LET IT GUIDE YOU : WEBSITES

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Hello everyone !

It is an undeniable fact that benefitting from websites for education is really common for a long time since using them is fast and costs little. Also, websites can be used anywhere and anytime as long as there is an internet connection so  you can always have an access to information which makes learning process easier. 

Language learning is one the main branches of education in which learners prefer using websites frequently. There are many different options on the net and choosing a website to guide you can be really difficult. 

In this post, I will introduce you a website that you can benefit from. It is directly related to EFL : ENGLISHGRAMMAR

This website is authored by Jennifer Frost, an English teacher located in Chiang Mai, Thailand.( Her Google Account, if you wonder). When you first enter the website, there is a long but really explanatory welcoming post so that you can have a general idea about the website. Here is the home page of it and because of the clear explanation on how to start using the website, I will not explain it again.

This website is really rich in terms of content, especially if you are looking for grammar resources. It provides you a great variety of grammar explanations, vocabulary exercises, writing guides, online exercises, etc. There are also downloadable lessons and once you download them, you will be able to study whenever you want without needing an internet connection.  There is not any listening and reading material, unfortunately. You can see the ‘’Topics’’ on the left-side of the page and choose the one that you are interested in. 

Considering the materials on it, this website is useful for both native speakers and EFL learners but as this website is entirely written in English, it is more appropriate to EFL learners who have already reached a pre-intermediate level. The target audience, on the other hand, is young adults and adults. Even though the content is also proper for teens, maybe some of them may not use it as the design of the website is not really colorful and full of different  visuals. Of course, I would not recommend this website to kids because it will surely look dull to them and it will not draw their attention.

The purpose of the website is improving your grammar skills from simple to complex and at the same time, supporting this process by developing your writing skills and helping you understand confusing words more clearly.

One of the things that might bother learners when looking for websites is the last update time to know if the website is still active. EnglishGrammar is an active website which is updated constantly and because of that there is no broken links that I came across while exploring it. Also, I did not notice specific errors related to grammar or spelling as I think because the author of the website is native.  

There is not any images on the website except the writing guide section. There is an image for each guide as shown below. However, as the target audience is mostly adults, it is not a really big problem because the older we get, the more we focus on the information, not on the pictures or animations. By the way, you will not get any images of distracting advertisements which is a plus because they can be really annoying.

As an English teacher, you can apply this website to your lesson plan in various ways. You can use this website to assist you with grammar and writing. For example, after explaining a grammar rule to the class, your students can read the related material on the website for a better understanding of the subject, then they can practice it using the exercises on the website. Also, it can help your students with their writing development, guide them step by step on a spesific writing task such as creating a short story.

Moreover, as a teacher, you can realize a different point about a specific topic that you have not known before and add it to your teaching material. Maybe you get inspired and even one day, you create your own website, why not ?

I’ll see you in my next post !

KEEPING YOU UPDATED WITH RSS

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Hello everyone !

One of the beneficial things of the internet is that you can follow blogs or websites for getting new informantion and interesting ideas about many different things. However, following various blogs and websites makes it difficult to catch up with the recent content of them. In this case, let me tell you about the RSS(Really Simple Syndication)feed as a solution for that. It is a format that keeps you informed about the continually changing contents of the blogs and websites so that you do not have to visit every single blog and website to see what is new, instead you can see all of them on one page.

There are many RSS Reader options available on the internet that you can either download or use online. I prefer using an online service which is called FeedReader.  You can sign up for it or just use your Google/Facebook account to sign in. Then, you write the names of the websites and add their feeds to the list. You can categorize these feeds according to their features  such as education/travel/fashion etc. You see the numbers next to the blogs' name and understand that there is something new. Also, the posts that you do not read remains bold so that you could see how many of them left to be read.

As you can see above, I follow several blogs and FeedReader helps me a lot keeping up with the latest posts and it is really simple to use,too. Among these blogs, I have a favourite one that I recommend for EFL teachers to check : Özge KARAOĞLU

This blog is created by Özge KARAOĞLU. She is an English teacher, teacher trainer and educational consultant. Her blog is one of the best examples of tutor blogs where you can learn how to integrate technology into education and of course in our case mostly into teaching English. Teaching with the web-based technologies is the main concern of the blog so you can find many teaching tips whose aim is to combine tech and education and create effective ways for learners in the process of language learning. She recommends different web tools and applications for vocabulary exercices/creating online stories/listening activities etc. She also provides lesson plan samples for different topics. The resources that she shares on her blog are definitely useful for EFL teachers and they encourage you to use technology in teaching and make lessons more enjoyable for your students. Explore her blog and I am sure that you will be inspired and add some of the things that she recommends to your teaching materials.

See you in my next post !

LOOKING FOR A VIEW ?

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Hello everyone !

I’m here with my second project and I worked with my friend, Ecem AKGÜL in the preparation of it.

This time our subject is about ‘’Wikis’’. A wiki is a website, consisting of several pages that anyone can edit a content.

We wrote a film review on Wikispaces. This Wiki is created by our teacher and we shared our review on a one common page. This is a rather easy assignment considering our previous one, podcasting. We did not have any difficulties in the process because the film is one of our favourites so we enjoyed writing about it. 

Working with a partner for such tasks helps you see the other aspects of the things that you do not realize and also it makes is easier to cope with the difficulties that you might have during the preparation of the task.

You can also use wikis in your EFL class as they are easy to use but still effective. You can want your students to write about their favourite books, countries they want to visit or they can create a short story in pairs, etc. They can develop creative thinking and improve their writing skills by doing that. Also, students can edit each other's pages or comment on the content so that they can share different ideas together which is something that is not always possible during the class hours.

As an example, you can check our review here. Also, the screenshot of our review is available for those who do not have an account for Wikispaces.

Hope you like it !

AUDIO FUN : PODCASTING

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Hello everyone !

Here is my very first project which is created in collaboration with my dear friend, Ecem AKGÜL

Online recording software >>

Our project is podcasting. A podcast is a digital recording audio, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player such as a computer or a mobile device.

For our podcast task, we wrote a two-minutes-long story by ourselves and recorded it. We added different sound effects for the liveliness of the story and we changed our voices accordingly to the mood of the characters to make it more realistic. Considering our choice of vocabulary and the way we pronounced them, this podcast is more suitable for A2/B1 level of EFL students/teenagers. One of the diffuculties was creating the story with the limited number of words given for it but it helps you to enhance your imagination, of course. The other one was the recording part. We recorded our voices for several times until we could give the emotions to the characters properly. However, we had so much fun in the process and this is one of the main things which makes podcasting really suitable for education.

As podcasting is a audio system, it draws students’ attention much more quickly than a classical way of teaching and makes the lesson more enjoyable and fun. It helps students enhance their listening and comprehension skills. It also provides opportunity to improve their pronunciation of words.

We see that there are many advantages of podcasting so it is quite suitable for EFL teachers to use podcasts in their classes to make lessons more efficient. In this case, our podcast can be a good example for you to use because we are sure that your students will enjoy it and you can create different activities based on this podcast. You can also create your own podcast or you can even help your students to create theirs which will increase their interest for language and will make a positive effect on their learning process.

Let’s get one step closer to the technology usage in language teaching with podcasting !