Analysis of the websites used in learning a foreign language

Undoubtedly the Internet can be used as an effective application for the development of grammatical, lexical skills and knowledge test. This includes all sorts of training vocabulary, grammar, phonetic exercises, tests on reading, grammar, IQ-tests, etc. Teachers or students themselves can find such sites on the WWW.

The big plus of using Internet resources is the development of intercultural competence, to get acquainted with different cultures, to identify ways of their interaction and interpenetration of each other, the formation of cultural universals necessary to achieve mutual understanding and fruitful cooperation with the direct communication.

World Wide Web with a huge number of sites and homepages providing information for all tastes - is a vast field of activity in the use of foreign language lessons for the development of intercultural competence.

Site ?Virtual Reality? (<http://www.flash.net/~cssmith1/vr.htm>) - a collection of linguistic and non-linguistic authentic materials collected on the web-server. Its significance and motivation lies in the fact that it directly brings the true culture of the pieces of the country the language is spoken in class. In addition, the lessons are not tied to a particular city or place that the teacher had the good fortune to visit once, and are based on materials from different places, received from different people with different interests. Students have the opportunity to communicate directly with these materials and not with someone of their interpretation and analysis.

And the use of the Internet, and the adaptation of the original materials in the classroom is now gathering pace. Thus, when traveling over the network, the student is sure to meet with so many printed information, which he would never have gathered during a visit to the country. In fact, it erases the geographical boundaries that once served as a barrier for acquiring information. In the "Virtual Reality" may stop at a small cafe on the beaten track, be at the train station and find the train schedule on the weekend, go to the supermarket as a native of this city, and then bring the collected collection in a class and use in the classroom, never at the same time does not leave home or school.

Website City Net (<http://www.city.net/>) makes it possible to travel to different countries, visiting parks, monuments and any other attractions. Here you can find all about the chosen country - from monuments pictures to complete the report on natural resources and the arts, in the target language. City Net - an excellent navigator. Once in the desired country using hypertext or links (links), students will become familiar with its features.

You can invite students to travel as tourists or guides. They will be able to pack the luggage themselves and recommend the necessary things its customers call the contact number of airlines and hotels to obtain information on the availability of tickets and availability, fill in the blanks for a visa and passport ... As the report on the work done, you can offer students create a photo album or diary of his travels.

Website Metro Link (Metro http://www.subwaynavigator.com) - site will make a trip on the largest cities of the world on the subway, to study their routes and find out how to get to certain parts of the city. Necessary instructions are available in English.

You can create a route or travel at random. The names of the stops are provided in the route map, and the program will calculate the approximate time of movement, remembers all used routes and stations. Students can be offered to create a report that includes the travel route, the description of sights, encountered in the city on a particular station, the time spent. For example, if you travel to Berlin, you can go to the metro station Charlottenhof and go to the stop area Rozenthalter. The program determines that it will take about 50 minutes, showing which stations are on the way and what attractions can be reached, if you go there in the city. It is on this route, you can get to the Charlottenburg Palace and the Egyptian Museum, in the Grunewald for those who love the forest and zoo. The report may take the form of travel diary and album of photos, a guide for visitors to the city, which will mark the interesting places of the city and next to him the subway station.

Website WILD-e (<http://www.wild-e.org/>) proposes to consider the aspects of the acquisition and the problems of the teaching profession who teaches foreign language. Here you can read the relevant statements and share if you want to own, to explore the world of metaphors, to give their answers in the category "Tell me why?" (Can you tell me why?) In the interests of all questions as "Why writing theoretical treatises on pedagogy permit people who do not have anything to do with the practice of teaching? "(" Why are there so many things about teaching and educational administration that are so pointless and stupid? "), to share the experience of the last lesson, etc.

<Http://www.infospace.com/info.USA/> - America's homepage. Travel states and cities, acquaintance with the history, culture and way of life of Americans.

In preparation for the lesson, the teacher of a foreign language have the opportunity to use the materials of various domestic and foreign sites. British Council held an Internet survey of teachers to find out: what Internet resources are most often used in the training. Among the most commonly used teacher called chat rooms, online dictionaries, blogs and virtual learning environments. 10% of respondents do not use the Internet in the classroom.

If foreign language teachers have difficulties when using Internet resources in the classroom, and in preparing them for Media Awareness Network website (http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers) you can find detailed for lessons with a phased indication actions, as well as materials for self-education and improvement of teacher skills. The site includes articles by foreign trainers and practitioners working with Internet technologies and to develop their own courses. In addition, the site developers and consultants are ready to answer any questions. The site has a special section for parents, which addresses issues such as the safety of children when using the Internet, privacy, ethics of communication in virtual communities. The site teaches to analyze and evaluate the information that we face by working on the Internet. Access to the site content is free of charge.

With the support of the British Council, a series of sites for teachers was created, and for those who are learning English. Website Teaching English (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk) was designed specifically for foreign language teachers. Here are the articles trainers dedicated to teaching different aspects of the language. Communication in a forum with teachers and methodologists from around the world an opportunity to discuss any issues.

An interesting additional information on a variety of topics can be found on the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk). Materials suitable for the development of elective courses in a foreign language on the topics: "Nature", "The flora and fauna of the planet Earth", "Prehistory", "Human Brain Work", "Human body Bodies", "Cosmos". In addition, students in the learning process may be offered tests in English, which will help them to evaluate their lifestyle, intelligence, memory and attention.

Website Free Printables for Teachers (www.mes-english.com) contains a large number of colorful pictures on the topic: "Animals", "Vegetables", "Fruit", "House", "school", "City", "Weather" "Sport", "Hobby", "Insects", "Health", "Nature", "Tools", and grammatical cards: "Degrees of comparison of adjectives," "Irregular verbs", "Question words", "Prepositions" cards with phonetic icons and ready-to-print board games: "School day", "Big city", "Bingo", "Grammatical casino", "treasure Island," "Baseball" and many others. For younger students, you can use multiple coloring, which help not only to study the color, but also the vocabulary on the topics.

Portal Sites for Teachers (http://www.sitesforteachers.com) 1140 offers links to a web page where you can find materials for students with different levels of proficiency.

Many schools have Kazakh language laboratories equipped with computers with Internet access. In this case, foreign language teachers can use Internet resources directly in the classroom. However, it should be remembered that the computer does not replace a school textbook, but rather complements it, making the lesson more interesting, informative, motivating students to active involvement in the learning process. Using Internet technology increases the effectiveness of the lesson that if the material chosen in accordance with the lesson objectives, level of proficiency students, their age and interests. Students should possess basic computer skills, and the teacher to be able to clearly articulate the job. Then the pace of the lesson will be quite high, and to perform tasks on your computer will need no more than 10-15 minutes, which corresponds to the "sanitary-epidemiological rules and norms".

On the Internet you can find a large number of sites designed specifically for those who are learning English. The materials can be used both in the classroom and for self-study at home.

Online Learn English (http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ru) presents authentic audio and video materials, texts for reading, games for different age students, tests with different levels of proficiency. The materials can be used at any stage of the lesson. For example, texts suitable for teaching reading skills to search in grades 9-11. Various subjects, a small amount of text, and simple enough to pick up vocabulary allow for the classroom stories, relevant theme and objectives set teacher. After each text, students can perform small (no more than 10 questions) testing for understanding of the text (to answer questions, pick one answer from four, determine whether the text of a statement corresponds to, and so on), and immediately check the correct answers and receive an independent assessment. On this site there is also a virtual community where people from different countries are able to communicate in real time.

The smallest British Council offers students visit the site Learn English Kids (http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en). All kinds of educational, linguistic, humorous game will help children learn the vocabulary and grammar of a foreign language: to find a couple of words to sign pictures, solve crossword puzzles, fill in the blanks, solve word, to place offers in the correct order, to paint pictures on the instructions to choose the correct answer to the question, and so Further. This form of work teaches children from an early age to perform various types of tests, including a time limit. In the ?Make? given tasks for independent work, developing the creative potential of children. For example, in elementary school, when we pass the theme "Animals", children can offer the game ?Make a dangerous animal? (http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/make-your-own/make-dangerous-animal). Implementation of this task will take less than 5 minutes. Children need to create your own animal, changing the color of the model, by adding horns, tentacles, spikes, tails and claws. When you hover over the corresponding picture at the bottom of the screen prompt appears with the name of a part (for example, ?strong legs with claws? or ?a strong jaw and sharp teeth?). And by clicking on the "video" icon in the corner of the picture, the students can see how their own pet will move. The comments prompted the children to answer questions and describe their animal. Students can print the animal and describe it verbally (5-10 sentences).

The site EnglishLearner: English Lessons and Tests (www.englishlearner.com) you can find a large number of tests on grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading for senior students. During the test, you can view comments. At the end of the assignment the student receives the result as a percentage and can be independently set itself an assessment based on the criteria established by the teacher.

