January 29th


Times when people wanted to learn a foreign language in order to understand some written texts are already in the past. Nowadays most people wish to know other languages to survive in social situations, and that involves listening and speaking. There was an interesting statistics given: "More than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995). It is evident that speaking is a more spontaneous mode of language than writing, especially if it is informal. People have less time to think about what to say rather than to write, therefore the language used is less structured. For the same reason listening turns to be a more challenging skill to develope than reading. Beside the time pressure and lack of structure, there are some issues of pronunciation that might hinder mutual understanding. I've heard a lot of jokes about how mispronuncation changed the meaning of the phrase completely: for example 'who are you?' instead of  'how are you?', or 'Where can I bark?' instead of 'Where can I park?' However only few language instructors devote enough time for teaching pronunicaiotn in their class, there is a belief that it should come naturally while listening to authentic materials. The question how good we are at imitating the sounds is a different story. Apart from that, the most widely spread languages have the most varied pronunciation, for example English- we have British accent (Scotish, Welsh), American accent, Australian accent, even Indian accent. Does it mean that pronunciation is not so important? Some researchers raise the question how much one language should deviate from its original one so that it would become a separate language, and it's obvious that differences first start to appear in pronunciation. For example my native language is Lithuanian, but we have different Lithuanian dialects in separate parts of the country, and one of them 'Žemaičių' used to be a separate language in the past. If you come to Lithuania and visit Žemaitija, you will probably not be able to understand anything what they say, mainly because of a heavy accent. By the way, the Lithuanian language is believed to be the most conservative living Indo-European language and you can find more information about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_language So, should we devote more time to teaching pronunciation? This is an open question. In case you are in favor of it, there are some useful websites devoted to pronunciation matters, such as http://www.praat.org and http://www.englishcentral.com/ I have found some interesting sites on developing listening skills as well. Here they are:
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
http://www.esl-lab.com/
http://ed.ted.com/
Enjoy your time!

January 27th
I bet half of the world search for some information on the Internet by using Google search engine. There is even a term- 'to google'. But recently I was caught by surprise when I heard about search engines that I have never known before. Just a few examples:
http://www.infotopia.info/
http://www.twurdy.com/
http://www.sweetsearch.com/
http://www.surfwax.com/index.html
http://www.iseek.com/iseek/home.page
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
http://www.bing.com/
http://www.ask.com/
http://hakia.com/
and many more.......
We love browsing the Internet, because this is the easiest and quickest way to become omniscient. Yet there is a danger that this knowlegde will become too shallow to apply it in real life situations. Nevertheless lets enjoy being a part of 'google generation'.
And one more suggestion- if you need some page to put all your useful weblinks, try using https://delicious.com/ It will reduce your headache.

January 21st
Back to teaching online.  I've just learnt the importance of clear objectives in this way of teaching. There is so called ABCD module, according to which 'A' stands for 'audience'- who you state your objectives to, 'B' is 'behavior'- what they are supposed to do, 'c' is 'condition'- under what conditions they will have to do it, and 'd'- 'degree', how much they are expected to achieve. Your objectives should encompass all four aspects of teaching. This is a very basic yet very important pattern to remember :)

January 20th
Everybody has faced with an enormous amount of information that overflows us every day. There has never been a time in the history of mankind with such abundance of news from all over the world. How do we deal with this kind of flood? Ignorance. We learnt to ignore any information that does not concern us or not interesting to us. Does it mean that the other part of information is not important? Of course not. We simply can not process everything that reaches our ear. Do students do the same? Absolutely. So why do we blame them if they can not remember what we used to speak about last week? Because we think that the information we give is very important and relevant to them. ....But let's think about ourselves. Do we remember only what concerns us and is relevant to our situation? Not exactly. ..Usually we remember things that make some impression on us. Today, at the time of information overflow, teachers should be not only facilitators of learning, but great orators if they expect to gain any attention of their students.

January 13th
It is quite obvious that the role of a teacher is changing with the time, but I have big doubts if this profession becomes extinct in the foreseeable future. Nowadays it is fashionable to say that a teacher is a facilitator of learning, helping students to choose an appropriate information for a particular case. He still needs to know a lot, but due to an enormous amount of information, his knowledge appears more selective and practical, which makes it more applicable in real life.  Furthermore, teacher's ability to socialize must be accompanied by his computer skills, since a large percentage of our daily communication happens on the internet, . It is not enough to be a good interlocutor in face to face situations in order to gain respect from the students, you need to be a part of an online community too. What does it mean to be a teacher on the internet and how is it different from teaching in a physical class? I hope this course 'Building teaching skills through the interactive web' will help me to answer these questions.

January 11th
So, here I am, trying to be a better teacher. In the modern world people have more freedom of choice, which makes them more selective in all fields of life: food, living place, education, carrer, friends, entertainment, etc. The more choice there is, the less valuable is a particular option. For instance, if I do not like some school or college, I can go to another one, or if I do not like that teacher, I can choose a more attractive one. What is more, nowadays you don't even need to go to an educational institution, you can complete a course and receive a certificate while sitting at home and looking at your computer screen . In this case the role of a teacher is not so important. I have never taken or offered an online course, but it is obvious that this method brings some changes to our educational paradigm and remoulds teacher identity. This process has just started, but we can already see the outcomes of it. Knowledge is not the privilege of educators any more, as it can be acquired by everyone online. Moreover, people don't need any communication skills to gain new knowledge, rather some basic understanding of how to search information on the internet. What is the function of a teacher in this case? And will we need a teacher in the future at all? Hmmmm.......

January 9th

Probably I am that type of a person who prefers working with live objects- such as people :) rather than machines. A teacher is always involved in communication, and, having in mind that human being is the most complex and the most unpredictable system in this world, he can often find himself in the most unexpected situations which provide him with new insights into human nature. It means that this job is never boring, but always full of new adventures and incredible discoveries about us as humans. What is more, a teacher is expected to be ahead of his students in terms of new knowledge, which is growing every day and every minute. Therefore he constantly learns new things and gains expertise much greater than that of an ordinary worker. So if you are a curious person, you should definitely be a teacher :) Obviously this knowledge enriches a person and adds more weight to his words. And finally, if a teacher is a good communicator and always full of new ideas, his students will never forget him! This is the highest reward a person can receive in his life. People die, but memories about them stay forever. There is one saying by Samuel Butler, novelist and philosopfer "To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead."