Top Mobile Apps for ESL/EFL [Guest post by Elaine Hirsch]

For the second time, I have the privilege to host a guest blogger. This time, Elaine Hirsch talks about apps for ESL/EFL. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Top Mobile Apps for ESL

English as a second language (ESL) has become one of the most commonly taught subjects in all levels of education around the world. Mastery of the English language can open doors to exciting opportunities around the world in many different fields. Simply being able to understand and communicate in English can bring about new friendships and meaningful relationships. It’s safe to say English today is the language of choice online from PhDs to elementary-schoolers and effectively the world’s lingua franca.

The advent of smartphones has made it easier for ESL students to learn and practice language skills. One of the keys to mastering a second language is immersion, and mobile apps can augment ESL learning by offering additional exercises and instruction beyond the classroom. ESL teachers can get the most out of their smartphones and tablet devices with mobile apps to help them plan lessons, gather additional materials, manage the classroom, and keep in touch with students.

The following five mobile apps can help ESL teachers and their students enhance the learning experience:

Dynamic English Lessons

For the average ESL students, phrasal verbs can be difficult to master. With the Dynamic English Lessons app, students can learn and practice the use of phrasal verbs contextually. The phrasal verbs are sorted into various useful categories such as work, leisure, health, and even dating. The app’s dictionary grows in scope as users successfully complete exercises based on questions and images that call for multiple choice answers.

ESL AI

ESL teaching is more than grammar and theory. Conversational exercises are not only the cornerstone of ESL learning, they’re often the main the reason most students return to the classroom. With the ESL AI app for Android, Windows Mobile, and MeeGo, students can listen to conversations in everyday settings and respond to the conversation prompts via their smartphone keyboard or touchscreen. The app’s artificial intelligence adjusts the conversation to each response, creating a wide range of outcomes to each conversation.

Voice of America VOA Special English Player

The respected VOA Special English website is a favorite among ESL teachers everywhere. The iPhone app version of the VOA Special English site allows students to listen, read, and learn about a variety of subjects. Each relevant story is narrated with the clear accents and measured diction VOA broadcasters are famous for, an essential style of speech students are encouraged to emulate.

ESL Aloud

Listening and understanding are the keys to ESL learning. Listening to a variety of spoken English recordings with guided practice can greatly enhance understanding and assimilation. The ESL Aloud app for the iPhone and Android devices features a variety of podcasts, each with a corresponding PDF document that contains relevant sentence patterns for review.

PowerTeacher Mobile

The Apple iPad has become a favorite tool among ESL teachers for its portability and powerful organizational features. With TeacherPal, ESL instructors can easily manage all their classroom activities with features such as attendance books, seating charts, gradebooks, class manager, and notepad. TeacherPal also takes advantage of cloud computing by easily synchronizing with Dropbox.

Oct 21 2011

i-rEFLEct upon: ELT conferences and Professional Development

I am always thrilled to take part in ELT conferences, seminars, forums and the like. I personally believe that these events are the ideal place to learn, share and showcase the latest innovations and initiative in areas such as management theory and practice, academic managerial skills development, technology, market trends and teacher training and development. Being a tech savvy teacher, I tend to choose related talks and workshops. Today I had the privilege to attend the X English Teaching Forum which was held at Cultura Inglesa, Duque de Caxias. I was pleased I was very well welcomed and could enjoy a full day of professional development, made some networking, caught up with some old friends and met new people.

The day started with some coffee at the pub which belongs to Cultura Inglesa. Funnily enough its name is “The Duke Of Caxias” – how creative is that! Well, the first two sessions I attended presenters mainly showcased webtools that can be used to enhance learning.

Most of the tools presented were not new to me, but I believe they are truly effective and if you haven’t heard/used them, you should definitely give a try:

- Tag Galaxy = a visual dictionary which links pictures to Flickr images in a rather playful way

- Click and Learn = is a collection of drills to learn Reading, Math, Science, Geography, Social Studies, Spelling — just about any topic. It looks and feels like a game, but it is really a powerful, proven learning tool

- English Tips = provides tips for learning English. Topics include grammar, usage, vocabulary, writing, cultural issues and other areas that learners of English might find useful.

- Elllo = is an English listening lesson library online (acronym for ELLO) they provide free listening activities that include multimedia, MP3 files, vocabulary tasks language notes and print pages

The old discussion about using technology in order to use in service of learning, not otherwise was almost omnipresent. Some questions I’ve been wrestling with poped up: How do we know we are not being blown away by the wowing effect that new advances have in our lives? How can we gauge the effective use of technology in class? How do we, as teachers, make sure that the tail is not wagging the dog? I personally believe that simply letting your students to watch a video clip on Youtube in class is not what I call “effective educational use of technology”.

Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to attend Giselle Santo’s presentation. Giselle’s ability to connect metaphorical analogies never ceases to amaze me! This time she use “the hat metaphor” with which she invited us to wonder the many kinds of hats we, teachers, may should to wear. These were:

a) The paper hat – are you afraid using it?

b) The hard hat – Do you need some protection against external factors?

c) The Mortarboard – Are you a learning coach user of technology?

d) The birthday hat – is technology a source of entertainment (only)?

e) The Brain Cap – do you think critically?

f) Finally, the Mad Hatter’s Hat – This presentation would not have Giselle’s if there weren’t a surprise: some wild ideas!

This time I was flabbergasted to say the least! But you’ll have to attend one of her next talks to know more about the hats. She’ll be presenting a similar talk at ACINNE in Salvador in November.

Another technology related talk I attended was Graeme Hodgson’s on Mobile Learning. Not knowing much about the theoretical part that lays behind the use of hand-held devices, I was keen on learning more about it. Graeme started his talk by exemplifying the various myths that surround the world of m-learning. The list included:

- M-learning is not all about mobile phones

- Sts need state-of-the-art technology

- Only works with teens

- Focus is on technology not learning

- Every student must have their own device

- It’s too expensive

Graeme also provided some interesting facts about the use/purchasing of mobile devices and some ideas as well. However, one of the high moments of his presentation was when he said that m-learning allows more personalized lessons.

These professional development moments are to be cherished by all teachers. We have chosen a profession that suffers heavy prejudice and many people think we should go and find a “real” job. Mainly because of the society’s view, because of the market’s view and because of how we ourselves see our profession. It is up to us, however, to decide what to do with our career. Choosing to be a better professional is definitely taking the road less travelled.

That’s subject for another post. But I would like to ask you:

why is ELT so stigmatized?

Oct 12 2011

irEFLect upon: The Brazilian ELT context

YES, WE HAVE BANANAS – THE ENGLISH TEACHING CONTEXT IN BRAZIL

Taken for its size, Brazil is almost a continent itself. It is a place where you can travel thousands of miles without having to speak a foreign language. My home country is not only internationally known for its natural beauties, the contagious beat of samba, the specific happiness that define us, but also, unfortunately, for its badly-structured educational system.

Way too often we plead education guilty for the exclusion that the vast majority of Brazilians live in. It, ought to be, however, known that education is a not panacea that can prevent processes of exclusion once these processes are driven by a series of other complex cultural and social issues such as race, gender, class and sexuality. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that education is an important tool for people who seek equality.

Brazil is divided between those who have access to information and, therefore, greater opportunities to learn, and those who have limited access to information, with fewer opportunities to broaden their horizons. In such context, learning English has become one of the greatest tools of current education. Learning English in Brazil is seen as one of the most valued symbolic assets. Many people are excluded from the technological advances that grant more opportunities for individual and social accomplishments. In a place where inequality is increasingly dramatic, exclusion has become a synonym for poverty.

There are two mainstream ELT contexts in Brazil: in regular schools and in language institutes. In regular schools, teachers face up to 50 students sitting in orderly rows waiting for a lecture. Actually, many English teachers in regular schools cannot speak the language. Lessons are given in Portuguese, and the focus is on grammar, translation and superficial reading comprehension. Students are extremely reluctant about learning English because they believe nothing will change if a teacher who does not belong to their world lectures them about a language that is not theirs.

In addition to that, many of the students study English at language institutes. Classes contain students from different levels in the same classroom, from those who have never studied English to those who are proficient speakers, and teachers have to teach them “all” about the verb BE. Language institutes are abundant all over the country. Some institutes claim to provide miraculous speed learning, low cost and satisfaction guarantee, when that is not the truth. Others enable students to effectively communicate in English. All skills are integrated and students are stimulated to use the language in productive ways rather than just being able to understand it. This is the context I find myself in.

Teaching English in Brazil requires a great deal of passion, creativity, commitment and willpower. Paradoxically, the ELT context in Brazil is highly demanding and promising with great opportunities for those who engage in it. But at the same time is a path full of obstacles, frustrations, and above all, doubts and questionings.

Sep 9 2011

i-reflect upon: another speaking dive

__So the topic of speaking emerges again after having dove in an experience that will certainly not go like water off a duck’s back since it helped me reflect upon a question I’ve been wrestling with for quite a while:

“How to convert inert seemingly inert knowledge of words and grammar into fluid speech”

Today I attended a training session led by Valeria França for teachers at Cultura Inglesa (which is the language institute I work for). The title of the presentation was “How to foster speaking in class” and I was rather intrigued with it and couldn’t help thinking: - Isn’t there enough speaking practice in our lessons?

