lesson-plan

lesson plan (grade 7):

1. Phase:

Time: 5 min.

course of the class (phase/content): opening of the class

Activity: brainstorming (cities in England)

Media: blackboard

Objectives: activation of previous knowledge

2. Phase:

Time: 10 min.

course of the class: listening phase

activity: listen to the mp3-file concerning Canterbury two times –>1st: listening and comprehension; 2nd: filling in gaps (worksheet: http://www.eslpodcards.com/england/canterbury.php)

media: cd-player, sheets of paper (printed version of the online worksheet)

objectives: improvement of listening comprehension

3. Phase:

time: 5 min.

course of the class: self-control

activity: handing out the orthographical transcription of the text; filling in the left gaps.

media: sheets of paper

objectives: improvement of reading comprehension and self-reflexion.

4. Phase:

time: 10 min.

course of the class: controlling phase

acitivity: answering of questions on the text (http://www.eslpodcards.com/england/canterbury.php)

media: sheets of paper

objectives: reading comprehension and improvement of writing skills

5. Phase:

time: 10 min.

course of the class: saving the results

activity: reading out the results

media: blackboard

obejectives: improvement of oral skills and self-reflection (self-correction)

6. Phase:

Tinme: 5 min.

Homework

media: blackboard

Blog-task 6 “Dream-Project”

First of all, I have to admit that I have never thought about a dream-project I want to conduct at school. Nevertheless, to write about a project where I have all the money and possibilities I like to, sounds very interesting to me.

According to the Hessian curriculum grade 6 (G8), the students shall learn to handle the problems of clichés and prejudices, they shall be confronted with different people from different countries, and they shall be confronted with different ethnical backgrounds. In my opinion, this is a quite good topic to connect it with the new media. Since our school has many different partner schools in Australia, the USA, Canada, and Great Britain I could imagine conducting a video project where the students (the class consists of 25 students) can contact different students from our partner schools. The aim is to talk to them using the English language and to learn something about their culture and everyday life. Therefore, a concrete task can look like this:

1. Choose one student of our partner schools you want to talk to (of course the students from our contact schools are always there and have always time to talk to them)
2. Talk to him/her and find out how a typical day of a student looks like in his/her country!
3. Do you find any similarities between his/her everyday life and yours?

In my opinion this would be a task which can be very helpful for the students because they have to use the English language because none of the students from our partner schools speaks German and therefore, the German students might realize how the English language is used in a natural context. Thus, the task is a good tool to let the students realize what they are able to express in English and where they have some difficulties. Furthermore, the students learn to interact with people from different countries, get to know a different culture, and may find similarities between himself/herself and the other student. Therefore, with the help of this task the students can improve their social, speaking, listening, creative, and, of course, also media skills.

                I also could imagine to extend this task insofar as that the students have to talk to our partner school students once a week to have a permanent contact to English native speakers. This could be quite helpful to achieve a constant improvement of their language skills.

What I want to add is furthermore that the German 6-graders are of course very motivated and eager to talk to the English native speakers. There is not even one student who is not eager to do this task and to talk to native speakers of English. (-;

Blog-Task 5 part 2

Before we made the field trip we were ask to write down two questions (see below) to ask them during our field trip to the “Alfred-Wegener Gesamtschule”. In this blog I want to write down the answers to the questions.

Answer to question one:

According to Mr. S. (he showed us the school), each 5^th grade has to participate in a six-week “crash course” in computer science. The aim is to acquire basic knowledge concerning the use of the computer and therefore to improve the media skills of the students. PowerPoint, the use of “Word”, and the internet research in general are the tools which each student should be able to handle after the six-week course.  Nevertheless, Mr. S. admitted that you cannot make them completely fit in the use of the new media because even six weeks are not enough time to achieve that. Furthermore, Mr. S. explained that in terms of other than medial competencies or in terms of an increase in performance in general no changes could be discovered. This is also due to the fact that nobody aimed to find out if such changes occurred since the new media are used. Nevertheless, the school is very happy to get the chance to work with the new media. Their newest aim is to bring the new media to the students and not the students to the new media. Therefore, fixed installed computers shall be available in each classroom.

This would, of course, lead to a further improvement of media skills.

Answer to question two:

In general there are no teachers who are against the use of the new media. Nevertheless, some of the older teachers have the opinion that it is too late for them to learn how to use, for example, computers. They think that this is something for the younger generation of teachers. Nevertheless, the educational authority offers them to take part in different training courses. Unfortunately, only a very few number of the older teachers use this chance to improve their knowledge and therefore acquire media competencies. The main group of the older teachers sticks to their opinion that it is too late for them to learn how to use the new media properly. But in general all the other teachers, and also some of the older teachers, use the possibilities which the new media offer them.

In terms of the parents there is no opposition against the use of the new media because according to Mr. S. most of the parents know that knowledge about the new media is important for the future life of their children.

