CAI

Week 9 :

Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI)
        A self-learning technique, usually offline/online, involving interaction of the student with programmed instructional materials.

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is an interactive instructional technique whereby a computer is used to present the instructional material and monitor the learning that takes place. 
        CAI uses a combination of text, graphics, sound and video in enhancing the learning process. The computer has many purposes in the classroom, and it can be utilized to help a student in all areas of the curriculum.

        CAI refers to the use of the computer as a tool to facilitate and improve instruction. CAI programs use tutorials, drill and practice, simulation, and problem solving approaches to present topics, and they test the student's understanding.

Typical CAI provides

1. text or multimedia content

2. multiple-choice questions

3. problems

4. immediate feedback

5. notes on incorrect responses

6. summarizes students' performance

7. exercises for practice

8. Worksheets and tests.

Types of Computer Assisted Instruction

1. Drill-and-practice Drill and practice provide opportunities or students to repeatedly practice the skills that have previously been presented and that further practice is necessary for mastery.

2. Tutorial Tutorial activity includes both the presentation of information and its extension into different forms of work, including drill and practice, games and simulation.

3. Games Game software often creates a contest to achieve the highest score and either beat others or beat the computer.

4. Simulation Simulation software can provide an approximation of reality that does not require the expense of real life or its risks.

5. Discovery Discovery approach provides a large database of information specific to a course or content area and challenges the learner to analyze, compare, infer and evaluate based on their explorations of the data.

6. Problem Solving This approach helps children develop specific problem solving skills and strategies.

Advantages of CAI

• one-to-one interaction

• great motivator

• freedom to experiment with different options

• instantaneous response/immediate feedback to the answers elicited

• Self pacing - allow students to proceed at their own pace

• Helps teacher can devote more time to individual students

• Privacy helps the shy and slow learner to learns

• Individual attention

• learn more and more rapidly

• multimedia helps to understand difficult concepts through multi sensory approach

• self directed learning – students can decide when, where, and what to learn

Limitations of CAI

• may feel overwhelmed by the information and resources available

• over use of multimedia may divert the attention from the content

• learning becomes too mechanical

• non availability of good CAI packages

• lack of infrastructure

 Process of CAI Designing 

There are seven process of CAI designing:

1. Preparation is preparing before design the lesson.

2. Design Instruction  is thinking for designing the lesson.

3. Flowchart Lesson is describing the process of the program.

4. Create Storyboard  is preparing to present the texts, pictures and media to write on the paper.

5. Program Lesson is changing the storyboard to CAI 

6. Produce Supporting Materials

7. Evaluate and Revise 

Designing screen of the lesson 

There are three component of designing screen of the lesson:

👰 The pixel of screen

          - 640x480 pixel

          - 800x600 pixel

👰 Color of background

          - Use cool color such as, white or light grey for background.

          - Use cool color such as, dark blue or dark green for the normal texts.

          - Use warm color for the texts which want to highlight.

👰 Format of setting screen

          - Menu

          - Contents

          - Pictures

Digital Writing : Enhancing Ways of Teaching and Learning Writing

Week 8 :

Problem in Writing Classes : 

1. Many struggling writers have language difficulties.
2. Struggling writers is often less motivated to write and fails to organize their idea.
3. The learners usually have poor handwriting and writing slowly or illegibly.
4. They have problems in expressing their idea through composition and sometimes have trouble communicating and understanding.
5. They have a lack of confidence in producing text and insecure feelings about showing their writing to other.
6. Struggling writers are likely to develop negative attitudes toward writing and often have low motivation to write.

Digital writing

Digital writing refer to the term of digital writing is used to define a change in the writing environment where writing is produced on the computer, mobile phone, and tablet, and then distributed via Internet networks.

Types of Digital Writing

      Three majors tools are reviewed as a source for teaching writing : blogs, instant messaging and social network sites.

1. Blogs : A blog is a discussion, informational article or personal journal, published on the World Wide Web, which is often frequently updated. Blogs allow people to post or exchange information with no constraints on time and space. 
2. Instant Messaging : Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of Internet-based, real time text communication between users on the same system.
3. Social Network Sites : A social network site (SNS) is a website or an online service platform in which people share interest, create a public or semi-public profile, and interact with other users.

Characteristics of Digital Writing : Features that Support Struggling Writers

 

     First, many digital writing applications offer an anonymity feature. They provide opportunities for users to use nicknames or pseudonyms. This anonymous identity results in less anxiety and more pleasant classrooms, and therefore can benefit students who might be risk-averting in learning writing within the normal classroom environment.

        Second, learners actually type out what they want to communicate to the group or readers. This emulated real-time communication is perceived as advantageous since learners can see what their partners intend to communicate through the typed text. Allows learners an opportunity to ponder and recheck their ideas before transmitting their response.