The answer seems to be positive with some strings attached: “Yes, but there’s always room for more!” – And when it comes to speaking, the more the merrier, right?

The session started and Valeria pointed out that the classroom experience involved maximizing speaking opportunities and equipping students. But how can this be done?

- Raising Awareness:

Awareness-raising is a term borrowed from the cognitivist learning theory. One way of raising students’ awareness of features of spoken language is to expose learners to recordings of speaking and to get them to reflect about the transcripts of these recordings.

I personally find it very effective to have students analyze their own recordings. In order to help me persuade them is telling the plot of the movie “The King’s Speech” in which by getting help from an unorthodox speech therapist who constantly recorded the king, who eventually overcame his stuttering problem and found his voice leading the country through war.

As mentioned by Valeria, the act of raising awareness should be intertwiningly worked with monitoring. Teachers should get help from being observed by managers and mentors as well as from peer teachers. So as to foster speaking, the session dealt with an important feature of the lesson which is planning.

And the first question was: Why do we plan? (and some answers are:)

- Security: a lesson plan serves as a map in which you plan your way to achieve a destination but if by any chance you end up taking another road, you will have a full range of possible roads to reprogram your trip.

- To ensure the flow of activities and/or lessons

- To anticipate problems which obviously have to come with a(some) possible solution(s)

- To set goals and check their achievement

- To adapt into your class profile / students needs

- To deal with content, materials, sequencing and materials

These ideas came as a harbinger of things to come: a paradigm shift! – CHANGE THE LESSON PLAN!
There are several reasons why to do so:

Omit an activity:

- Learners are clear about it

- The topic is not appropriate

Replace an activity:

- When you want to try out another activity similar to the book suggestion

- When materials are inappropriate for the learners’ age

Add something:

- Because students need extra review

- Because I have time to spare

- Because my students are working on a project which needs support

- Because students have specific learning needs

After deciding what and how to adapt the plan, teachers should reflect upon the questions to do so. Some of the ones I came up with were:

· What’s the aim of the lesson?

· Are my students going to be able to use the target language in real contexts?

· How to their previously knowledge interfere or help in the process of achieving my goal?

· How can I adapt the activitiy in terms of making it more engaging, appealing and memorable to my student?

A very nice question was brought up:

“Are the initial steps going to help my students achieve the production part?”

It was skillfully highlighted that it is important to move a bit away from the Presentation / Practice / Production mentality and go towards an Introduction and Contextualization one. That makes sense since according to the PPP, students would only be “given” the opportunity to speak towards the end of the lesson. Which does not make sense at all: A lesson can involve a lot speaking practice since its very first beginning.

Some of the things that caught my eye during this session were:

- It’s important to train our students to listen to each other

- Don’t limit your students – create opportunity in which speaking can emerge

- Don’t overuse pre-prepared flipcharts with questions or sentences – Let learning happen!

- Body language makes the learning of chunks more memorable

- As students get more comfortable with participating, engagement will come more naturally

- Tolerate silence (again…); refrain from filling the gaps between turns. This might put pressure on students to initiate turns.

- A lesson should be collaborative!

I’m sure that most teachers will leave this session as surprised and motivated as I did. So as to get the most of speaking opportunities we need to come to terms with the fact that a class should not be the book, a class is the language. After all, we shouldn’t teach the book. We should teach the student. (Scrivener)

i-reflect on: Speaking: you might never come back from this dive.

“Through dialog, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with student-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialog with the students, who in turn while being taught also teaches. (FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Opressed 1970 p61)

When the subject of speaking abilities is brought up this quote fits like a glove. Freire, a visionary Brazilian educator, claims that learning is built through dialog in which students and teachers are authors of equally importance roles in the process. Nevertheless, the acquisition of oral abilities is still a not-very-explored part of learning. No textbook can teach or assess speaking abilities. Students may learn a lot of linguistic information about the language. However, they may not acquire much language at an automatized level, which therefore inhibits them in limited efforts to have conversation.

I fear that teachers are not fully aware of the implications of oral skills. As reflectionist practioners, sometimes what we read, observe, test and adapt is not enough. When that happens I turn to my students and cry for help. Most of the time they provide me simple solutions that help me alleviate my pedagogical pain. Having watched a video posted on Facebook by a colleague of mine, I decided to show it o my students to get them to discuss the topic of “speaking”.

