Let us be "Evaluators"

This week I am here to talk about websites. Websites are really purposeful and beneficial tools for almost every business. But its benefits of EFL is undeniable. In today's education every teacher is using web tools like websites, podcasts etc. the ones who haven't started to use, must start using it before it gets too late.

For this week's task, I will evaluate a website which is used by ELT teachers and designed for ELT teachers for you. It is "Designerlessons " As you can guess from its name, it is all about lesson plans categorized for each stage of learners (pre-intermediate, intermediate..)

Pre-intermediate plans

It is founded by two english teachers George Chilton and Neil McMillian who are both English teachers and teacher trainers. According to them, lessons should be fun, inspiring. Every lesson plan has its own aims, stages, focused skills. Stages are mostly like discussion, video comprehension (optinal), questions, activities.

While looking a plan in detail, you have a chance to see related articles and which type of learners it is suitable for.


They say "So these lessons…
Aim to engage and promote conversation in a semi-controlled way. Ultimately, the teacher is responsible for guiding and correcting the language production in class. So we hope these ideas give a decent-enough framework and help to create  an energetic, spontaneous environment in which to teach."

I think it is a good example of ELT websites. As it is full of fun and successful mainly because it really does serve its aims. That enables students love learning english and have fun while learning. Furthermore, not only just students but also teachers have fun while teaching English. As teachers you can use a plan according to your groups of learners. One negative point is that we can't say this website is up-to-date as the last post that has been posted is on March 1,2015. Posts are appropriate for the target audience, the site may not seem colorful but plans are supported with appealing visual aids and pictures.

Teachers simply copy or develop the plans and use in their classroom. From the "contacts us" section, they can even communicate with the writers and ask their opinions.

That is all for now. Please share your ideas and comments. Bye :)

Keep updated with RSS

Hi everybody! I am here to introduce a very simple and beneficial tool for following blogs or sites which are about our personal interests, jobs, experiences. If you are not a blogger or any blog user, don't worry. You just download and add your favorite blogs and BUM! Whenever they post, it comes to your feedreader. Okay I am going into the details, you'll  find out how to do it.

  What is it? 
It is RSS or "Really Simple Syndication". It is an easy communication tool between publishers and readers. RSS feeds are not time consuming, you won't waste time checking or visiting the sites. When the new contents is published, you'll be notified about it. And even you can categorize them according to your interests.

There are many RSS options, you can download to your personal computer if you wish, or just simply use it online by signing in with your Facebook/Google account. I am using Feedreader. It is very simple. You can choose some different groupings like according to their tags, sources etc.

Here you see a screenshot of my feedreader. I follow some ELT bloggers and my friends' blogs. The number of the updates I haven't seen are shown in parentheses. And you see a post of one of my favoruite blog: All at C.

All at C is a blog kept by two bloggers who are very facilitated ELT educators. They share lesson plans focus on videos on their blog. Posts include a video and a theme, activites about it, for whom it is suitable, also teacher notes. I strongly recommend it to all ELT teachers and teachers-to-be. It is a very entertaining blog for not only for students but also for teachers. You have a lot of alternatives for your students' level.

This is all for now. I hope this post will be useful to you. And if you have a favorite, I'll be glad if you share it with me. See you next week :)

Let's talk about movies!

Hello again, here I am with a new project. For this week's project my friend Zerrin and I created a wiki page to write the review of our favorite movie 'The Martian' .

A wiki is a website which allows collaboratively sharing and editing its content. It is easy to use and follow also it allows anyone to edit. Teachers can assist their students in their learning processes through using Wikis. But don't forget to be careful as anyone can edit and there may be a problem with its reliance. Anyway you can have many benefits of using wikis.

We wrote our review on Wikispaces created by our teacher. This was a rather easy task as we both like watching films and when it comes to our favorite we almost had no difficulty in writing its review. It is always fun to do a task with a friend as you can help each other and enjoy at the same time.
If you wonder, you can see our review here. I hope you'll like :) See you next week!

Listen and Learn: Podcasting

Dear All!
My friend Zerrin Akgün and I recorded our voices for the first task. Podcasting is a form of audio broadcasting on the Internet. You can simply download it to your personal audio player, computers, phones etc. In order to suggest our students to do it, we have to learn how to use it effectively. With this purpose, we wrote a short story and recorded it added sound effects changing according to its mood. Our word choices and subject are suitable for A2/B1 learners and mostly teenager EFL learners. Of course there are difficulties, we had difficulty in creating a creative story with limited words. Hearing our voices is very terrible and achieving the most satisfying record took almost 3 hours. Despite all of these, it was so much fun. I believe that it is very useful once you get used to it, you can have many benefits of it. I strongly recommend it to all students and teachers if they are looking for something new and technological. It may help students improve their pronunciation, raise their interest in language learning. Furthermore it is free and easy to use!

Our story is named "THE FEARFUL MISSION"


I HOPE YOU'LL ENJOY IT.


Record audio or upload mp3 >>