         Third, all users are able to see everyone's messages and respond to those messages in real-time and have an equal opportunity to type their messages and  respond to other people's messages. (student-centered learning)

Activities for Teaching Writing with Digital Writing

1. Affiliate group Chat
2. Guess Who
3. Scavenger
4. Little Reporter
5. Secret Admirer
6. Role play
7. Peer Feedback
8. Closed Group Community

Corpus for Classrooms : Ideas for Material Design

Week 7 :

         Using corpora in language classrooms has proven to be an effective tool in teaching vocabulary, grammar and language use to learners of English as a second/foreign language. So teachers have to learn about using corpora for bringing it to teach students have good English skills. Activities will aim at developing students' vocabulary, grammar, knowledge of idiomatic expressions and pragmatic constraints. All activities discussed in this paper could be used in any language classroom even those classrooms that are not equipped with computers.

Corpus-based Activities and Ideas for Material Design 

👯Elementary students: Collocations: make/do

💗Verb pairing game

         The verb pairing game can be done after the teacher highlights some collocations to the students. After that, students will be divided into two groups. Group 1 will have some corpus-derived sentences without the verbs make and do. Group 2 will have the verbs make or do. Students in both groups will stand in lines facing each other. The ones carrying verbs will take turns trying to pair their verbs with the sentences the other group has.

💗Computer cloze activity 

          To integrate the use of technology in our classes, computer cloze activities might be used to help students practice the uses of both verbs and to learn their collocations. The teacher might prepare a passage or a number of sentences on Microsoft Word with every do and make being deleted. Students should complete the passages and then print them out for the teacher. Another way is to use peer-evaluation first before answers are discussed in class. 

💗Screen shot analysis

         After introducing the idea of corpus in class, a data show could be used to illustrate how frequent nouns occur with certain verbs and not others.

👯Intermediate students: Modal verbs 

💝Contextual Analysis

         Students will be given a number of sentences obtained from any of the two corpora used in this analysis. They should try to analyze the context of each to see why one modal verb is used rather than the other. For example, students could be given the following sentence and asked why have to is used instead of must.

💝Cloze activities

       Students will be given a worksheet with some sentences from a certain corpus. Modal verbs will be deleted. They have to fill in the blanks with the modal verb they think is most appropriate to use. After they finish, they will compare their answers with a partner. The teacher will then display the correct answers to the whole class and they can all discuss why certain modal verbs are used.  

💝Spot the error activity 

          Students will be given a worksheet that includes a number of sentences with wrong modal verbs. Students will work in pairs trying to spot the error and decide on the best modal verb to use in each sentence. Results can be either discussed as a whole class activity or in pairs. 

💝Multiple-choices 

      Students will be given sentences obtained from a certain corpus. For each sentence, 3 choices will be provided as explanations of the meaning of the sentence.

💝Express yourself 

       A number of sentences that express suggestion/obligation will be written on small folded pieces of paper. The teacher will then write a situation on the board. Students will randomly draw pieces of paper and read the sentences on them. Some sentences will be relevant to the situation on the board and some will not. This is a fun activity that exposes students to a large number of sentences using modal verbs. Students can negotiate the meaning of the sentences and decide which can be used and which cannot. 

👯Upper intermediate students: Phrasal verbs 

💘Cloze activity 

         Students will be given a worksheet with some sentences from the corpus. Phrasal verbs will be deleted. They have to fill in the blanks with the family-related phrasal verb that is suitable to the text. After they finish, they will compare their answers with a partner. The teacher will then display the correct answers to the whole class and they can all discuss why certain phrasal verbs are used.

👯Advanced students: Idiomatic Expressions: 

💕Concordance Analysis 

         After training students on how to use online corpora, you can ask them to search for the idiomatic expressions and analyze the concordance lines to see how these idioms are contextualized and used by native speakers.   

💕Pragmatics: Situation analysis 

       This activity could be done after students are introduced to the different uses and meanings of apologies. For this activity, students will be divided into groups. Each group will receive corpus-based dialogues on flash cards, and students will decide the meaning and the level of sincerity of the apology. 

        Although using corpora in language teaching is challenging, it has a big potential in EFL classrooms. If teachers are trained on how to design suitable corpus-based tasks, they can help their students get exposed to a broader framework of how English is used for communication by native speakers. Certain points to bear in mind while designing corpus-based tasks include the ability level of the students, cultural and educational backgrounds and the age group of the students. It is also recommended to use online corpora as they are available for anybody at any given time. In class a specialized corpus is needed, EFL instructors and researchers need to make sure it is available at their institutions. The researchers’ next plan is to examine some of the activities listed above using a more in-depth approach to highlight the benefits, challenges and drawbacks of each. 

Modal Auxiliary i British English : A Corpus-Based Study of Modality Through British National Corpus

Week 6 :

In this lesson, I can learn about the modal verbs must, have to and should.

