Download Teaching Reading Skills with Technology

Call 570 Intro to CALL
312050 Rie Shojaku
Summary of Part 3: Authentic Task
Chapter 9 Classroom Practice:
Communicative Skill-Building Tasks in CALL Environments
Deborah Healey
This chapter offers teachers way to incorporate technology in communicative skillbuilding activities. The examples of authentic tasks addressed with specific types of
software show some of the many possibilities for employing technology effectively in the
classroom. The point is to keep the focus on the communicative goal and to achieve it in
a variety of ways.
Teaching Reading Skills with Technology
What are the reading skills? 1) skills that help learners find information from a reading
2) skills that help learners enjoy reading
What are the skills of finding information?
1) skimming
2) scanning
3) recognizing topic sentences and supporting details
4) predicting what will come next
5) recognizing transition markers
6) reading quickly
7) evaluating the validity of a source
Learners can learn these skills through ….
-Simulations by using SimCity (a software package)
The software asks players to make the decisions necessary to run a city and gives
them information in a variety of categories. The task is to create a city that survives and
prospers. Students need to skim the on-screen information quickly to find facts relevant
to their role.
-Speed-Reading Software
The software makes the logistics easier, computing reading speed and turning pages at
a pace set by the student much more smoothly than the combination of a stopwatch and a
book can.
-The World Wide Web
Teachers can give a group of students a list of Web sites related to a specific topic
and the task of gathering information about that topic. Each person can quickly scan a
different site and report the main idea and a few significant details back to the group, as
in a communicative information-gap activity.
-Hypermedia
Text, graphics, sound, video, or a combination, with links among them that let
learners jump from one medium to another and from one topic to a related one – allows
the teacher to bring out learners’ background knowledge of a topic.
-Extensive Reading by using whole-text deletion software like Storyboard and Eclipse
Every letter in the text is replaced by a dot, and students guess words to fill in the
text. Learners can turn these exercises into games for pairs or groups by adding a
competitive element.
Teaching Writing Skills with Technology
The author states that learners can learn writing skills through ….
-e-mail
Having students write e-mail to a partner (keypal) increase learners’ motivation.
-Software such as Writer’s Assistant
It helps learners practice academic and business writing.
-On-line lab like Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/)
It offers e-mail interaction; learners write in with their questions about grammar
and rhetoric, and someone at the other end responds.
-Presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoing 97
It creates an on-computer presentation with a related handout from the outline.
-Collaborative writing software, such as LiveWriter, Dialectical Notebook, and Daedalus
Integrated Writing Environment
The reviewer can feel freer to ask questions and give a critical response.
-Internet Relay Chart
It provides a space for anonymous comments and real-time written
communication between writers and readers.
-On-line dictionaries, thesauruses, and style and grammar checkers
Teaching Listening Skills with Technology
The author states that learners can learn listening skills through ….
-Internet: Voice of America (http://www.voa.gov/) allows users to hear its broadcasts on
the Internet using Realplayer, add-on software to Web browsers like Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Teachers can ask students to listen to the news, tell their classmates what they
heard, and perhaps discuss some of the stories. Learners can look for background
information electronically as well. Students can save it easily for later playback.
-Moviesites on the internet
It offers an interesting way to use digitized video, as some producers put digitized
video clips of previews of their current movies on those sites (see Internet Movie
Database, http://us.imdb.com/).
-CDictation: program that helps teachers create dictations with audio CDs.
The teacher sets up one or more tracks on an audio CD by marking logical breaks
and typing in the lyrics that go along with those tracks. Students can bring in CDs and
lyrics for songs they want to practice with and can either set up an exercise themselves or
ask the teacher to do it for them.
-HyperACE Advanced
Students are expected not only to recall information given orally but also to
manipulate that information in some way in order to select the correct answer. This
situation and questions are similar to those students encounter in academic classes.
-Aspects: a collaborative writing software program, to help learners see how to take notes
from a lecture
This software helps learners understand the thought process that goes on while
skilled note-takers listen to a lecture.
Teaching Speaking Skills with Technology
The author states that learners can learn speaking skills through ….
-Simulations such as Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and Decisions
They help teachers create a microworld in which students can operate in the target
language. The simulated world can take on a life of its own, making communication
within that context feel authentic. Simulations often require reading, note-taking, writing,
and group discussion, making simulations a versatile tool in the language classroom.
-To have students create their own simulations and role plays
-Software like Hollywood High
In this software, students receive raw materials in the form of sets and stock
characters to choose from and decide what the characters will say and do, typing in the
dialogue. The program then animates the characters and synthesizes their speech based
on the dialogue.
-Collaborative writing, gap filling, whole-text reconstruction, and some competitive word
games by using computer software
-Videotape students’ speech
Video offers them a full picture of what they do well and what they need to
improve.
-Pronunciation software such as Accent Lab, TEAM: Technology –Enhanced Accent
Management Program, and VideoVoice
They incorporate some types of waveforms and some also offers formant
diagrams to translate sound into graphic representations.
-Software such as ELLIS Master Pronunciation
It includes video clips of a speaker’s mouth in motion during pronunciation of
words or sounds.
-VideoVoice and SpeechViewer 3
They let learners practice in a wide variety of ways.
Teaching Grammar with Technology
The author states that learners can learn grammar knowledge through ….
-On-line writing with e-mail
-Multiuser object-oriented domains (MOOs): schMOOze University
(http://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888/)
Readers can ask for clarification and negotiate meaning immediately.
-Conversation simulation like Eliza
The computer “reads” what the learner has typed in and responds according to
specific key words and structures. If the student’s grammar is inaccurate, the computer’s
response will likely be unsatisfactory or nonsensical.
-Grammar or style checkers
They operate by applying relatively rigid rules of grammar and rhetoric and
bridging inconsistencies to the attention to the writer.
-Hypertext
Learners can read an electronic text until the point at which they do not
understand, then request grammar help.
-Program such as Language Now!
Learners open a window to see a gloss of a certain element in the reading – a
sentence, phrase, or word – in terms of the grammatical structures used. Students learn
what they need to know only when they request it.
-Concordancers, such as MicroConcord, MonoConc, and Conc
They allow users to select the text file to search, which lets learners see how
words are used in different ways in different styles of writing or speaking.
-Web browsers, such as Netscape Navigator
Learners can see the difference in usage by selecting different types of writing in
which to search for target structures.
Vocabulary Teaching with Technology
The author states that learners can learn vocabulary through ….
-Electronic dictionary such as the Longman Multimedia Dictionary
-On-line dictionary like The Newbury House Online Dictionary (http://nhd.heinle.com/)
Learners have access to definitions and often graphics, sound, video, and sample
sentences for unfamiliar words they come across while perusing a CD-ROM-based
encyclopedia or a Web page.
-Software like VersaText and NewReader
They allow teachers to add their own glosses, customizing the definitions to their
students.