Children often spend a lot of time searching for unfamiliar words in the dictionary. This task is much easier online dictionaries such as Mul'titran (www.multitran.ru). A huge advantage of this dictionary - constant renewal and updating of the list of words. The examples of the use of words in different contexts. The dictionary entry for the meaning of words grouped fields of consumption.

To improve the efficiency of foreign language teaching and the organization of operational consulting activities after school subject teachers can create your own website using free and comfortable designers (eg, www.ucoz.net, www.sozdaysait.com), which modules can be optimized and tuned for a specific project that allows you to create sites of any complexity. A site can place on any hosting on the Internet, and get a domain in any zone.

We have a site ?Our Land of English? (www.english4sch21.ucoz.net) was created. After registration, students receive full access to the site have the opportunity to ask questions to the teacher and to receive prompt response. Working with an Internet site for school involves a creative approach to the implementation of non-standard jobs (commenting on photos, messages, other students, communicating in a mini-chats, forums, posting their own materials, creating personal pages, and so on). Therefore, every teacher should be ready to answer a variety of questions the students: how to find our website? How to register it? How to place your photo in the photo? Where can I find a hint, if you suddenly do not get to take the test? How to fix the error, if the message is already sent?

The use of new information technologies in educational process allows teachers to realize their creative teaching ideas, share experiences with peers and receive prompt response, and the students makes it possible to choose individual learning plan: the sequence and pace of study in training tasks and objectives of the system, depending on the language proficiency, methods of control and correction of knowledge. Thus is realized the basic requirement of modern education - to develop the subjects of the educational process of the individual style of activity, self-determination of culture, encouraging their personal development.

Using websites

- Using websites in the classroom

- Planning lessons using the

Internet

- Working with lower levels of

language proficiency

- Web teaching dos and don'ts

- ELT websites or authentic websites

- How to find useful websites

- How to evaluate websites

In this chapter we look at the basic skillset needed for effective use of the Internet with your students and take a closer look at the process for introducing the Internet into your teaching.

Using websites is one of the easiest and least stressful ways of getting started with technology in the classroom. There is a large and constantly expanding collection of resources on the web, at a variety of levels and covering an amazing array of topics. You can choose from authentic (written for Internet surfers in general) sources or Ell-specific sites (made by, and for, teachers), monolingual or multilingual sites, sites with multimedia, or just simple text, for those on slower connections.

The web is a source of content which can be used as a window on the wider world outside your class, and is - of course - a readily available collection of authentic material. As such, it is a much larger repository of content than would previously have been readily available to you and your students.

Perhaps one of the best tips we can give you at this point is to work as a team with other teachers in your centre. Everybody has their favourite websites, and plenty of teachers will, at some point, have used websites in class, or taken material from the web and adapted it for teaching purposes. Take the time to share sources of content with other teachers and organise regular get-togethers where you sit down and discuss what you have found on the Internet and how you have used it in class. Collaboration like this can help to reduce the time you spend searching for good materials and the time spent preparing activities or

making worksheets. fust as the Internet is becoming more of a collaborative medium, so should your use of it in your teaching.

The technology needed to use the Internet for teaching is relatively limited and the chances of something going wrong are greatly reduced over-more complex technology approaches such as attempting to carry out live chat or video-conferencing sessions.

Another advantage of this tool is that you don't necessarily have to rely on a constant Internet connection if you bear in mind that it is possible to save local copies of websites on your computer, or print out potentially useful pages for later use. Indeed, you can use web pages in the classroom in a variety of ways:

- as printed pages, with no computers. Although printing is not necessarily the cheapest option, it is certainly a viable one in places where there may be

limited access to the Internet. Indeed, a lot of activities using web pages will only necessitate the printing of one or two pages, which can subsequently be photocopied.

- with one computer with an Internet connection. This can be enhanced by

connecting the computer to a data projector or even an interactive whiteboard,

allowing for greater visibility in class, but it is also possible to make use of a single

computer on its own connected to the Internet for reference.

- in a computer lab with a set of networked and connected computers. If you're lucky enough to be in this kind of situation, then you are ideally placed to incorporate Internet content into your regular teaching.

It's important that both you and your learners see the use of the Internet as an intrinsic part of the learning process rather than as an occasional activity which has nothing to do with their regular study programme. We would therefore recommend that, if you plan to use the Internet, you should talk to your learners and explore the reasons for using this resource with them. This can be done at lower levels in their own language or in English with higher-level classes. You will need to talk to your learners about why Internet content may be useful to them and discuss their attitudes to technology in general - when they use computers, and what for. Show them how the coursebook and other materials can be enhanced by extra material from the Internet, but above all, make it clear that this is not a toy, not something that you are just using to fill in the time.