           We use have to / must / should + infinitive to talk about obligation, things that are necessary to do, or to give advice about things that are a good idea to do.

👸 Must and have to are both used for obligation and are often quite similar. They are both followed by the infinitive.

👉I must go now. / I have to go now.

        We often use must for more personal opinions about what it is necessary to do, and have to for what somebody in authority has said it is necessary to do.

👉I must remember to get a present for Daisy.    (my opinion)   
👉You have to look after their hair regularly.     (dog experts say so)
👉Do you have to wear a tie for school?    (asking about school rules)

👸We use should for advice, or making suggestions, and must for strong advice.

👉You must go for a walk with the dog at least once a day.
👉Maybe you should go for a coffee or lunch and see how you feel?
👉You shouldn't leave it on the street.

         BNCweb is a useful device to explore practical usage in English language. Besides common grammatical knowledge, collocates can give new insight and broaden our point of view. Modal verbs must', "have to" and "should" have been explained in theoretical usage in many textbooks and sometimes each one has been exemplified by unrealistic examples. Through application of BNCweb, collocates can elucidate unforeseen patterns that co-occur with each modal verb and this will assist, at least, English teachers to give realistic examples to students from the top list of collocates. However, the top list of collocates is flexible due to, firstly, a span of words in left and right position and, secondly, statistical methods. These two factors are subject to results of collocations if either the span or other statistical methods were to change to other values. Although the difference might be diminutive, other investigation is still appealing as it may enrich our point of view in modalities.

Using corpus analysis software to analyse specialised texts

Week 5 :

What is a corpus?

       👯 Corpus is a collection of naturally-occurring texts in a computer-readable format which can be retrieved and analyzed using corpus analysis software.

            💗 The first feeling when I hear the word "corpus", I think it must be difficult because I have not seen this program before. Everything looks complicated, I do not like it. But after I learned it. It made me understand corpus better, whether it be meaning, using and benefit. These things made me feel that corpus is a good program for learning English. 

             🙌 It helps me understand the meaning and use of words in a better way.

             🙌 It helps me understand the collocation of word that it is necessary for the learner.

           🙌 It helps me understand words and sentence structure that the native speakers use in daily life

             🙌 It helps me improve my English skill (writing, speaking).

Questions for digital writing paper.

Week 4 :
Please answer them in your blog. According to the article:

1. What are the problems struggling writers have in writing classes?

Answer 👉

• Many struggling writers have language difficulties.
• Struggling writers is often less motivated to write and fails to organize their idea.
• The learners usually have poor handwriting and writing slowly or illegibly.
• They have problems in expressing their idea through composition and sometimes have trouble communicating and understanding.
• They have a lack of confidence in producing text and insecure feelings about showing their writing to other.
• Struggling writers are likely to develop negative attitudes toward writing and often have low motivation to write.

2. What does 'digital writing' refer to?

Answer 👉

Digital writing refer to the term of digital writing is used to define a change in the writing environment where writing is produced on the computer, mobile phone, and tablet, and then distributed via Internet networks.

3. What are the three digital writing tools? Give brief descriptions?

Answer 👉

Three majors tools are reviewed as a source for teaching writing : blogs, instant messaging and social network sites.

1. Blogs : A blog is a discussion, informational article or personal journal, published on the World Wide Web, which is often frequently updated. Blogs allow people to post or exchange information with no constraints on time and space. 
2. Instant Messaging : Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of Internet-based, real time text communication between users on the same system.
3. Social Network Sites : A social network site (SNS) is a website or an online service platform in which people share interest, create a public or semi-public profile, and interact with other users.

4. How has digital writing enhanced the teaching of writing?

Answer 👉

    First, many digital writing applications offer an anonymity feature. They provide opportunities for users to use nicknames or pseudonyms. This anonymous identity results in less anxiety and more pleasant classrooms. A digital-integrated writing class has the potential to be an avenue for nurturing writing skills. Synchronous computer-assisted class discussion reduces anxiety and enhances interlanguage communication. Moreover, digital writing, especially SNSs namely Facebook, creates a state of anxiety-free relaxation with the sense of anonymous communication

    Second, in digital writing, learners actually type out what they want to communicate to the group or readers. This emulated real-time communication is perceived as advantageous since learners can see what their partners intend to communicate through the typed text. Moreover, they can view their language messages as they produce them, they are more likely to “monitor” and self-repair or edit their messages; hence, they tend to produce more structured language.Thus, this may be beneficial for struggling learners or those who have problems with spelling and low command of vocabulary  since being able to see what they would like to communicate to a conversation partner allows learners an opportunity to ponder and recheck their ideas before transmitting their response.

