Final project plan

Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web

Project Report

Name:   KYEONGHWAN CHOI                                     Country:  Republic of Korea                                                                         

Overall project goal: Plan and conduct action research, which involves a change related to technology use in your classroom. 

I. Background

Due to the rapid growth of networking technology, Internet has recently become a vital medium to promote effective communication and education in language learning and teaching.

Schools are reinforcing traditional classroom-based instructions with online learning management systems. Students can benefit through the more frequent online interaction with the teacher for their independent learning outside the classroom. This study explores the effects of the web-facilitated language teaching and learning in English education and suggests how teachers can help students develop learner autonomy and classroom interaction using a web-based learning management system. Students who participated in the study indicated that the web-facilitated instruction was very effective, and they felt that doing class activities through online was very convenient. While sharing common interests and ideas about studying English or life events, they could study English in interactive and collaborative ways. Students also suggested that they could study more and voluntarily through the online learning experience.

The substance of language is to communicate each other. Therefore educational purpose of language is ultimately focused on attaining proficiency of communication capability.
Looking back the past century under the current situation, our education for foreign languages like English has been biased toward literary language skill and spoken language skill has been neglected as the most of English lecturers admit. Recently cultivating communication capability is directly connected to spoken language function as the reflection and reaction to this and the importance of spoken language is too much emphasized as if spoken language function seems to represent overall language function. However substantial communication situation is integral type of listening, speaking, reading and writing and the capability of literary language function is also required importantly according to the situation. In addition to it, sometimes the capability of literary language function is relatively much more needed in the case of learning English as the foreign language like Korea. Accordingly appropriate harmony and balance for the smooth communication activities are required under the current situation. A lot of studies on the teaching methods on English comprehension has been performed until now and related books are massively spreaded. But the effective techniques of teaching English comprehension are not actually applied in education offices and class rooms and traditional teaching methods are followed.
But Web-based instruction has showed up as a new educational method which creates, organize and propagate knowledge based on Internet according to the recent trend of worldwide infrastructure and the web which fits in these education trends has characteristically the possibility of individualized teaching, repeated learning and supports as a various multi-media function.

II. Issue or problem that started your project

In Korea, most English teachers do not teach writing activities, concentrating instead on reading and relevant grammar activities. As teachers put great emphasis on the grammatical correctness of written expressions, students not only have few opportunities to write but also hesitate to express what they think in English. English writing is as important as listening, speaking, and reading in Korea. However, writing has been neglected in classrooms and many students are not satisfied with their writing skills.

III. Initial solution and expected response

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce sample online project activities as a task-based resource for Korean  Elementary school teachers and students. Through the project writing activities, students can interact with each other with authentic materials, working cooperatively as well as individually. The tasks in the project lead students to improve their writing ability. It will be suggested that further research fulfills more developed web-based instruction model for learning English writing containing more variety and effective writing activities. Furthermore, the effectiveness of developed model needs to be validated, so that students’ writing skills will be improved.

IV. Response and reflection

 The research results shows that the students were very satisfied with their project work and their writing was also improved. Aside from that, project work gave the students the chances to use English more than the traditional teaching method. Yet, it should be admitted that there are limitations for project work in the Korean secondary English classrooms.

This study examines what the current situation on teaching and learning English writing;what learners needed for English writing and developed a web-based instruction sample which was expected to lead learners to improve their writing skills autonomously and collaboratively with other learners within a web community. The needs of writing instruction were defined through teachers’ interviews and students’ questionnaires and the results showed that the present

circumstance of teaching and learning English writing is lacking.

V. Changes made

First, all elementary  school English students’ English proficiency is not good enough to write in English for project work. Second, teachers will find it difficult to implement these types of project work as almost all the English schools are preferring college entrance exam-oriented class. Therefore, it may be rash to apply project work to the English class in full scale for the present, but if teachers try project work once or twice a week or at least twice a month among five one-hour English classes a week, teachers and students are all getting used to the teaching method. As time passes by, in addition, teachers will be able to find time to prepare for project work, so both teachers and students will be happy with such classroom teaching. Accordingly, project work that is more effective than the traditional teaching method in the overcrowded Korean secondary English classrooms will bring about not only students’ enthusiasm of English but also enhancement of students’ English by a student-centered learning in the whole educational process.

Many students know advantages of learning using a website but interestingly it is found that many students do not have any experience of learning writing through the Internet while they want to learn writing using a web-based instruction model. Different students have different needs so they answer various needs for writing using a website and also had various needs for others except writing activities when they learn using a website.

VI. Conclusion

Project work methodology as task-based approach has been found in various applications and in a wide range of fields and it is ideally suited to the learning of a foreign language in the public education system. Nevertheless, this approach has not been much used in the Elementary  schools in Korea.

One of the major reasons that the project method can be effective in the Korean English classroom is that it is a learner-centered teaching method, carrying out by students themselves, not by a teacher. It is quite different from a teacher’s unilateral teaching in the traditional Korean English classroom because students themselves do their own research and exchange their ideas with their group members, give a presentation of their work in an English class. Therefore, this method is more appealing to students than the teacher’s one-way teaching method.

Another reason is that through the project work, an integrated teaching with other subject matters can be done naturally as students meet with a diverse range of people for the purpose of research, visit some relevant places, or search the Internet during individual research. Hence, students can acquire the English language autonomously, which can be more effective than learning in the traditional English classroom.

An appropriate model for web-based learning can developed to improve learner’s writings and increasing learning efficiency by me. The website will be developed with menus of 1)Level test that student can diagnose their current level of English writing; 2) Writing that student can do writing activities as guided or controlled writing and free writing and also receive feedbacks from writing teachers; 3) Boards that students can communicate with teachers or friends, search various materials for their writings and communicate with teachers or friends. It have also a learner’s personal space so that they could scrape useful expressions or information for their own uses and collect their writings and teacher’s feedback for a review. Ultimately, using the Internet for writing is expected to be a useful method to increase learning motivation and ultimately improve writing.

VII. Resources

Dodge, B. (1995). Some thoughts about WebQuests. Retrieved March 10 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html.

Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tribble, C. (1996). Writing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.