KWL - Wiki

I knew only wikipedia.org and wikileaks and I know people can share information on wikipedia.org by just clicking to edit but they need to sign for the web site. I don't know how reliable they are but they give references to the sites they use.
You may find more information about wikis by clicking the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

I learnt how to be a member of wiki clubs a pbworks.com. Moreover, at settings list saw that Each individual workspace has its own "Settings" tab, which allows me to tweak the individual settings of the workspace. Then the settings for each workspace are separate, and there is no tool to modify the settings for multiple workspaces. Also. page and files link showed me how to browse actions we did before.  Further, with PBworks editor button, I learnt that Pbworks have edit tabs that allow users to write, edit and administrate workspace pages.
With last button I saw PBworks can be used for business and educational purposes.

You can pay a visit to my wiki account by clicking the link below.


http://ridvan1923.pbworks.com/w/page/61482980/FrontPage

Student Anxiety in Learning English

We all learnt English since childhood. We all know that we felt anxious while learning this foreign language because we were feeling like living in a foreign land and didn't know what to do. Nobody could give a hand to come back from this land. What was/is the reason behind this? It sometimes was behalf on us, but sometimes it was very rude to us.

Some of us didn't like English, some learnt it for future purposes, and some liked it very much. Motivation came through this anxiety.
Sometimes we were laughed by others because we felt very uncomfortable and not able to understand instructions in that language. Doing roleplay activities made us feel at unease. Homework was good for some of us, but some weren't comfortable with it. Sometimes we were angry because we weren't understanding anything. Becauuuuseeeeeeeeeee

We had anxiety!

What is this anxiety?

Anxiety is a general term for several disorders that cause nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worrying. They affect our feelings and behaviour, they can manifest real physical symptoms. People often experience a general state of worry or fear before confronting something challenging such as a test, examination, recital, or interview. These feelings are easily justified and considered normal. Anxiety is considered a problem when symptoms interfere with a person's ability to sleep or otherwise function

Anxiety and Learning English

Bailey points out despite its negative aspects, anxiety is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. Even it can be very helpful. Scovel distinguishes between debilitaling anxiety, which creates difficulties in learning and performing, and facilitating anxiety, which actually helps people to do better than they might otherwise. Yes, if we know that success is attainable but not guaranteed, we may do better precisely because our anxiety has spurred us on. On the other hand, if we feel that, no matter how hard we try, we are going to fail, then our anxiety might discourage us from doing our best. Another possible source of debilitating anxiety is the fact that learning a foreign language makes people feel, to some extent, in a foreign land, with all the cultural implications of this situation.

Scovel also makes a distinction between trait anxiety, which is a relatively permanent personality feature, and the less stable state anxiety, which is evoked by a particular set of temporary circumstances. State anxiety is an acknowledged feature of language learning, whether as cause, effect or both. But why should anxiety be a special problem for language learners? Aren't students anxious about other school subjects? Why should language learning be different? One possible answer is that in most language learning situations, students are required to perform in the target language, which deprives them of their normal means of communication and behaviour. When forced to use the language they are learning, they constantly feel that they are representing themselves badly, showing only some of their real personality and intelligence. This sort of deprivation breeds anxiety about communicating with others, both in class and outside it, thus these learners will not fully profit from practising the language which has been learned.

Now I would like to ask questions about anxiety in English language learning:

How do you feel about anxiety before reading this blog? Good or bad ?

Do you think that anxiety can be useful tool for learning English or any other language ?

How can you learn your students' anxiety when you're an English language teacher?

Is anxiety a required feeling for the English language learning or is it only non-sense and must be eliminated? Why do you think so ?

If you like to read more on anxiety and anxiety in English language learning following links are good to help you:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/anxiety/

http://hera.ugr.es/tesisugr/16235290.pdf

Ridvan & Lauren

It is broadcasting time, friends ;))

Technology

An interesting conversation with Mr Balzac. He is a well-known man in whole India. He is answering my questions about technology.

KWL

I have know nothing about readability tools. I want to understand how those tools calculate or estimate readability rates.
Its nature allows me to choose the best for my students because while in the text A readibility rate low, B has more rates. It is obvious it can be very good for students who are at lower levels or at upper levels of English.
But then I wonder how it does simply decide how readable a text. Could it be that it is a time saviour of a teacher because with one click you got your  results in front of you while sipping your coffee.

