Tutorial Task Week 9

In this activity, students are required to listen and understand a talk. Question (A) is asking about what are the changes that happen to the teenagers and the counsellor’s role in helping students to solve the problems. Question (B) will be about what effects that growing up have on teenagers. Firstly, students will be discussing about the questions based on the audio recording. The question starts with a bottom-up process where students have to listen to the topic in the talk and later on they will have to answer a question about changes that teenagers are facing now, activities that involved in this question are answering and duplicating. First, the listener will listen to the topic and then they will answer the question, other than that they are actually duplicating what is mention by the speaker in the audio. Next, the question which can a counsellor help them to solve those problems actually involved top-down process, students have to discuss the question based on what they know simply saying that they will have to utilize their schemata. We would say that the extending activity involved in the question because they have to think beyond the text by continuing whether talking to a counsellor can help students solve the problems.

    Question C need the students to use both top-down and bottom-up processes. To understand what they have to do, first they have to listen the audio recording and recall back a situation where they seek for someone advices and then they will have to relate the experiences to their friends. The audio recording acts as a guide for them to recall what information that they can use in relating the experience to their friends. This guide or scaffolding, become the base of their knowledge and they can get access to it. This is the combination of both top-down and bottom-up processes, often called the hybrid process.

     The listening process play a crucial part in this activity because they need to be able to understand the text to be able to answer the questions. To be able to understand this, they need to listen properly to the audio recording. Picking up the major points from a text is the most crucial ability to master and by training them to listen properly, little by little, they would be able to pick up the points from a recording. This contributes to generate meaning from what they heard. With the information they collected, it is now possible to answer the questions by referring back to what they heard and thus comprehension is established.

Tutorial Task Week 8

List and discuss the levels of materials adaptation.

Levels of adaptation can divided into 3 parts which are macro adaptation, adapting a unit and adaptation of specific activities in a unit.

1^st level: Macro adaptation:

-      The first level will be done before the language program begins.

-      Macro adaptation helps to avoid waste of time and energy of the teacher and the students.

-      Helps the teacher to see what he/she needs to supplement so that he/she can keep an eye on                materials that could be used.

-      After comparing between what is covered in a textbook and what is required by the syllabus or examination, teacher can find certain areas or whole chapter of the book can be omitted, and certain contents need to be supplemented.

 2^nd level: Adapting a unit:

-      Helps to make the classroom teaching more smooth and cohesive.

-      Helps teachers to better fulfil the aims of a unit.

-      In this level we will reordering activities, combining activities, omitting activities, rewriting or supplementing exercise materials.

3^rd level: Adaptation of specific activities in a unit

-          Activity in a unit is regarded as valuable but it is not well-designed or not practical in a particular class. If teacher still want to use the activity he/she need to adapt it.

-          Adaptation involves supplementation, which is teachers add materials from other.

-          Teachers can used authentic materials for their supplementation which is better than non-authentic materials.

-          Teachers who use authentic materials will find it much easier to adapt textbooks.

-          Although, authentic materials are not always readily to hand, some adjustment have to be done so that teachers can use the materials as their supplementation.   

Tutorial Task Week 6

DIGITAL LANGUAGE LEARNING MATERIALS (DLLM)

Examples of DLLM 

Blogger

Edmodo

Facebook

Prezi

Schoology

Tumblr

Wordpress

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories and principles

SLA theories

-         Interactionist theory (Long, 1985; 1996)

-         Sociocultural theo

ry

-         Co

mmunicative language teaching

-         Comprehensible Input theory (Swain, n.d.; Krashen, 1991)

-         Affective Domain (Krashen, 1991)

      Principles

      Materials should help learners develop confidence.

      What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful.

      Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment.

      Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use.

      Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use TL to achieve communicative purposes.

      Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles and affective attitudes.

      Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback.

      Rough outline of DLLM

      Using Prezi as a platform to develop the DLLM

-    Includes 6 activities; each according to the levels or bands according to the School-Based Assessment (SBA) that the MOE developed.

-    Using a chapter from the English Form 2 textbook; making sure the chapter is interesting and relatable to the students thus relevant to be used in their everyday and working life.

-    Each activities are different from each other; might include one language skills, might be more than one (e.g. reading and writing in one activity).

-    Might be focusing on linguistic, thematic or both types of content.

-    Each activity is a progression of the previous one; the first activity (band 1), increasing with each activity progresses.

      Making sure the materials follow the criteria of technical and pedagogical  usability

Visual design

           

a)       a) Harmony

           The manner elements of a display interact together in a pleasing manner.

           It pulls the pieces of visual image together.

