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Writer's pictureDidi Zou
Jul 9, 20204 min read

Using E-resources to Support the Teaching of Grammar and Vocabulary

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >


Outline

●What can technology offer in the teaching of vocabulary and grammar?

●Evaluation of various online e-resources for supporting the teaching of vocabulary and grammar

●Making a video dictionary

●Workshop on Bookwidget



What can technology offer in the teaching of grammar?

While there is a place for technology-supported grammar teaching, it has to be said that there is a great deal of poorly designed material on the internet.

●Textbook drills transposed online

●Offer only sentence-level practice

●Lack of opportunity for meaningful production

(Chapelle and Jamieson 2008)


Choose carefully!


●Does the material fit the intended learning outcomes/ objectives?

●Does the material reflect sound learning theories?

●What knowledge/ skills will students need to engage with the material?

●Will students be able to interpret the input provided by the electronic material? What sort of guidance/ training will be needed?



Activity 1: evaluate the following e-resources and state your opinions

  1. Khan Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar

  2. Explanation and activities on 48 grammar topics written by Dave Willis http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar

  3. An academic English site created by PolyU https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/cill/grammar/#Grammar guides

  4. Grammar Bytes http://www.chompchomp.com/

  5. The Englicious Website, an online library of English teaching resources created by a team of linguists at UCL http://www.englicious.org/

  6. Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals http://movies-egmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/

Needs in the learning of grammar

●Hinkel (2004) argues the lack of “intensive, individualised help with sentence-level syntax” has failed to prepare ESL/ EFL learners for success in academic writing.

●What is needed is direct instruction coupled with explicitly pointing out mistakes in essays made by learners.

●Question: how might technology meet these needs?



How has technology been used to achieve previously impossible outcomes?

1. Concordancing programme by Lextutor http://www.lextutor.ca/conc/eng/

Find out what ‘anxious’ is typically preceded or followed by. In what ways can concordancers help us learn a language which were previously impossible?

2. Grammarly www.grammarly.com

Contribute examples of typical mistakes made by your learners here. How effectively can ‘Grammarly’ help to correct these mistakes? Would you recommend this resource to your students?



What can technology offer in the teaching of vocabulary?

↓↓↓↓↓

9 principles underlying effective vocabulary instruction (Xu 2010)

  1. Build a large sight vocabulary

  2. Integrate new words with the old

  3. Provide a number of encounters with words

  4. Promote a deep level of processing

  5. Facilitate imaging and concreteness

  6. Use a variety of techniques

  7. Teach independent learning strategies

  8. Teach vocabulary in context

  9. Provide opportunities for incidental learning of vocabulary



Activity 2: evaluate the following e-resources and state your opinions

  1. BBC Learning English ‘The English We Speak’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/the-english-we-speak

  2. Flocabulary (an online learning programme using hip-hop to engage students) https://www.flocabulary.com/subjects/vocabulary/

  3. Academic phrasebank http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

  4. Using AWL http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/

  5. An online thesaurus http://www.thesaurus.com/

  6. Visuwords https://visuwords.com/

  7. Etymology dictionary http://www.etymonline.com/

  8. Collocation dictionary http://www.freecollocation.com/

  9. TED Corpus Search engine: https://yohasebe.com/tcse/

  10. Make a word web using Popplet http://popplet.com/



Activity 3: Making a gif dictionary

  1. Work in groups and choose a word your group wants to learn.

  2. Together, act out a short scene in which the meaning of the word can be conveyed visually and in a dialogue.

  3. Alternatively choose a suitable video clip to illustrate the word. You may like to make a gif image out of the clip using a gifmaker tool: https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker

Discussion: do you think the video dictionary activity is a good vocabulary learning activity? Why? Which e-resource(s) do you think is/ are particularly suitable for making the video dictionary?


Using ‘Quizlet’ for vocabulary learning

●While there is more to learning a language than simply knowing the vocabulary and the rules of grammar, drill-and-practice programmes still have a place.

●For example, learners can use such programmes for independent revision and learners often feel secure and reassured by drill-and-practice activities.

●Apps like Quizlet also come with the function of authoring, allowing teachers and learners to create interactive activities to meet their own teaching/ learning needs.

●These programmes also enable rapid formative feedback and personalised differentiation between learners.