Text A

 Text B

Integrating Blog

I  have never realized that I will be signing a contract for blogs. It is so interesting to do so.
I learnt that an expert or good blogger has unique ideas. They make good entries, comment on other members' blogs. They share their ideas and help each other. All the missions they took completed on time and properly. Using grammar properly makes their blogs seem interesting. Responsible at work, respectful towards others these are characteristics of bloggers. I will try to be at their sense. Moreover, a blogger is not harmfull but s/he must a useful or beneficial source for others.
Following daily life, co-operating with others make them more accountable.
Creativeness also is a key word for bloggers because good bloggers are good at being creative. Senseful for creating good blogs.
They must keep in touch with other good bloggers and encourage other fishman to be good bloggers.

Vocabulary Profiling 6

Computers don't consume our time so they are better at picking up the key words instead spending minutes. I found multi concordance a bit complicated but I can easily see differences in a context as shown below. Students can develop their sense of word usage in contexts. I believe they need special education because "lextutor" quite complicated.
[001] s too light. After Guardino's left, we'll DUMP the kid   somewhere near the border where
[002] id to herself. It isn't only birds   that DUMP their children in other people's nests ..
[003] ng rockets from a   launcher mounted on a DUMP truck; they are also trained with carbine
[004] for the proper time to come over here and DUMP this place into the   Adriatic". But the
[005] s too light. After Guardino's left, we'll DUMP the kid   somewhere near the border where
[006] id to herself. It isn't only birds   that DUMP their children in other people's nests ..

Vocabulary Profiling 5

Vocabulary profiler offers us three types of word lists which are tokens, families and types. I can easily access those lists without time consuming skimming activities. It provides lists of frequent and common words. Yes, it is absolutely possible for students to use such a tool. They will easily understand and learn common words. As shown in the video I can prepare word filling activities with their collocations. Moreover, I think that vocabulary profiler is better than wordle in this case because wordle shows most used words in a text but vocabulary profiler provides word types. Word cloud can be beneficial for skimming activities whereas vocabulary profiler can be best used for common word activities.

Vocabulary Profiling 4

When I used "concordle", it provided me collocations of words and so forth. I pointed out that a word can break into many directions. This proves me that a vocabulary profiler can like "prism" for lexis.   A word can be same in all genres but it differs, differs and differs again.

Vocabulary Profiling 3

It is quite obvious that native speakers are better at guessing the unkknown words because at least they can make comprehension. I am suprised because there was a problem with the tool because it didn't give right answer at all options for some words or it deleted right answer. Word frequency will certainly differ in Englishes due to geographic conditions come up with new words.
The only thing I know I don't know what I already know about the nature of lexis. Maybe I can develop my lexis further.

Vocabulary Profiling 2

I believe that we can easily help our students when they need to know a word that they don't know. Learning common words can seem natural however they must be taught through an education. It is seen that students need to know surrounding words for unknown words before contexts, then it can be said that it is good to make decontextualization. Most common word lists can satisfy student's needs; however, dictionaries don't come up with necessary common words. Looking for common words in dictionaries can be time stealing.

Vocabulary Profiling 1

Failing to guess the meaning of an unknown word depend a deal on a student's word knowledge. Probably a student who has weak word knowledge tends to fail a lot. Sometimes it happens to me, too. However, those unknown words might be high level English words that I can't understand their meaning though I know most common words in a context. Most of coursebooks don't include "guess meaning activities". However, the ones that contain "guess meaning activities" provide dictionary meanings or fill in the blank activities with most common words. Developing sense of word frequency can be beneficial for our proffession because everybody thinks us as living dictionaries.

Data-Driven Learning

Task I

From Palmer's view of point  language can be learnt through discoveries. People like to discover things and language is a good unknown treasure to be done so. This method makes people hypothesize, experiment and observe the language. 
I am not sure, but it can easily be followed in f2f classes because it is kind of constructivits approach that shows way how to develop your learning skills. Moreover, it is certainly more suited to individual work because of the aura of computer technologies. Finally I think of new softwares to use this learning method. Due to as long as computers develop, new software can be designed to help DDL and we can access a lot new sources by the help of the internet. 

What I do at CTE 319

What I do at 319

First and foremost, I see this course as director and useful toy to enlight our view of point for educational purposes.