With some learners there may be some resistance to regular computer use in, the classroom. We have often found, for example, that professional people view computers as work tools rather than as resources for learning. It is vital that they appreciate that this is a useful, as well as an entertaining, tool in the classroom and that it can contribute to their language development in a variety of ways, for example by giving them the opportunity to build vocabulary or improve their listening skills. Lower-level classes can be engaged with visual and multimedia materials, the use of songs and other video materials.,

ELT websites or authentic websites?

Your choice of website will depend largely on what you want to achieve with it. Many teachers tend to steer clear of authentic websites, and by this we mean any site not created with the language learner in mind, believing that their students will find them too difficult. But, as with all authentic materials, t he level and language challenges posed by these sites can be largely mitigated by the type of task you expect your learners to carry out.

A well-designed task will allow your learners to deal with authentic sites, guiding them through not only the text, but also the layout and navigation problems that may otherwise impact on their learning experience.

It is also the case that many learners these days are far more used to working with computer-based text and information than they are to dealing with more traditional, paper-based forms of text, and this familiarity with the conventions of web design can count in your favour when deciding to use authentic content from the Internet.

Of course there are plenty of ELI websites which provide content that your learners can use, for example language practice activities they can do on their own. They provide valuable opportunities for more controlled language work and are often a great help to learners who need to brush up on certain aspects of the language or to prepare for an exam. Such sites are often ideal for homework, access to the Internet permitting.

Authentic sites, on the other hand, can be chosen to fit your learners' interests. This is a key factor in keeping motivation high in your electronic classroom. When evaluating authentic sites for possible incorporation into your teaching, try to find ones which have an easy structure and navigation, and with smaller chunks of text per page. These will be more approachable and understandable. Design your tasks to make them achievable, and show your learners how they can use online dictionary sites to help them - if they need them.

Authentic sites also provide an ideal opportunity to work through the issues of 'total comprehension? that plenty of learners have to deal with at some point in their studies. They can be guided towards being comfortable with understanding the content of a site and identifying what they need to know or find out without getting bogged down in having to understand every word on the screen.

How to find useful websites?

As already mentioned, the Internet is a vast repository of information and resources, and it is perhaps exactly this range that makes it seem, at first, daunting and unapproachable to most teachers. In the following two sections we take a look at how to find and evaluate resources for use in class.

The ability to search through Internet content, and quickly and efficiently find suitable resources is perhaps the most underrated, and yet most useful, skill that both teachers and learners can acquire.

For teachers, having good search skills means finding useful resources quickly, speeding up lesson planning and facilitating web use in class. For learners, it means being able to quickly accomplish web-based tasks, thus ensuring that the technology enhances the learning experience rather than impeding it. It makes sense, then, both to acquire these skills, and to spend some time sharing them with your learners.

There are three basic ways of searching on the Internet, and we will briefly describe them below, and look at way so f making searches more targeted and efficient.

Search engines

Although there is a large variety of search engines, perhaps the most well-known is Google (www.google.com), which currently indexes over twelve billion web pages.

A search engine is almost directly analogous to a telephone directory, or any other database of stored information. You search for a name or a title, and the directory gives you more information about that entry. But with over twelve billion pages to choose from, it's not quite as easy to use as a phone directory. So how do you find exactly what you want?

The answer comes in knowing what kind of information Google actually has on each web page that it indexes. What Google knows about a page is generally the page address on the web, the page title, when it was last updated and a few keywords associated with the content itself. These keywords are defined by the designer of the page, and can reasonably be expected to accurately reflect the content of the page. The key to good searching in Google is to define your keywords properly.

Say you have a class project on the history of the Olympic Games and you want to focus on the Barcelona games which took place in 1992. This means that instead of searching for Olympic Games, you should try something more specific: Barcelona Olympic games 1992. In this example, more is less: the more keywords you put into the search box, the fewer page results you will get. Olympic games gives 30,500,000 pages, whereas Barcelona Olympic games 1992 gives 619,000 and Barcelona olympic games 1992 10000 meters women's gold

medal winner gives 738 - with the name of the winner (Derartu Tulu - result two) clearly visible in the top few results.

The other technique which you may find useful is to use the 'phrase' search technique which involves wrapping part of a phrase in inverted commas, thus ensuring that Google will treat the words not as individual entities, but will actually look for sentences on web pages which contain those words in that particular order.

Thus, instead of searching for cheap hotel in Rome, which can search for any or all of these words, in any position and order, on a page, try searching for "cheap hotel in Rome" as part of a phrase you might expect to find on a web page.