Recycling, revision and memory

Chance for retaining a word from one exposure: only 5-14% (Nagy 1997)

‘One of the great mistakes many teachers make is to focus on a new word only once, leading to a high probability of that word being forgotten and the time spent on teaching it wasted.’ (Schmitt 2007, pp.831-832)


Pattern of forgetting with expanded rehearsal (Schmitt, 2000, p. 131)


Steps for creating a vocabulary study set

  1. Create a set.

  2. Adjust the setting (e.g. language and who can view and edit your set).

  3. Give your set a title and description.

  4. Enter term and definition.

  5. Customise setting of learning activities (e.g. audio on/ off; English/ Chinese first, choose question types for ‘Test’, etc.).

  6. Share the set with your students.

Steps for using ‘Quizlet Live’

  1. Pick a set to start ‘Quizlet Live’.

  2. Share the join code with your class.

  3. Student will be assigned teams.

  4. Teams sit together and start playing.

  5. Team race each other to win.

  6. Learn how to do better from ‘end-of-game review’ .



Workshop on making a word sort activity using‘Bookwidget’

●An example of vocabulary learning activity I created using Bookwidget (Top 10 Hong Kong dishes): https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/LED8FM?teacher_id=6011766611902464

Steps

  1. Create a new widget.

  2. Go to ‘Quiz’ and click ‘add question’. Then choose ‘text drag drop’.

  3. Enter question (e.g. Put the following words into different categories based on their meanings.)

  4. Create word groups (e.g. taste, method of cooking and texture)

  5. Add items to each word groups (e.g. sweet, sour, salty, spicy → Taste)

  6. Go to Title/ Reporting to choose what info Ss need to provide when submitting their answers.

  7. Go to ‘General’ to adjust ‘correction’ options (e.g. whether to show correct answers when a quiz is done).

  8. Name your widget.

  9. Preview

  10. Get shareable link.

Add items to each ‘word group’

You can add more than one widgets in a quiz. Go to ‘Examples’ (in the left hand side tool bar) and have fun exploring other question formats provided by Bookwidget!



References

●Chapelle, C., & Jamieson, J. (2008). Tips for teaching with CALL : practical approaches to computer-assisted language learning. White Plains, N.Y. : Pearson Education.

●Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching academic ESL writing: Practical techniques in vocabulary and grammar. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbau

●Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in Language Teaching. Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press.

●Schmitt, N. (2007). Current perspectives on vocabulary teaching and learning. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.). The International handbook of English language teaching (pp.827-841). Boston, MA : Springer Science + Business Media, LLC.

●Xu, Z. (2010). Vocabulary Studies: Lexis, Morphology and Semantics. Singapore: Pearson Education South Asia.


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Writer's pictureDidi Zou
Jul 8, 20204 min read

Using E-resources to Support learners with Reading and Writing Difficulties

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >


Agenda

●What is the effect of reading and writing difficulties on learning an additional language?

●What we can do to help?

●What is the role of IT in enhancing reading instruction and supporting students’ reading development?

●Recommended e-resources for supporting readers with reading and writing difficulties


A metaphor

"Learning to read for dyslexics is like running a race where only the dyslexic students have invisible hurdles on the track. The others complete the race easily and quickly while the dyslexic students fall when they first hit the hurdles. As the hurdles cannot be seen, nobody understands why they fall. And all those standing by can say is try harder. The dyslexic runners can only succeed if someone notices the hurdles and teaches them how to jump over them."


What are the hurdles?

●In addition to difficulties associated with recognition of words and spelling, these students also experience difficulties in other aspects of producing and using language (e.g. oral skills and reading comprehension).

●These disabilities are neurobiological in origin and cause these learners to process language input differently from others. They typically have shorter working memory and reduced phonemic awareness.

●Such difficulties do not just affect a learner’s academic study, they also hinder a learner in his/ her daily life and are frequently associated with other learning disabilities (e.g. problems with fine motor skills).


Instruction matters

●Education policy nowadays have emphasized a multi-tiered interventions in schools, leading to a growing interest in improving teacher knowledge and skill in reading instruction.

●Moats (2009): skilled instruction is crucial in preventing and ameliorates reading failure among students. Teachers should be equipped with solid knowledge foundations for teaching reading and spelling in order to differentiate instruction for diverse learners.