          Can be achieved through repetition and rhythm, where rhythm is the flow depicted in a visual and helps direct eye movement.

           To ensure harmony 3x3 grid must be used.

           Rhythm should either be a clockwise or counter clockwise.   

            

           b) Balance and symmetry

           We can bring balance to the elements of different sizes by either moving them closer of father from the center of the page.

           Symmetry is when one half of a visual display is a mirror image of the other half.

           Types of symmetry: horizontal, approximate horizontal, radial and asymmetry.

            

           c)  Emphasis

           Create dominance and focus in their work.

     It emphasize colour, value, shapes or other design elements to achieve dominance. For example “facebook” page used dark colour as their background and the symbol “f “for“facebook” in light colour.  

            

           d)  Alignment

           Alignment of elements within a screen is important part of organizing and grouping.

           Should visually maximize differences between text, label and pictures.  

           e) Unity

           Relationship among visual elements that helps all elements to work t

ogether.

   

       Lives a sense of closure or oneness to a visual i

mage.

 

         Can be achieved through use of similar shapes, common pattern or use of a common background.

C

riteria of technical usability

-          Errors

(i) Less serious errors = affect the work of the user

(ii) More serious errors = endanger the preservability of users’ outputs

-          Efficiency

·     Refers to how well experienced users can operate an application after they have mastered it.

-          Learnability

·     How long beginners’ use of a system before they learn the essential skills necessary to perform their tasks

-          Memorability

·     Ability of an occasional user who previously used the system to remember its operational system.

Criteria of pedagogical usability

-          Feedback

(i)        The system or learning material should provide the student with encouraging and immediate feedback è encouraging feedback increases learning motivation; immediate feedback helps the student understand problematic part in their learning.

(ii)       Learning is based on the fact that mistakes are corrected immediately and progression cannot happen when corrections are not done.

-          Motivation

(i)         Affects learning and makes people behave the way they do.

(ii)        Motivation = the way to do things by reference to instincts, desires and    reinforcement; support the direction on one’s general behavior.

(iii)       Motivation affects alertness and vigor.

-          Goal orientation

(i)        When the goals of teacher, students and LM are closely aligned, best results are obtained.

(ii)       Goals should be clear cut and able to motivate them to achieve them.

(iii)      When the students themselves do not set their goals, their meaningfulness should be justified from the point of view of motivation.

(iv)      Students should be able pursue their own interests in relation with learning

goals.

-          Lea

rner control

(i)        Learner’s memory should be pushed to the limit when learning a new topic.

(ii)       Materials should be broken down to be learned into small meaningful units.

-          Applicability

(i)        The approach taken in learning material should correspond to the skills that the learner will later need in everyday and working life.

(ii)       The skills or knowledge acquired should be able to be transferred to other contexts.

(iii)      Learning something new can be accomplished effectively by relating it to practical tasks.

(iv)      LM should be at appropriate level from the point of view of learner’s learning proce

ss.

-          Ad

ded value

(i)        Induce creativity in learners when using DLLM.

(ii)       Other kind of added value: adaptability to individual needs, number of flexible options, learning is controlled and initiated by learners, interesting contents, development of communication, active participation of students.

-          Learner activity

(i)        Learners’ independent activity may increase when a teacher stays in background; a facilitator.

(ii)       Learning materials can support learner’s activities by being interesting and based on real life.

-          Cooperative/collaborative learning

(i)        Studying with others to achieve common learning goal.

(ii)       Instead of just acquiring personal knowledge, learners construct knowledge as members of community in practice.

-          Valuation of previous knowledge

(i)        Previous knowledge from the learners are assumed to be possessing some skills that previously been presented.

(ii)       LM that respects learner’s previous knowledge takes account in differences of skills and knowledge in learners and encourages them to take advantage of it in learning.

-          Flexibility

(i)        Learner’s learning differences should be taken into account.

(ii)       Information gained in pre-test can be used to provide learners with different routes or methods of studies.

REFFLECTION

How does the lesson affect me on study?

This such particular topic surely does generate my ideas and creativity in exploring new mechanism of digital materials that really helpful to be applied in my project paper later on. 

Does the tutorial helps me on increasing my prior knowledge?

There is no doubt that the tutorial much helps me including the rest of my classmates on increasing our prior knowledge which is in-depth regarding Digital Language Learning Materials that opened up a wide view on how to utilize digital application for an addition of learning materials instead of just using textbooks provided.

Can I use this knowledge later on?

Digital Language Learning Materials really helps in order for me to apply current technology into creating new perspective of learning materials as the fact that the pre-service teachers have to be creative and innovative while running a lesson in classroom atmosphere, in future definitely.