To elaborate on our example above, "Barcelona olympics marathon" returns only twelve pages, since the likelihood of these three words being on a web page in this exact order is significantly smaller than the chance of the words being on a page separately in any position.

This technique is particularly useful for finding song lyrics, where searching for "I never meant to cause you trouble" will return 11,800 results, with the first result being the lyrics of the Coldplay song, whereas a search for Coldplay lyrics will give you access to 7,640,000 websites, but you will have to visit each one to see if that particular song lyric is there.

The ultimate trick with Google is to try to imagine the web page you are looking for, and then try to visualise the content that is on this ideal page. This technique will help you decide on exactly what to search for.

In our next example, one learner is doing a project on the singer, Shakira, and needs some biographical information. Searching for Shakira on Google returns 43,200,000 p ages. But how exactly would biographical information be presented on a website? Perhaps a search for "Shakira was born in" would be more useful, since the only possible information which could follow such a phrase would be a location or a date. This search returns 266 results, with the first few all leading to biographies of the singer.

Subject guides

Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) currently claims to index nearly twenty billion pages, and is still the search venue of choice for many people who remember when it was the only way of searching the Internet. The approach here is slightly different in that Yahoo! was never intended as a keyword search engine, but rather as a way of browsing titles. Whereas Google might be likened to a telephone directory, a more familiar metaphor for Yahoo! would be that of the library, where users have a notion of what they are looking for, but not necessarily the exact title. So, in that sense, we are invited to browse, t o wander around, rather than directly key in search terms or words we are interested in exploring.

Yahoo! derives its description of subject guide from the fact that it divides its content into subject areas, and subdivisions of those areas. Instead of a keyword search from the main page, users browse the section which best reflects their interests, and then search.

Using Yahoo! to find our biographical information about Shakira, we would access the Yahoo! directory by clicking on the more dropdown list at the top of the Yahoo! main page and choose Directory. From there we can browse to Shakira: click on Entertainment, then Music then Artists, and finally search for Shakira biography, making sure to select he this category option. What this essentially means is that Yahoo! will only search in 'Entertainment - Music - Artists' rather than in its entire directory. This yields six results, shown below, all of which lead to biographies of the singer.

It is worth noting that Yahoo! search results can often be more accurate than Google results as they tend to lead searchers to the first page of a website, rather than dropping them in discriminately into the middle, where the chances of confusion are higher.

Real language searches

A real language search such as Ask (www.ask.com) allows the user to type simple questions as search queries. Thus our learner who is investigating the life and times of Shakira types something along the lines of When was Shakira born? instead of a selection of appropriate keywords. Note that the website does not actually analyse or indeed understand the question itself, but rather selects the keywords from the query ('when','Shakira','born') and constructs a search based on them.

A search on Ask should give you a results page with the answer to your question at the top (where Ask has been able to find a direct answer), and links to relevant sites below that.

Your choice of search facility will depend on how you like to work, and which site you find particularly attractive and useful. However, it is worth taking the time to play with all three and to spend some time exploring them with your learners. Learners can benefit from an exposure to all three types, as they activate different linguistic and mental processes. Keywords are good for exploring word relationships and lexical areas. Subject searches help define and refine ideas and contexts. A real search can provide useful practice in question formation.

A simple way of introducing the topic of searching the Internet in class is to produce a trivia quiz or short 'treasure hunt' type activity for your learners to do. Give them a set of questions and allow them to use all three search pages to find the answers. Make it into a timed quiz, with the first team to finish bringing the activity to an end. Then go over the answers and help them to see how to improve their search skills.

It is at this point that you can examine which search page was used in each case, if it was the appropriate choice, and work together as a group to extrapolate general conclusions about search techniques.

In this example we can see how a variety of approaches would be possible- and how these might lead to a useful discussion on search skills, as w ell as some basic language work, on question formation, for example. The first search encourages the use of Google and the 'part of a sentence' approach discussed above, with perhaps the best search term being "is the president of the WorldBank", while the second one might work nicely as a real language search, with learners coming up with the question What's the capital of Scotland? The third search involves reformulation to be successful, perhaps Who won the 1986 FIFA World Cup?

These are the skills which are the basis of many of the activities you will do on the Internet, so it is worth spending some time refining them and examining them a little more closely.

It is also worth considering specialist sites as a source of information. Teach yourself and your learners to think a little more laterally. For example, any queries related to movies might be better directed to the Internet Movie Database (wwwimdb.com) than a search engine. Similarly, book information can be easily found on the Amazon site (wwwamazon.com), and football World Cup information on the FIFA site (www.fifa.com).

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 76