“Teachers should no longer be taught that students’ reading outcomes depend more on gender, IQ, socioeconomic status, handedness, or learning style, than instruction. Teachers should no longer be taught that teaching is an exercise in personal philosophy and that learning to read is a natural, organic process (Walsh et al., 2006). Classroom experience, use of structured reading programs, use of screening tests, and accountability pressures are valuable but not sufficient to build expertise in reading and writing instruction. State and federal policies that support multi-tiered instruction and preventive intervention depend first and foremost on capable, educated teachers”. (Moats, 2009, p.393)


5 Essential component of effective reading instruction

  • Phoneme awareness

  • Phonics, word study and spelling

  • Reading fluency

  • Vocabulary development

  • Reading comprehension

(The Reading Partnership, 2003)


A presentation by Dr. Margaret Crombie

●View the video here.

●You are encouraged to take notes while watching the video presentation.



The role of IT in supporting learners with reading and writing difficulties

Post-viewing discussion:

1.In what ways is IT useful to help dyslexic learners? Do you agree with what Dr. Crombie said?

2.Are there any specific tools, applications, software, websites that you would recommend? Type your recommendations here. (Join code: JEKA7PAFU)

3.What difficulties/barriers have you experienced in using modern technological tools when working with dyslexic students? Have you got any suggestions for how to overcome these?


How can we help? Kormos and Smith (2012):

●Provide extra activities and materials to allow for additional practice--it often takes them longer to acquire new information and transfer it to long-term memory.

●Incorporate a range of multi-sensory activities and explicit instruction on the phonological / orthographic relationships of the language.

●Provide alternative ways of demonstrating understanding. Students might be asked to produce mindmaps, diagrams, bullet points, pictures, models or even short dramatic performances which demonstrate how much of the target language they have understood and produced.

●Teachers need to be sensitive to the issue of self-esteem whilst not allowing students to ‘exempt’ themselves from important learning opportunities. They need to anticipate activities that may present challenges and find ways of supporting them so as to instil confidence.

●Teach learning strategies explicitly to help learners develop effective study skills and metacognitive techniques in the context of their studies. These will help them not only succeed at language learning, but also in other areas of their lives.


How has technology transformed reading?


Development of e-books so far

●Scanning entire print picture books

●Transforming books into film-like creations

●Transforming books with features unique to the digital world and adding interactive features, including games, that extend beyond story

(Yokota, 2014)


Added advantages of e-texts over printed texts

Many forms of ebooks nowadays allow readers to physically interact and manipulate texts to meet individual needs and interests. And here are some of the numerous unique features offered by these electronic texts:

●Read texts with audio support

●Word-by-word tracking

●Comprehension supported by visuals (e.g. picture animation)

●Opportunity to record and replay read-aloud

●Ability to check definition and pronunciation of any unfamiliar word

●Highlight any section of the text and add notes


Unique benefits offered by digital tools in facilitating response to a text

Some examples:

●Write virtual notes to annotate a text (e.g. summarising main events)

●Use digital drawing tools to visualise what they have read

●Record audio for a response

●Graphically organise responses in limitless way with online mindmap tools

●Simultaneously share screens and project images and written responses


What makes a good e-book?


Why may IT be incorporated into literacy activities?

An example from Hutchison et al. (2012, p.19)



Online resources for learning phonics


Technology for supporting readers with reading and writing difficulties


References

Crombie, M. (n.d.). Using IT to teach students with dyslexia [video]. Retrieved from https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/dyslexia/0/steps/6756

Kormos, J., & Smith, A. M. (2012). Teaching foreign languages to learners with specific learning differences. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Hutchison, A., Beschorner, B., & Schmidt-Crawford, D. (2012). Exploring the Use of the iPad for Literacy Learning. Reading Teacher, 66(1), 15-23.

Moats, L. (2009). Knowledge foundations for teaching reading and spelling. Reading And Writing, 22(4), 379-399.

The Partnership for Reading. (2003). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. Kindergarten through grade 3 (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

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Writer's pictureDidi Zou
Jul 8, 20206 min read

Support the teaching of reading with technology

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >


Outline

●The teaching of reading – an overview

●Using e-resources for teaching reading – some examples

●Challenges in teaching of reading and how might technology help

  • Developing fluency

  • Promoting extensive reading

Teaching of reading-an overview

1.Knowledge needed for effective reading

  • Knowledge of language

  • Knowledge of the topic

  • Knowledge of text types and text structures

2.The process of reading

  • Bottom-up: individual words → sentences → paragraphs → main ideas in the text

  • Top-down: use background knowledge to predict what will be in text

  • Interactive: interaction occurs across different knowledge areas and skills rapidly and simultaneously as we read

3. Reading levels of texts

  • 3 reading levels: independent, instructional and frustration

4. Readability of texts

  • What affects the readability of a text: difficulty level of language, knowledge demands, and whether support for reading is available

  • At instruction level, a text can be comprehended by the reader with support. The reader may not have enough knowledge of the content and language but the reader still knows 95% of the words.

