WEEK 3 - FEELINGS

This week was really challenging, I hope everybody did their best to accomplish the given tasks on time.

I don't know what to begin with. Because each week is full of colorful activities, you learn new techniques, get a lot of useful information about the recent innovations. The only thing to do is to apply them in your classes.

This week's discussion was Aural/Oral Skills. I read several articles about teaching listening, speaking and pronunciation by Lindsey Miller, Maria Busa and Julia Gong. The authors presented valuable information about developing these skills, especially using authentic materials. Besides I got acquainted with several websites full of activities, such as One Stop English I found more interesting First day lessons and drama activities. And esl.about.com provides with conversation activities, classroom worksheets, boardgames for all levels. All the websites suggested by our dear instructor Ms Donna are so useful that we need enough time to apply them in the classes.

Another task was to read nine final sample projects  and share our opinions about how efficiently the projects were implemented, what changes the authors made in their students, whether they achieved their goals. All the projects were clearly described, among them a project by Aleyda Linares from Universidad Pedagogica Nacional Francisco Morazan of Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web Project Report drew my attention. She completed her final project successfully. What I liked in her project was that we should think and satisfy the needs and interests of the students in order to make them highly-motivated in the class. Using a class blog, assessing the students' accomplishments and defining netiquette rules for them enabled her to involve the students in the activities with enthusiasm.

I want again to thank the staff of Oregon University, especially Ms Donna for nominating me for this course. I already feel positive changes in me.

Best regards

Gulnar