Online Vocabulary Activities

http://www.manythings.org/vocabulary/

The website provides beginner level ESL learners with fun and interactive exercises that promote vocabulary development and practice. Students have the opportunity to choose from a wide variety of vocabulary lists of words and practice with different types of fun word games, puzzles and quizzes. The activities presented in the website do not require an extensive experience with online learning and could easily be used by learners who have minimum experience or exposure to technology.

I am concerned, however, about the complete absense of the sound effect in many of the activities. I am not sure to what extent vocabulary words can be taught only by the presenation of their spelling and with no reference to pronunciation. Moreover, is the interaction with a computer enough for vocabulary practice? Could students learn how to negotiate and apply meaning in the appropriate context on the basis of no other interaction except of this of student/computer?

Study in the USA

http://www.manythings.org/voa/study/

For international students apart from learning how to speak English and meet the language requirements for university admission in the US, they need to become familiar and develop a deep understanding on a wide range of topics in order to survive at an American university. The website Study in the USA listed above offers reading activities that address important aspects of the life of international students and provides useful information related to academic survival,application and immigration procedures, housing search and other important issues. The reading resources are provided with sound support which gives students the opportunity to practice their listening skills as they read.

Even though the reading texts offer useful information and would easily draw the attention of the specific group of students, the complete absence of pre reading and especially post reading activities leave a lot of room for lesson modification. What kinds of post reading activities could follow the specific reading activities that would give students the opportunity for effective output practice?

Maria's Call Blog

My experience with technology as the means for developing teaching materials began during the course of my graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the spring session of 2009 I developed teaching materials using software such as Hot Potatoes 6.0, Dreamwaver (a web publishing tool) in my case for developing an online portfolio, a Wiki website (a collection of online pages focusing on a specific subject), a delicious account (a tool for bookmarking and facilitating online research) and the website questgardern.com (an online authoring tool and hosting service for the creation of webquests).

I have enjoyed working with different technology tools for developing teaching materials. I am not sure, however, to what extent the use of technology will make students feel uncomfortable, especially if they don't have relative experience or regular access to computers.