Certainly a fear not only for the native speaker but even more so for the non-native speaker.
Principle #1: Speaking in public is NOT inherently stressful
Priniciple #2: You don't have to be brilliant or perfect to succeed
Principle #3: All you need is two or three points
Principle #4: You need a purpose that is right for the task
Principle #5: Don't consider yourself a public speaker
Principle #6: Humility and humor can go a long way
Principle #7: When you speak in public, nothing "bad" can ever happen
Principle #8: You don't have to control the behavior of your audience
Principle #9: In general, the more you prepare, the worst you will do
Principle #10: Your audience truly wants you to succeed
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Open writing seminar for ELLs
A four-month, open writing seminar for English language learners is scheduled to begin the end of January and will conclude the end of May. To sign up, visit the Moodle main page and search for the course titled Writing Seminar (8th semester-BAELT).
Monday, November 9, 2009
Blended English Language Learning (BELL)
As I finish up this semester, I thought I'd share how I ended up blending a course I'm giving to pre-service English language educators studying in Mexico. I say, "ended up blending a course" because I really had no idea at the beginning of the semester which technologies I would continue to use throughout the semester. The class is a public speaking course for 5th semester students and meets face-to-face Monday (for two hours) and Wednesday (for one hour).
I created a group in LearnCentral that served as a central hub or meeting place (much like any learning management system might, like Moodle for example) where I mainly provided instructions that complemented what we did in class. Since this was a public speaking class, I wanted to focus on two important aspects of public speaking: 1) reflecting on one's performance of giving a public speech, and 2) gaining confidence speaking English as a foreign language. To address the former, I used BlipTV to host videos of the learners' performances in order for them to get used to seeing themselves speaking in front of an audience. A playlist of all their performances follows:
To help learners gain more confidence in their speaking ability, they participated in a weekly language exchange whereby learners connected with Skype and had discussions with American native speakers - college students their same age. Their American counterparts were learning Spanish, so each session learners spent half the class speaking English and half in Spanish. After each weekly exchange, the English language learners were asked to submit reflections to VoiceThread either as an audio or video. Moreover, learners were asked to reflect on their overall language exchange experience in written form by submitting comments to this blog.
In summation, technology was used to complement my face-to-face class as follows:
I created a group in LearnCentral that served as a central hub or meeting place (much like any learning management system might, like Moodle for example) where I mainly provided instructions that complemented what we did in class. Since this was a public speaking class, I wanted to focus on two important aspects of public speaking: 1) reflecting on one's performance of giving a public speech, and 2) gaining confidence speaking English as a foreign language. To address the former, I used BlipTV to host videos of the learners' performances in order for them to get used to seeing themselves speaking in front of an audience. A playlist of all their performances follows:
To help learners gain more confidence in their speaking ability, they participated in a weekly language exchange whereby learners connected with Skype and had discussions with American native speakers - college students their same age. Their American counterparts were learning Spanish, so each session learners spent half the class speaking English and half in Spanish. After each weekly exchange, the English language learners were asked to submit reflections to VoiceThread either as an audio or video. Moreover, learners were asked to reflect on their overall language exchange experience in written form by submitting comments to this blog.
In summation, technology was used to complement my face-to-face class as follows:
- primary means for input (asynchronous communication): LearnCentral, Internet, VoiceThread, BlipTV
- primary means for output (asynchronous communication): BlipTV, Voicethread, Blog
- primary means to interact with others (sychronous communication): Skype, Internet
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Language Exchange Reflections
English language learners in Mexico (UAA) who have been participating in a semester-long language exchange program with Marquette University have been asked to reflect on their experience. To date, their weekly reflections have been spoken, using VoiceThread as a means of uploading public audio and video in the language learners' target language (i.e., English).
English language learners have been asked to reflect a bit deeper on the entire language exchange experience this semester in written form, either in their L1 (Spanish) or L2 (English) - their choice. Their responses are the comments that follow this blog entry.
English language learners have been asked to reflect a bit deeper on the entire language exchange experience this semester in written form, either in their L1 (Spanish) or L2 (English) - their choice. Their responses are the comments that follow this blog entry.
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