Technology in testing: the present and the future

Using computer-based language tests sound very convenient to language teachers. However, I think there are quite a lot of problems. It is quite difficult to include a variety of questions in the tests. We are sometimes quite restricted to the technology. Sometimes, we may have better ideas in testing the students but, our IT knowledge or software may stop us from doing so. Also, it is hard to get a good setting for tests, if we ask students to do it at home, they may cheat. If we ask them to do it in the MMLC, we may come across technical problems. If we want to assess students' writing skills, it would be difficult as well. Since there are different functions of proofreading, spell check and etc to assist the students. Spelling and grammar use are definitely items we must assess in students' writing. With the help of technology, how can they show us their "true colour"? Furthermore, it is very difficult for us to mark the writing on screen, we may need to print it out and type our feedback afterward. That's why a lot of teachers don't want to mark the CE and A-Level exam papers.

Learning Management Systems: The wrong place to start learning

The author of the article said certain things about the weaknesses of an LMS, e.g., it may cause confusion for many learners, it may dictate the nature of interaction, it is still developing and also the instructor may not be able to achieve what he /she wants due to the limitations of WebCT. I do believe that nothing in the world is perfect. The use of Blackboard and WebCT can surely enlarge and widen the channel for learning and teaching. But to a certain extent, I think WebCT will be more useful for students with good motivation in learning. Not to mention distractions found on the net, how amny students will like to access blogs of others for academic purpose? Even my Form 7 students who take IT as one of the subjects in the AS-Level wouldn't be so sincere in learning through IT. Isn't it ironic and satiring? If students are not forced to exchange ideas or submit on their blogs, they will simply use it to gossip, tease or even scold others. Is it the real aim of using a blog?

Jellyfish

Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning

The writer defined the 3 approaches of learner autonomy in his research, the individual-cognitive, the social-interactive and the experimental-participatory perspectives. These 3 approaches related to the learner oneself, the peers and the choice of tools respectively. Then he mentioned the tandem learning which is to search a L2 learner of our mother tongue to teach us his/her L1 and at the same time, we teach him/her our L1. I think this is interesting but there are a lot of difficulties. First, to find someone who has the need to learn our L1 is not easy. At the same time, he/she needs to have similar interests, age and maybe background as ourselves will be very challenging. Not to mention to do it by oneself, even with the help of the school, this is not an easy match. I remember years ago, the school I worked before tried to match the junior students with foreigners so ao to form something like a pen-pal scheme through email. Of course, at the beginning students were very responsive at sending email to their foreign pen friend. However, weeks later, their responsive manner became lukewarm. As it is really difficult to share anything for long if our cultures are different. To foreigners, they may not be interested in your piles of tests and tons of homework. Also, some students treated the pen friend as a "dictionary" or an "answer-telling machine". Once they had problems in their homework, particularly English, they sent their pen friend an email. In such case, how can they learn better English? Technology is improving but under sharp differences of culture, to learn form a westerner is not so easy through technology.

Reflection of my action research

The website I used for my action research is http://www.ohiou.edu/linguistics/esl/reading/activities1.html. My students, 20 of them, were first asked to browse the website and do the exercises on thier own in the MMLC. They were given 10 minutes as this is set by the web. The topic is about Halloween. After schecking the answers and some consolidation questions were asked to test their understanding. The use of simple present tense and simple past tense was revised as well. Though they are in an EMI school, they are in the remedial class. After revising, they were told to brainstorm 1 festival they like most and draft a mind map for their composition--My favourite festival.

The website could really arouse their interest and let them learn a set of vocabulary for Halloween. At the same time, these students could follow the organisation of the website to draft and eventually write their composition. Though there were numerous grammatical mistakes in the use of the 2 tenses, they could still show me they could follow the lesson. To use a website to teach is not simple as if the topic is too close, students may attempt to copy a lot from the article. But my weak students, some supplementary readings can really help them understand the topic well, and organise their article sensibly and give us reasonable work.

Practical considerations for multimedia courseware development: an EFL IVD experience

The interactive videodisc courseware sounds very useful to English learners, as visual support is always a good aid to wearker students. From the article, the author mentioned something about "Viewing of the film", it looks very interesting and useful to secondary 4 and 5 students as in their new HKCEE syllabus, they are required to read some books and watch some movies as a kind of assessment which is based on the school judgement--School based Assessment (SBA). To most of the students they may not be able to watch the movie with no understanding problem. The aim of watching movies is also to learn English. I guess this can help students, especially those weaker ones. As their marks will be sent to the Exam Authority which will affect their final results (starting from 2008), so with the help of such software, maybe students can understand better about the choosen material and give better and more insightful ideas during the discussion.

I know that maybe such kind of function is not the most advanced one at the moment. But if we, languange teachers, have to equip ourselves with the most up-to-the-minute knowledge, we will be exhausted. To me, enough is good, we are not going to explore new technologies to change the whole world or to reform our teaching methodologies. I'm sorry that I'm not so enthusiastic in carrying out changes on how to teach in the best way with IT, sometimes we are restricted by our syllabus and policies; and most importantly, I am not a revolutionary.

Something related to Copyright

Under the implementation of the new Copyright Law, we have to follow more practical issues mentioned in the ordinance. I used to understand that we should not make copy of a book for more than 10% once. I think this is not quite clear. Many English textbooks used in the As-Level are bound into several booklets, does it mean 10% of the whole book or just the booklet? If the case is 10% of the one booklet, then it wouldn't be possible for us to copy a whole set of Section E Practical Skills paper, as it contains a question-answer book and a data file with about 10 pages, normally, they are more than 10% of the booklet. What should we do? Design the task by ourselves?

My school is an interesting one, as all teaching staff are not allowed to use the photocopier even for setting exam papers. We can only make copy with the approval of the principal, he scans what you want to copy and then signs his name onto the application form, funny? It always takes us DAYS if we need to make a copy in such way as we have to wait for our janitor to copy for us. He doesn't think putting up a notice next to the machine is effective as he believes we must break the law! He is really a good citizen who follows the Copyright Law very much.