     Third, digital writing promotes learners’ equity in terms of interaction. All users are able to see everyone’s messages and respond to those messages in real-time.All users have an equal opportunity to type their messages and respond to other people’s messages. This feature reduces teachers’

authority, increases student-centered learning, promotes student participation and fosters negotiation of meaning. And this feature encourages collaborative which has a positive effect on students’ writing proficiency, especially with struggling writers and students who are shy and passive learners.

     Next, instructors are able to keep track of learners’ interaction records through the history logs with no intervention to learners while actively writing. Learners, on the other hand, are willing to write more freely without the sense of submitting their writing to the teachers. 

     More importantly, digital writing offers language environments. The blog as a place to use language to engage in authentic communication instead of a place where they can learn and improve their language.

     Finally, this multimedia writing environment can capture learners’ attention and interest and suits learners’ different learning styles. 

5. What are the things that you should take into consideration to employ digital writing for teaching academic writing?

Answer 👉

I think, the things that I should take into consideration to employ digital writing for teaching academic writing. The first is writing skills, students must first have good general writing skills in a language before than can do academic writing. Next, it is shorthand, abbreviations, and emoticons. This specific discourse register has been continually debated among scholars whether or not it can harm young Generation M learners' academic discourse. It will likely deconstruct verifiable grammatical rules.

6. Which activity do you like most? Why?

Answer 👉

For me, The activity which I like most is Role Play because it is a technique that allows students to explore realistic situations by interacting with other people in a managed way in order to develop experience and trial different strategies in a supported environment. Depending on the intention of the activity, participants might be playing a role similar to their own (or their likely one in the future) or could play the opposite part of the conversation or interaction. Both options provide the possibility of significant learning, with the former allowing experience to be gained and the latter encouraging the student to develop an understanding of the situation from the ‘opposite’ point of view.

The Use of Multimedia in English Teaching

Week 3 :

     
    The definition of Multimedia

         Multimedia is the use of computers to present text, graphics, video, animation, and sound in an integrated way. 

       Components of Multimedia 

1. Text: It is the primary component of multimedia. Most of the information can be presented with the help of text. We can be emphasized the text by using different fonts, colors, styles etc.
2. Graphic: A digital representation of non-text information such as drawing, photographs etc are known as graphics. The graphic medium can be used with text medium.
3. Audio: Audio is one of the important components of multimedia. It is music, speech or any other sound. It is normally combined with animation medium.
4. Video: The effective medium for presenting information is video. It presents the moving images. It displayed the sequence of slightly varied pictures at the speed of 15-30 frames per second.
5. Animation: The animation medium presents the sequence of still images of artwork at a rapid speed that looks like the image is moving. 

         The Necessity of Multimedia in English Teaching 

          

          The Necessity of Development of Modern Educational Technology 

        The development of modern educational technology promotes the development of educational methods and means  and the development of educational thinking and model. We can say that modern educational technology must lead to development of multi-media teaching. Only multimedia teaching can develop and improve the modern education technology well. 

          The Needs of Quality Education

         Multimedia is one of the ways to promote the development of quality education. Multimedia English teaching provides a good educational platform and adds vigor for quality education, enabling students to change and update their thinking from the traditional teaching, thereby enhancing the quality of all aspects. 

          The Needs of Students’ Cognitive Mental

         The multimedia teaching system can fully mobilize the students’ audio-visual and other sensory organs, and get the best of the cognitive effect. Therefore, using multimedia teaching is very necessary, especially in English teaching. 

The Multimedia Teaching 

• Advantages of Multimedia

1. Arousing the students interest : teachers should try their best to get students to become interest in one topic of knowledge point and make the students with a strong passion and enthusiasm to participate in teaching.
2. Improving student's self-learning ability. : the most important thing is teaching students how to learn and making students change from "want me to study" to " I want to learn" in thinking from passive learning to active Learning.
3. Improving students' innovative ability
   
4. Cultivating students' communication skills.
5. Increasing classroom capacity.

• Disadvantage of Multimedia

1. Performance on behalf of the lead : Teacher addict multimedia and use multimedia instead of them self. Moreover, students really pay attention to appreciating the pictures and do not pay attention to what they should really master in the classroom.
2. Lack of spatial skills : because of lack of proficient operation of multimedia, some teachers waste certain time in the operation the computer, the unskilled operation on computer would affect the instruction flow ,which in turn would de-motive students if it happened frequently in class.
3. Over-use of multimedia : if teachers act as only information given to the students that they have no chance to have content thinking, critical thinking and creative thinking of the teachers' lecture.
4. Lack of interaction between teachers and students : is no eye contact, ask and answer to each other.

• Strategies for using multimedia

1. Combining Modern Teaching Method with Traditional Teaching Methods.
2.  Viewing Multimedia as the Assistance to Teaching.
3. Building the Ideal relationship between teachers and students.
4. Strengthening Teacher Training.