In the video, five classmates converse in English. Each of them has a problem with an aspect of the language. (grammar, spelling, methaphors/idioms, stress/intonation and vocabulary). Students were quite fast in recognizing them but when I asked them to rank these aspects in order of importance they had a rough time. (And I was like: “this is going to be awesome!”). When they were about to start a fight, I told them there was no way of deciding upon the most important since all of them play an equal role towards the desired fluency.

Moreover, I incited them with some other questions:

- Which are you most comfortable with?

- Which do you think is the easiest to acquire?

- Which is the most difficult?

- Which is the one that Brazilian students most face problems?

- Which one do you feel you need to improve?

- Which one are you able to teach a friend?

- How can you improve each of them?

My point was: Providing students with the opportunity to reflect upon their learning is rather effective. Students can, thus, take full ownership of their learning and become reflectionist users of the language. For this to happen, teachers need to raise students’ awareness of the features of spoken language. One effective way of doing so is to expose them to recordings. When students reflect upon their own recordings they feel compelled to make it better. They start wondering what they could have done differently and why.

Not only do we have to expose our students to oral input, but also we have to provide them with awareness of the language. This, consequently, will turn into appropriation and then will blossom into autonomy.

Simple ways of doing so (that I have learned through my journey):

- Tolerate silence! Silence does not mean your class is boring or students have nothing else to say. They might be just thinking. I have recently heard the metaphor: “be like the bee to the flowers” – approach your students, provide them with the necessary help and let them fly!

- Create in the students’ minds a personal reality, a direct relationship with the language in order to encourage the “feeling” that they are on their way to reaching their ability to survive in this sea they are entering (and might never come back)

- Make them talk about themselves!

- Get students’ familiar with specific chunks of idiomatic language; provide dialogs in which they can act out reusing these chunks in applicable contextual scenarios where students can use what they have “learned”

What would you add?
I have been learning through trial and error that real/authentic English does not come easily, but to reflect upon it has helped me a great deal.

Aug 23 2011

i-reflect upon: Learning to Study Because You Want to Learn – Guest Post by Lindsey Wright

A few weeks ago I received a request from Lindsey Wright. She wanted to write a guest post for both of the blogs I have. Needless to say I was rather honored and excited with the idea.

After having discussed the topic, Lindsey provided me with this delightful piece of writing on “Learning Because You Want to Learn”.

Lindsey is a writer from Seattle, US. And she is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

Study for the Sake of Learning

All too often people study in order to get good grades, please parents, or reach career goals. On the other hand, sometimes one might study to fulfill an urgent need for information: the parents of a child diagnosed with a serious medical condition, for example, will likely study that condition with intense interest. Whether for extrinsic reasons or because of some other direct motivation, a common theme successful studying from grade school to online college classes is interest. It’s far easier to learn about a topic when it draws or appeals to you on some personal level. Many students have a difficult time studying because they feel forced to enroll in classes in which they have no interest, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Almost regardless of the subject, you can find some point of interest to you that can be used to improve the effectiveness of your study time.

Finding an Anchor

No matter what subject you need to study, you should look for something within the subject and the materials at hand that interests you personally. Once you find it, latch onto it as a jumping-off point for all the information you need to know for the class.

For instance, if you’re interested in religion and need to study the regional politics of 17th-century American colonies, find a way to link the subject to the religious developments of the period. No subject is an island, so regardless of your interests you can find some specific point you’d like to know more about in most any area. With that anchor, you can build out a web of information more directly related to the subject itself.

Ignoring Grades

While it may seem counterintuitive, one of the best ways to make studying more enjoyable is to disassociate your study time from concern about your GPA. Studying without worrying about grades helps you proceed at a pace of your choosing. More importantly, taking the focus off of grades will allow you to keep better in touch with intrinsic motivations, which are ultimately stronger driving forces for learning.

Of course, you should still be concerned with your grades, but they shouldn’t be the primary motivators behind your study. Proceeding at your own pace rather than that determined by your class will reduce your study-related stress, help you get a fuller understanding of the subject, and make studying seem less like a chore.

Going Beyond the Text

Once you’ve established an interest in a topic and set your own study schedule based on your own pace, it becomes much easier to develop your learning through means beyond the basic reading and assignments you’ve been given. Tapping into additional resources — alternative textbooks, primary sources, museums, etc.— can give you a more thorough understanding of the topic and consequently improve the effectiveness of not just your studies, but also the entire class experience.

The more you know about a topic, the easier it becomes to build on that knowledge in the future. Thus, by strengthening your foundation of knowledge you can preemptively limit your later study-stress. Regularly visiting free online book resources like The Pathfinder Project or Project Gutenberg can go a long way in making this practice second-nature. This may sound like a lot of additional work, but if you’re actually interested in the topic taking things this step further will probably feel like second nature.