5.Knowledge of genres and text structures

  • Narrative, recount, information report, description, procedural, persuasion, discussion

6.Teaching of reading entails (≠) teaching of reading strategies

  • Reading strategies: what a reader does deliberately to better understand, learn from and remember what one reads

  • Pre-reading activities: to get students ready both cognitively and affectively to read a text

  • While-reading activities: activities that students do themselves as they are reading and actions that you do to assist them

  • Post-reading activities: to encourage students to think deeply/ critically about or to respond to what they have read through speaking, writing, drama, etc.

7.The ultimate goal of teaching reading→ students can read to learn and for enjoyment on their own



Why teach comprehension strategies?

●Comprehension strategies are a means to an end-- students’ understanding, learning from and enjoyment of reading materials and the fostering of higher-order thinking. Students’ motivation to read improves when they enjoy and understand what they read deeply.

●Not all students can benefit from strategy instruction. They need to attain a certain level of reading fluency to have the cognitive resources to try out and monitor their strategy use. For weaker students, aim at reading fluency first.


9 key comprehension strategies (Graves et al. 2011)

  1. Establishing a purpose for reading

  2. Using prior knowledge

  3. Asking and answering questions

  4. Making inferences

  5. Determining what is important

  6. Summarising

  7. Dealing with graphic information

  8. Imaging and creating graphic representations

  9. Being metacognitive


Definitions

  • (Establishing a purpose for reading) to identify the purpose for a particular reading situation and read in a way to accomplish that purpose (e.g. to find some specific info, to read for pleasure)

  • (Using prior knowledge) to purposefully use prior knowledge to set up expectations of what one will encounter in a text

  • (Asking and answering questions) to pose questions prior to reading and then attempt to answer those questions while reading in order to ensure reading is an active process

  • (Making inferences) to infer meanings by using information from the text and one’s knowledge of the world to fill in bits of info not explicitly stated in the text

  • (Determining what is important) to understand what one reads and make judgements about what is and what is not important

  • (Summarising) to first determine what’s important and condense it in own words

  • (Dealing with graphic information) to understand when, how and why to examine visual aids which accompany a text to make optimal use of them.

  • (Managing and creating graphic representations) to improve comprehension by creating visual representations of text

  • (Being metacognitive) to actively monitor one’s reading and take appropriate strategies as needed.





Using e-resources for teaching reading

Setting questions to improve comprehension

Mr Lee goods in Ontata. He is a shifter. He bads on the Atatno. He nices to bad by car.

●Where does Mr Lee good?

●What is Mr Lee?

●Where does Mr Lee bad?

●How does he nice to bad?

Mr Lee lives in Tai Po. He is a teacher. He works on the Hong Kong Island. He goes to work by car.

●Where does Mr Lee live?

●What is Mr Lee?

●Where does Mr Lee work?

●How does he go to work?


Using questions to improve students’ comprehension

1.Questions involving synthesizing information from different texts/ sections of a text.

2.Questions of inference.

3.Questions of evaluation.

4.Questions of personal response.

5.Questions concerned with how writers’ craft.


Practise setting comprehension questions which go beyond literal meaning.

1.Set up an educator account.

2.Set up a library and share your library with your students.

3.Set comprehension questions which help to improve your students’ comprehension.


Sample post-reading questions which promote higher-order thinking

  • Recalling: What was Suzie Gump obsessed with?

  • Understanding: Why do you think everyone suddenly wanted nothing?

  • Applying: What are some things which might be expensive but useless?

  • Synthesizing: Do you think Otis has changed in any way by the end of the story?

  • Evaluating: Do you think it’s a good idea to make Tubby Portobello go away?

  • Elaborating: What do you think is the funniest part of the story?

  • Creating: What if Otis had not made Tubby Portobello go away? What might have happened?

  • Interpreting: How did Otis feel when he made Tubby Portobello go away?

  • Thinking metacognitively: Did you understand all the words/ expressions in the story? If you didn’t, what might you do to deal with them?



The importance of reading fluency

●The ability to read most words in context quickly, accurately, automatically and with appropriate expression and phrasing (i.e. prosody). (Cunningham 2009).

