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Sunday, May 24, 2015

Student Learning Time

After 2 months of blogging on my teaching activities and reflections,I began to question myself on the purpose and the effectiveness of using my blog to help my students.

The reason I started blogging again after about 5 years of not writing anything is so that my blog can be the platform for me to share additional materials for reference since I only meet each class less than 2 hours per week. It's week 12 this week. 2 more weeks to end the semester.

However,I found that they had not been referring to my blog or the suggested links that can help them to create the questionnaires or interviews for their report writing classes. I found out when they failed to write based on the materials that I have shared. I also shared several You Tube links for them to watch the demonstrations

Initially, I thought that using blog and Facebook,it can attract them to be more involved in their learning process. I also use Instagram to capture their weekly attendance. I discovered later that some students refused to even open a Facebook account. I use Facebook to give quick public announcement to all my classes. I have a total of 8 classes this semester.

Besides that, I also gave them several options to reach me.
1. In class
2. In my room
3. Text message
4. Whatsapp
5. Email
6. Google Drive
7. i-Learn
8. Facebook
9. Instagram
10.Blog

I wanted to provide variety in my teaching techniques and tools to cater for different learning styles.
In my first class, I shared course information,weekly schedule,assessment and assignment.
There's also information about the duration of 'Student Learning Time' and 'Lecture Hour'.

Now,the question is "How many students 'responsibly and diligently' follow the 'student learning time' as specified?"

Yes,there's a voice of disappointment there.

Perhaps my expectations are too high for these students who are taking this course not by choice.
What I want to state here is that it is not enough to learn English  language skills in just about 28 hours minus presentations and tests.

It's less than a day!

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!"


Friday, May 1, 2015

Free English Online Courses

Here are some suggestions to improve your English proficiency at your own pace and time.
They are free online grammar courses.

http://alison.com/learn/English-Grammar

When I read the questions in your questionnaires, I also realized that most of you need to do revision on your tenses.

You may visit my previous blog post here to do revisions and the tests.

http://learningenglishthroughmyeyes.blogspot.com/2008/01/simple-present-tense-present-continuous.html

There are lots of materials available for you.

Please watch "How to Form Questions in English" below.

Most of you have written sentences and simply put 'question marks' at the end of the sentence to form questions. That's not how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVw_yNXArg