2 Aug 2010 : I walk into class to see new faces besides the 5 (Thiru absent) I've been teaching all this while. 8 new students from the 2nd intake! Surprisingly, they are mostly Band 4 and seem pretty confident and articulate compared to the original group. They are all from PPBL, either on the BAELS or the BAELit programme.
Since 8 students are without a book, I'm unable to do any work from the text. I get the original class to explain to the new students what the course is about and what I've done with them so far.
The rest of the time is spent discussing blog topics.
After a meeting with the coordinator , it is decided that I shall keep 4 of the new students, and Thiru ( already in her 3rd year) and the other 4 new students will have to be placed in other groups. I've found 6 to be too small a class - it's not cost and energy efficient.
So now I have 9 in the class, forming 3 blog groups.
4 Aug
New practice introduced: self marking of exercises.
I made copies of the answer key so that students can self mark the routine types of exercises - gap filling, simple sentence completion, error correction, etc
I will mark only those exercises which require students to write out in their own words.
Online learning resources:
Students generally have never bothered to use online resources for language learning - except for one student who uses the online dictionary.
I introduce students to online resources for language learning. I get them to search for suitable sites to learn pronunciation, grammar, etc One site which teaches phonetic symbols was particularly interesting to the BAELS students. I show them Dave's ESL cafe.
Will need to monitor their use of online resources.
I tell students to share any resource they find useful with the rest of the class.
Consultation on blog project:
2 groups have registered their blog site.
