There is an old English proverb about our inability sometimes to “see the forest for the trees." It refers to an inability to see the whole while focusing on the details. It also happens sometimes that we have an inability to see the parts because we are focused on the whole. English Forest is based on the premise that the English classroom is a place where we can look at one another with a will to understand, where we can strive to see both, the people as a whole and the individuals that they are, the individuals that they are and the cultures that they form.
English Forest is a small service program offering English lessons and activities to members of the IUJ (International University of Japan) community. It began in the fall of 2011 at the request of international student families, who found that elementary schools were not offering English as a regular subject of study and that private language schools were expensive. It has included students from many countries around the world, including Japan, both children and adults. Classes have been offered in English conversation, business communication, and TOEFL preparation.
As English Forest students have come and gone over the past four years, usually returning to their own countries, there has been growing interest in continuing English studies via Skype. In their own countries, English lessons may be limited, inaccessible, expensive, or differently approached. As a teacher, I have been able to continue studies with Japanese students in Tokyo through this Skype technology. This spring I decided to try offering lessons -to begin later this summer- to students overseas.
Earlier in the academic year, in the fall, as I had been growing as a teacher, I began to feel a need for more study myself, more professional development in the TESOL field. This summer I began an online graduate certificate program at Indiana University. My first course is CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). The very format of the course --being online, using a learning management system -- as well as the readings have me thinking more and more about the ways in which English Forest might grow to continue to be of service to its "alumni" around the world.
Currently, I use Skype as a means of interacting with some of my students for lessons. However, my CALL course has me thinking of ways in which I might also design an online course. Some preliminary ideas that come to mind are to use a learning management system, to have assignment pages with links to web-sites for language activities, to assign online pair work so that two students could work together to practice or do activities at a suitable time, to include video in the learning management system that students could access at their convenience, produced videos as well as my own that might show modeled dialogues or offer language practice specific to our lessons, and possibly power point presentations on language concepts. One of the CALL course readings, Mike Levy's article on "Technologies in Use for Second Language Learning" (2009), offers a vast description of so many ways to use technology for language learning, and I feel a need for time to explore, think, allow my ideas to gel in order to design a meaningful distance-learning curriculum. Levy discusses virtual learning environments, with multimodal features. His description is fascinating.
Other readings offer insights into purposeful computer-based language-learning activities, based on theories on authenticity, audience, and autonomy. The computer allows students familiarity with many more genres for reading, writing, and creating, as Peter Duffy explains in his article, "Engaging the YouTube Google-Eyed Generation: Strategies for Using Web 2.0" (2007). These articles have helped me to think of the value of project-type tasks, both on and off the web, in relation to multiple perceptions of authenticity, including the students', real audiences, and autonomy. The web allows the processes of interaction, dialogue, expression, disagreement, negotiation, cooperation, collaboration, discovery, resolution and revision that may be involved in learning to extend beyond the classroom, beyond the teacher and classmates, beyond traditional classroom genres. The web and the world become the classroom. Students can develop a sense of agency as they engage in computer-based tasks for language learning that are perceived to be authentic and purposeful. These articles have stirred me to think more about the kinds of tasks I might offer the classes: purposeful, relevant for them, in a format comfortable for them. It has me thinking about the roles I too may play in this learning --as a teacher, a guide, a facilitator, a participant.
On a personal level, it feels like a special convergence: my interest in having English Forest continue online and my CALL course.
This blog is one of my CALL course assignments. Today, I renamed my blog, which was originally titled, "My CALL Course at IU." I renamed my blog "English Forest - Online." I felt this title to be more suitable, more personally relevant, as I reflect on using technologies for language learning.
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