put it on PowerPoint presentation. I like the idea of saving it on PowerPoint and uploading it on space. But, I feel that we will be merely adding to the global warming by wasting papers to print out the assignment later. I may sound like a real Mother Earth lover but actually I am not. Just that, I feel that it is a pure waste to print and throw them later. Hurm....

The class then continued with presentation on last week’s topic. Some of the presentation brought up issues, examples and theories which never strike my mind when I read the chapter in the alone in the book. So, thanks guys for sharing your knowledge and ideas.

Week 2 Learners Characteristics

The excitement to learn ICT created by the lecturer in the previous lesson drove me to the second class on time. We were informed that we got some ‘office job’ to do but before that, we are asked to read and comprehend Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 addressed six characteristics, skills and instincts, pupils bring with them to language classroom. The first characteristic is children’s ability to grasp learning. According to Susan Halliwell, children start to learn to understand non-verbal cues much earlier before they learn language. They learn how to interpret message or instruction by adults to them by non-verbal cues and develop language ability later. Therefore, she suggested second language teachers to expose children to the language so that they will learn the second language as they learn their first language. In my opinion, I believe children will pick up language if they are constantly exposed to it because all language shares some common features. But, the pupils may need some help from teachers to correct their misconceptions.

Second features of young language learners are they are creative in using limited language resources. They may make-up their own vocabulary and rules. We, as teachers, should understand their journey of exploring language and guide them. We also need to create the urge to communicate in them and ensure that their learning environment is safe because humanists believes that success in learning only occurs when learners have positive attitude to learning.

The third quality that pupils bring to their classroom is their capacity for indirect learning. Susan believes that language learning need not only takes place through direct learning but also indirect learning. I agree with Susan because as Krashen suggested in Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis (monitor Model 1982) pupils can learn and acquire the language. Acquisition will take place with no conscious attention on learning whereas learning occurs through conscious attention to form and rule of learning. Therefore, real work should be set so that learning and acquisition take place.

The fourth trait of young language learners are their instinct for play and fun. We, teachers should understand their nature of liking play and fun and manipulate it so that learning tales place in the best condition. We can use games to teach language.

The fifth attribute of pupils is their imagination. Children are rich in their imagination and creativeness. Therefore, we as teachers should design activities which promote their imagination and ask them to share their ideas so that they develop their language white communicating their thoughts.

The last characteristic pupils bring with them into language classroom is their instinct for interaction and talk. Since we are aware that children love to talk, we should vary the mode of interaction in the classroom so that we encourage them to use the language and would not have a hard time managing them.

Then, the office work started. We were asked to segregate our seniors’ assignments according to the topics we are going to learn starting from next week. There are all together five topics namely internet skills, video editing, audio editing, picture editing and software. Out of these five topics, I would say that I have only mastered half of the internet skills. Therefore, I have a lot more to learn and I am eagerly waiting to conquer ICT so that I can utilize the knowledge in preparing my teaching aids later.

Question-ares...

Today we were given a lot of questionares.... I think the questionares is to get feedback from us... A lot of questions were asked in the questionare....

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”

Ken Blanchard quotes

Hi!!

Created this blog the for the resources project on 15/7/2010