Avoid Forcing Yourself

Above all, a person establishing an enjoyment-based study habit should avoid intrusive study patterns like late-night cram sessions or frantic, last-minute note-skimming. These and other stressful study techniques can create negative associations that will be difficult to shake once they become embedded in your subconscious. As result, studying will seem more like an odious obligation than an enjoyable activity.

However, you should also avoid the opposite. If you feel your studies intrude upon your social life, you should build part of your social life around studying. Find a study group, or convince your friends to spend their study time with you in the library or similar location where you won’t be distracted. It’s important that you don’t feel as though studying is keeping you from better things, or else you’ll grow to resent it.

Ultimately, you should study in a way that best suits your own learning style and social needs. If you have trouble getting through your reading, remembering relevant information, or just plain don’t like to study, this method might be the best thing for you. Improving your study attitude is the first step toward making education an integral part of your life rather than an interruption.

Jun 19 2011

i-rEFLect on: EFL teachers wanted: No experience necessary.

EFL teachers wanted: No experience necessary.

On the last edition of #breltchat participants were invited to share their views on the influence of certificates in teaching practices. I myself have wondered about it many times:

- After all what is better, to gain experience through trial and error or to get as many certificates as possible?

- What should be the balance between experience and theory?

- Do certificates truly certify your practices?

So, let’s get down to business:

Experience should always be accompanied to well based theory. To Plato experience meant habituation, or the conservation of the net product of a lot of past chance trials. To the modern reforms, however, the situation was reversed. Principles, a priori, meant either blank minds which had to be filled in by experience and observations in order to get significance and validity; or else were mere dogmas imposed by authoritarian forces.

Nowadays, in general lines, a college degree is not enough for a professional do get through a job interview and be hired. Good institutions seek professionals who are in tune with the theory they have learned – whether it be through an intensive 4-year-college or international teaching certificates such as CELTA or DELTA – and the experience in class they have gathered. Both play a big role in the formation of teachers. It is, however, sadly believed that teaching English requires no or almost no experience. Many job adverts post opportunities in which candidates needn’t to have neither any previous experience nor any certificates. A native-like fluency would suffice. In my humble opinion, the teaching profession is greatly damaged by those who see it as a doorway to other objectives. I call them adventurous teachers. Sadly, this mindset is cultivated by private language institutes which in search of cheap labor hire unprepared and unqualified teachers. But who’s to blame them?

How can undergraduate students gain experience if they do not find a place to start? In most cases universities do not prepare its students to the real life of classrooms and when they graduate they do not feel confident enough to face a 20-kiddos-classroom. Another important fact is the false belief that inexperienced teachers should start teaching beginners level. Beginners and young learners are the most difficult group to teach. Teachers should be very careful not to scare students for life. Where do you think the famous utterance “I HATE ENGLISH!” comes from? And that is when experience overcomes theory. Right? Wrong! Theory and experience should be harmonically intertwined in order to constitute a good teaching practice. The desired balance between theory and practice is when theory underlies practice in meaningful ways.

Reflection plays a role in this process as well. The theoretical and methodological position pointed by the educational institutions, across the curriculum, brings deep implications to the process of training new professionals. At the intersection of these questions, practicioners should reflect on how to scale the teaching of language – which is the result of a theoretically informed practice.

What do you guys have to say on the matter? I bet future English teachers feel they are between the devil and the deep sea when it comes to the battle between experience and theory.

May 28 2011

Hello world!

Welcome to i-rEFLect.net.

This site/blog shall be my instrument of reflection as an English Teacher practioner and a technology lover.

First of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Bruno Andrade, I’m brazilian and I come from the interior of the state. Currently, I live in the capital, the sunny Rio de Janeiro. I have been an EFL teacher for about 10 years and I’m certain that I did not choose this profession. It chose me. And that’s why I feel so blessed.

My passion for teaching comes from the fact that I’m/can be a live-changer. My words and my mind can travel the world and actually be heard. What I teach my students is not only how to be proficient in the English language, but also how to be better human beings. Better learners, better classmates and better citiziens. Way too often I fail. And that’s when I seek counselling, advice and guidance.

This shall be a portal in which I will kindly ask my readers to reflect with me and help me to ease my pedagogigal pains, my didatics abortions, my linguitics suicidal-trials and my psychological issues (why not?).

I’m happy to be in this world. I’m happy to at least try to make it a little better.

Join me in this adventure. You won’t regret it. And if you do, we can always try it again.

i-rEFLect

I-REFLECT.NET

Reflections of an English as a Foreign Language Teacher and the Use of Technology