Week 6 : Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint

I have planned for an EAP project. It will cover the aspects of academic lecture listening and lecture note taking for university level students who study English as their second language.

This week as part of preparations for the project proposal, when I started gathering more resources, I could find useful resources for lecture note taking. Now I have a small list of useful websites as resource for academic lectures. I must thank to Robert for sharing the websites.

The process of change is always slow in class teaching. The teacher works at multiple levels. One has to find out alternatives and make appropriate choices at every stage in order to introduce a change. When I started exploring websites for listening, I could see that there are very limited choices available for materials selection suitable to the background of my students. Either there is difference in language efficiency level or the content areas of podcasts and videos. I wish to select the materials related to their commerce curriculum, if possible, in order to generate their interest in this project. Although there is a difference in accent, reduced forms, speed of speaking, and lecture organization in the recorded e-materials and the local oral practices, I would consider it as strength of the project rather than a limitation. Rather it will help me to expose my students to a different variety of English. I think WebQuest is a good alternative for implementing change. I am trying to develop a lesson plan on WebQuest focusing on both the aspects simultaneously: academic lectures and note taking. I think I will be able to develop a satisfactory one within a few days.

It was a good learning experience for me to prepare an interactive power point presentation. It involved along process. Appropriate topic selection for a visually appealing presentation, finding out resources from net, organization in points and sub points, and proper hyperlinking.

Technology is a very good supportive tool but in demands huge amount of planning and preparation time on the part of the teacher. Things do not happen as per planning in actual practice. A teacher will foresee the situation of technological breakdown or disciplinary problems in the large classes. But time management at the personal level is a great challenge these days. There is hardly any assistance or support available from administration. Whatever technological tool one may select, whether email, ppt or other tools, it is a great challenge for an ESL teacher in a developing country, working in a traditional environment with limited resources.

Inspite of the situation as above, the ELT scenario in India is fast changing due to globalization. It is all due to increasing use of technology. Teachers have a great role in bringing about a change in the society.

Now we have our great festival of Diwali- the festival of light. It is the beginning of a new year in Gujarat.Let there be peace, prosperity and enlightenment in everybody’s life.

 

Kinnari