Reading Reflection for session 4 - blogging

Godwin-Jones, R. (2006). Tag clouds in the blogosphere: electronic literacy and social networking. Language Learning & Technology, 10(2), 8-15.

The picture above is tag cloud from flickr. The tagging process is a way of categorizing resources. The user of the site can find common interests in the tag cloud. The web is a place for users to get benefit and contribute. The users have to do a lot of reading and writing in discussion forums and when they give feedback and comment in the social networking site.

Blogs are the places to encourage readers to give feeback, so it is a kind of reading and writing activity. Writing on blogs encourages debate, critical analysis and articulation of ideas and opinions. IT is so common to write blogs in the recent years. It has been estimated that around 70,00 new blogs are created every day. The blogs can also integrated with other tools and services. Blogs offer reading and writing practice with informal language everyday. There are a lot of different types of electronic texts on the Internet, such as e-books, online dictionaries, encyclopedias. After the students read the texts online, teachers can give them comprehension questions to test students' understanding.

It is so popular to have a blog for personal use or business use or educational use, etc. nowadays. Some teachers may ask students to have daily or weekly writing. The aim is to let students practise writing more and let the teachers know more about their personal thinking. Some teachers may give them a topic to write about from time to time to train up their writing skills. Some teachers may give them a passage to read and answer some questions about the article to practise their reading skills. No matter which ways to practise students' reading and writing, I think writing on a blog can help achieve the aims of the above. Comparing to writing on an exercise book, the advantage of writing on a blog is more interactive and pictures, cliparts, video also can be put onto it. The other classmates also can read it and give feedback. So, I quite recommend my students using blogs to do the reading and writing exercises.

Essential Reading Reflection for session 11

Schwienhorst, K. (2003). Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning: Putting Principles Into Practice in Synchronous and Asynchronous Telecommunications Environments. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(5), 427-443.

It first clarifies the misconception of “learner autonomy”.It discusses three different approaches to learner autonomy: an individual cognitive perspective which focus on reflection and awareness; a social-interactive perspective which focus on interaction; an experimental-participatory perspective which focus on involving the learner in creating less stressed learning environments and experiment with cognitive tools.
Then, it introduces tandem learning as an implementation of learner automomy principles. The main principles of tandem learning are learner autonomy, reciprocity, using bilingualism.


Synchronous and asynchronous telecommunications environments are just like chatting in a chat room and sending emails to others respectively.

I think social interaction approach is very common in HK’s classroom. We can have asynchronous and/or synchronous communication modes with the NET and peers. HK’s schools almost promote project-based group work to encourage personally meaningful interaction.

Reading reflection for session 6

Reading reflection for session 6

Hubbard, P. (1988). An integrated framework for CALL courseware evaluation. CALICO Journal, 6(2), 51-72.



This article is about the evaluation of courseware for CALL. It provides a good and structure framework to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the courseware. The three major sections of the framework are operational description, learner fit and teacher fit. The function of the operational description in the framework is to provide an objective and detailed view of the operation of the software and various accompanying elements, such as activity type, screen layout, input judging, feedback, help options, recording keeping, accompanying text, etc. In the framework, teacher fit refers to the notion of approach and learner fit corresponds to Richards and Rodger's design.

Actually, it is a very detail framework for teachers to evaluate a courseware. Just like Hotpotatoes, we can use this framework to analyze Hotpotatoes 's advantages and disadvantages and limitations. It helps teachers decide to use it or not to satisfy their needs.

Reading Reflection for session 5

Chapelle, C. A. (1998). Multimedia CALL: Lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA. Language Learning and Technology, 2(1), 22-34.

It states that the design and evaluation of CALL learning activities are interdependent. It gives the readers the relevant hypotheses about SLA (Second Language Acquisition). Basic components in the SLA porcess in interactionist research are illustrated by a flow chart. The flow starts from "input", "apperception", "comprehension", intake", "integration" to "output". It elaborates each step one by one and give a detail explanation. Based on the model of SLA, seven hypotheses relevant for developing multimedia CALL are elaborated. And it suggests some implications for multimedia task design and the evaluation of multimedia CALL activities.

This paper attempted to point out some specific implications of research findings for CALL design and evaluation that can provide a guideline for development of SLA research with CALL practice. I think it is worth to read as a reference for teachers to develop multimedia CALL teaching and learning because it gives a detail guideline of integrating multimedia CALL into SLA lessons and helps teachers to choose a good CALL software for meeting students' needs. For example, the CALL software should be able to analyze the mistakes the students made by the software. Because sometimes there are a few acceptable answers for a questions. The CALL software should be able to detect the acceptable answers and the incorrect answers and the minor mistakes. This is one of the conditions the authentic CALL software should have.