●Fluency is critical to reading comprehension.

●“If text is read in a laborious and inefficient manner, it will be difficult for the child to remember what has been read and to relate the ideas expressed in the text to his/ her background knowledge.” (The National Reading Panel 2000, p.11)


Why does prosody matter?

Not only can prosody reflect a reader’s understanding of linguistic features (e.g. sentence structures) and text features (e.g. punctuation), it can also reflect aspects of meaning (e.g. emphasis of key words, intentions and emotions of the characters).


Ways to support reading fluency (Kuhn 2009)

Principles:

  1. Model expressive reading.

  2. Provide sufficient support and a great deal of practice.

  3. Emphasize appropriate phrasing

Three approaches to fluency instruction:

  1. Echo reading: A teacher chooses a section of a text to read aloud. Students’ role is to listen and follow along when it’s their turn to read.

  2. Choral reading: T and Ss simultaneously read a text aloud. Students’ role is to mimic you.

  3. Partner/ Paired reading: Ss work in pairs to read aloud and provide feedback/ encouragement to each other.

Creating opportunities for building reading fluency



Determining importance→ first step to summarising

  • Think about the topic. What is the author mainly writing about? What is the author’s purpose?

  • Examine the title, headings, subheadings, pictures and bold print.

  • Search for topic sentences and main idea statements.

  • What do we think is the most important idea?

  • If we can’t find a clear main idea statement, we need to invent one.

  • Do check whether the other ideas support the main idea we found/ invented.

Effective rules for summarising

  • Delete trivial/ irrelevant/ redundant info.

  • Provide a superordinate term for members of a category.

  • Find and use generalisations the author has made.

  • Create your own generalisations when the author has not provided them.

(Brown and Day, 1983, as cited in Graves et al., 2011, p. 333)


Let’s practise summarising

An activity to help students synthesize and summarise what they have learned after reading biographies. Students might sit in small groups to use the cubes they made to prompt their summaries and share with one another.


Examples of technology-supported reading activities



Promoting extensive reading

One-on-one interview

●Learn about your peer’s reading habits and preferences. Then identify three books that your peer might enjoy based on the interview results.

●Interviewer: ________________ Interviewee: __________________

●Do you like to read? Why or why not?

●Are you reading anything for fun at this time? What is it? Why do you like it?

●Do you have any favourite authors and titles? Why are these your favourites?

●Is there a certain kind of text that you prefer--books, magazines, fiction, non-fiction, or some other format?

●How do you choose what to read when you go to a library or bookstore?

●What do you do if what you are reading is too hard/ too easy for you?

●What makes a good reader?

Interview form


Information about quality books and films

Kids and Family Reading Report 2019

HKEAA’s SBA recommended titles

Young Post’s SBA page

Award-winning children’s films and TV programmes

Book reviews, recommendations and awards


Recommended resources/ reading on teaching of reading strategies

●Useful online resources

○Seven strategies to teach text comprehension

○Reading strategies checklist

○Templates of different graphic organisers (text diagrams)

○Anchor charts to support the teaching of reading strategies

●Recommended readings

○Cameron, S. (2013). Teaching reading comprehension strategies: A practical classroom guide. Rosedale, Auckland, N.Z.: Pearson.

○Graves, M. (2011). Teaching reading in the 21st century : Motivating all learners (5th ed.). Boston, Mass. ; Hong Kong: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. (Chapters 10 & 11)

○Guthrie, J. T., & Cox, K. E. (2001). Classroom conditions for motivation and engagement in reading. Educational Psychology Review, 13(3), 283-302.

○Stricklin, K. (2011). Hands‐On Reciprocal Teaching: A Comprehension Technique. The Reading Teacher, 64(8), 620-625.


Recommended resources/ reading on promoting extensive reading

Useful online resources

●Cover to cover: Comparing books to movies

●Engaging learners in extensive reading

●Kids and Family Reading Report 2019

●Literature Circles

●The Novella. Why it’s a great extensive reading resource for English language students.


Recommended readings

●Day, R. & Robb, T. (2015). Extensive Reading. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Language learning beyond the classroom (pp.3-12). Routledge.

●Kreft, A., & Viebrock, B. (2014). To Read or not to Read: Does a Suitcase Full of Books do the Trick in the English Language Classroom?. CLELE Journal, 2 (1), pp.72-91. Retrieved from http://clelejournal.org//wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Kreft-Viebrock-final_correct-page-numbers.pdf

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