Blog-task 5

Here are my questions:

Question one:

Is an improvement of the skills of the students recognizable since you use the new media? If yes, to what extent?

Question two:

Are there still teachers or parents who are against the use of the new media? If yes, why?

Blog task 4 – project

This blog shall be a report about a teaching project which makes use of the new media.

By searching the internet I found a project which seems very interesting to me. The “Gymnasium Neusiedl”, which is a grammar school in the Austrian town Neusiedl am See (Burgenland), established a project using the new media in foreign language education.  The project which was called “das Ägyptenprojekt” was carried out in the 5^th grade and was an interdisciplinary project which comprised the subjects history, English, and computer science.  The aim was to create an interactive CD-ROM about the cult of the dead of the Egyptians and to send the CD-ROM to the Egyptian tourist association to win a week-long trip to Egypt for the whole class.

The whole project was done in class and also after school. The different subjects were connected insofar as that the historical background about the cult of the dead was part of the history lessons. The main idea was to highlight the differences between the cult of the dead of the Egyptians and the cult of the dead of the Austrians under Joseph II. The main emphasize was put on the mummification. The main part of the CD-ROM was an animated comic which the students had to develop by themselves and which should involve the historical facts taught in the history lessons. Therefore, the subject art was part of this project as well. To connect the area of foreign language education with this project the whole user interface and the comic was completely created in English. The part of computer science was to animate the comic and to design the user interface of the CD-ROM. In addition to the comic, the students also had to develop interactive games. Finally, two of them were put onto the CD.

After sending the complete CD-ROM to the Egyptian tourist association the project came in third. Unfortunately, the students did not win the week-long trip to Egypt because only the projects on the first and the second place won the trip.

Nevertheless, I think that this project was still successful. It shows that the new media can be used in school not only in terms of one subject but can also be used interdisciplinary which I think is something very important because this automatically lead to a big variety of learning skills which can be improved  so that you can kill two birds with one stone. Not only that the students could improve their writing, reading, grammatical, or listening skills, the students were also part of the whole project so that also other competences like social or creative skills could be improved.

Therefore, again, in my opinion the project has shown how the new media can be used in school very successfully and appropriately.

Maybe you want to take a look at the school website:

http://www.gymnasium-neusiedl.at/eLearning.144.0.html

Blog task 3

This blog shall be a comment on the different learning software we used in the session on Tuesday. Unfortunately, my group was only able to analyze one of the two learning programs since we were not able to install the different programs. First, we tried to install the foreign language learning program called “Lernvitamin Plus English” which did not work. Afterwards, we tried to install the program called “English + Mittelstufe”. Unfortunately, this program didn’t work as well. We were only able to install the guide tour of the program which was not very helpful in terms of our task. Finally, we were able to install the foreign language learning program called “Lernpaket Englisch Klasse 5-6”. But since we had such big problems to install the language learning software our group was only able to analyze the latter program and not two different programs.

Therefore, here is my analysis of the foreign language learning program “Lernpaket Englisch Klasse 5-6”:

First of all I can say that the software was very easy to handle, in my opinion also for 5th- or 6th-graders, although there were some tasks which were rather complicated. I can remember a kind of puzzle where we had to recreate a picture by pushing around some pieces of the picture. Unfortunately, we were not able to figure out the sense of this task. Irrespective of this, we were not able to bring the pieces into a correct order. (-;§

However, the software was developed to train writing, grammatical, and reading skills. I cannot remember if there were more skills which can be improved with the help of the program, because after our installing Marathon there was not much time left for a very deep analysis. Nevertheless, I’m not quite sure if the software does really lead to an improvement of these skills since the tasks were organized according to the theory of the behaviorism only. The students only have to fill out gaps to make a sentence complete. Besides, the words which the students have to put into the gaps are given below the sentence (the letters of the word are mixed). I could imagine that this can be very boring after a short time so that students, especially ten or eleven year-olds (5th or 6th-graders) won’t use this software very often. In my opinion language learning software should provide the user with tasks based on different language learning theories. In my opinion this is very important to meet the needs of different learner types.

Nevertheless, the design and the background of the tasks were quite okay and appropriate for students of that age, although I think that everything could have been a little bit more interactive.

Summing up, I can say that I would not recommend this foreign language learning program because it focuses too much on one learning theory and therefore can be very boring after a short time.

Additionally I want to say that in Tuesday’s session I experienced first-hand when the new media don’t work. (-;

Blog Task 2

This blog is about the poster which tries to answer the question: “Why is drill and practice-software still distributed? Do you think it’s useful?”

“Drill and practice-software” are tasks which belong to the learning theory of the “Behaviorism”. The behaviorists see the primary process of language acquisition in imitation, practicing, and feedback. Nevertheless, there is much criticism concerning this approach, for example, that this way of learning does not account for other types of learning or that it does not take the mental process into account.

