My students behave differently online when comparing with in classroom. They tend to use very horrible expressions in the lessons, while they use perfectly well-written English to communicate with me through email. Normally, they will ask me something important for their studies through email and I warned them if they do not use proper English, I won't reply them as I do not want to spend time guessing what they are saying in the email. I think this is only useful for senior secondary students as juniors may not have the ability to do so. Also, juniors will not have something very vital to ask for their English lessons. I don't disagree with the ue of MSN or ICQ to chat with them only if they use proper English. It is quite a good practice if they want to improve their English. Maybe someone may say it will seriously affect the willingness of students to chat online with you but as a language teacher, should we have some demand from our students? I know technology is advancing every day but does it mean to chat fast is more important than having great accuracy?
Using IT or running activites with IT in class is funny; however, there are also technical problems all the time. My experience is that always not to ask students to do too many exercises at a time. But I prepare a bit more than that, if everything goes smooth during the lesson, I can then ask them to do some more. It is much better than throwing them with thousands of exercises but their progresses vary greatly. To monitor a scene like this is very difficult as not everyone is an IT expert. Also, we need to cater the need of our students to a new or different environment, some of them may misbehave or some will become timid to respond. To prepare more than the expected schedule is helpful. In case of classroom management, maybe we can do the tasks together by inviting some students to come out and do it in front of all students. This can help ease the problem.
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3 comments:
Wow! You've a good time with senior students communicating in emails. I hope my primary babies can have such proficiency to do so. My students usually write simpler sentences or phrases to me. The most ambitious thing they do in the Net is to always ask me questions in English about my personal matters. They dare not do so in lessons
They are serious about their studies rather than interested in knowing my private life. Even they ask, I won't answer them. Hahaha...
If my students couldn't be able to ask in complicated sentences, I would be sad as they are going to have their A-Level exam soon. Anyway, I think it is a good habit for your students to develop such norm when they are young, chatting in English through IT. Their secondary school teachers will appreciate it very much and thank you a lot later. Also, they will be able to chat woth you fluently in future.
Sometimes my students send me emails, however, they are just very simple questions, such as 'are you happy?' or 'how are you?' perhaps they don't have enough words to express themselves or they don't treat it as a homework coz i found that they write quite a lot in their free writing, a kind of journal.
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