However, there are many other learning theories which try to explain how one can acquire a language best. Nevertheless all of them do not explain the acquisition and learning of languages in its whole complexity. Therefore, one can say that there have to be a mixture of all the different learning theories which also includes the behavioristic approach of teaching and therefore the use of drill and practice software. This can be one reason why drill and practice software are still distributed, today because no one really knows what are the best methods in language learning/acquisition.

This is a fact which does not occur on the poster. But I think that this is a very important point to answer the questions. Nevertheless, I agree with all the other pros listed on the poster although I think that some points are missing, like the fact that learners can solve the tasks according to their own pace of learning, the training of certain skills (e.g. writing or listening skills), that the learner may acquire problem solving strategies, and of course the acquisition of media competences. Nevertheless, I agree with all the other points on the “pro-site” of the poster.

Similar things are to say about the con column of the table. I think that it focuses too much on the term “software”. Four out of six headwords focus on technical facts, like “you need to have a computer”, “some programs are expensive”,” you have to sit in front of a pc all the time”, etc. I agree with all of these points but I think that you also have to focus on the question of “why drill and practice tasks” and not others. I think that you also have to focus on the behavioristic approach of teaching and that you have to list disadvantages concerning this theory because, like I said above, there is much criticism concerning this theory and therefore also against drill and practice tasks. In my opinion this is missing.

Additionally, there is no conclusion on the poster towards the question “Do you think it’s useful?”. Maybe this was done deliberately so that everyone can create his own opinion towards the question. Furthermore, everything could be a little bit more colorful.

Summing up, I can say that I agree with all the points listed on the poster although I think that there are still some points missing, especially concerning the learning theory of the “Behaviorism”.

(to get an impression of the poster see the image below)

Blog task 1 – new media in foreign language education

In our society the use of new media is becoming more and more important. Therefore, it is necessary to use the ”big wide world of new media” also at school and in foreign language education respectively.

On the one hand the use of new media at school is important because the students get a chance to grapple with all the new forms of media, like computers, the internet, certain programs, like “PowerPoint”, and so on, which is not only important for their everyday life but also for the future.  On the other hand, especially in connection with foreign language education, it offers various ways to improve the methods used in language acquisition. With the help of computers and the internet you can, for example, improve certain skills and it is easier to realize projects and action oriented tasks.

With the help of foreign language learning programs you can reach a new stage concerning the teaching of foreign languages because there are a row of different foreign language learning software, word processing programs, communicative tasks, which are realizable through the internet, possibilities of finding information via the internet, and so on. Thus, it is possible to improve the writing, hearing, speaking, and communication skills. Furthermore, the use of new media offers the possibility that each of the different learner types is able to learn like he prefers to. Moreover the students get the chance to work independently.

But not only according to students the use of new media offers a row of ways in terms of language learning, the teacher benefits from it, too. It is possible for teachers, for example when using programs like “PowerPoint”, to make the lessons more effective and structured. Moreover the teacher can contact students via email when they are at home so that communication is not dependent on the lesson. In addition the teacher has the possibility to choose a wider range of resources exceeding the normal use of schoolbooks.

Nevertheless there are also some limits and perils in terms of using new media at school. It is possible that students are overtaxed when searching the internet because of too much information. Often students, especially when they are younger, are not able to decide which information are important and which are not. Besides you have to reckon on the fact that there are often technical problems so that the technical equipment sometimes does not work properly.

But in my opinion everyone should use new media in foreign language education because the advantages are predominant.

The Dumbest Generation

Hi everybody,

some days ago I watched a video about Mark Bauerlein who wrote the book “The Dumbest Generation”. One of his theses is that people under 30 are stupid. I think that we do not need to comment on this. *g*

What I want to do is to try to understand why he says something like this. In my opinion the reason why he thinks that people under 30 are stupid is that he is stuck to the period of time when he was young. Now, he is old and does not understand what teenagers deal with today because he does not grapple with their world, especially with all the multimedia stuff, like cell phones, computer games, social networks, and so on.

And because he does not understand this, because it differs so much from the “world” when he was young, he thinks that teenagers or people under 30 are stupid.

Nevertheless, he does the same mistake each generation does when becoming old, to complain about the youth. Therefore, it is not really worth talking about his theses because in 20 or 30 years nobody will complain about people watching too much TV, playing computer games or using the internet for social networks.

Besides, it seems to me that he created such provocative statements deliberately to get a higher attention and therefore get more people to buy his book. (-;§

Hello everyone!

Hi,

I´m Daniel. I´m a student at Marburg University and

never wrote a blog before.

This term I take part in the course “New Media in Foreign Language Education”. I hope that the course will help me to learn how to use new media in terms of teaching English at school.