Why and How to Teach Linking

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Learn linking in pronunciation while discovering old Damascus: This interactive site is designed to help intermediate learners master linking in English pronunciation. The purpose of the activity is to raise English language learners' awareness of the importance of linking in listening and speaking, and provide them with contextualized activities that will reinforce the aspect. This unit focuses on form by providing activities and contextualized examples on the linking aspect of pronunciation it deals with. This contextualized implementation is important because it provides the learners with real-life examples, not the separate-sentence examples that they usually encounter in pronunciation books. For more on this topic, check my work below.

French in Quebec

Quebec

Visit Québec through the eyes and ears of Kate, a sophomore at Iowa State University and an exchange student at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. Join her as she makes new friendships, learns French and experiences a vibrant Quebecois culture. I created this website so that it offers a fun, interactive way to learn French conveniently with a focus not only on language structures and skills, but also on proper 'real-life' language use. French is the official language and the one used in public life — at work, in communications, and business. For the Québécois, French represents not only an essential communication tool, but also a common symbol of identity and belonging to Québec. Check this website out and send me any suggestion you may have to improve it. For more on this topic, check my work below.

Digital Storytellying in the Language Classroom

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A digital story is a short movie, organized around the author's own voice. It often uses still images and sometimes videos combined with the author's voiceover and optional soundtracks to addresses issues in one's life experience in an emotionally affective manner. For students, it is a tool for self expression and communication among different cultures. It helps students work on different skills (speaking, writing, and reading), as well as enriching their visual/media literacy and collaboration skills. For more on this topic, check my work below.

Audacity in ESL Classroom

audacity

Sound editing software such as Audacity has great potential for second and foreign language teachers who would like to create custom audio files for use in their classes. Audacity can be used to record and edit audio, convert old tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, export audio files into various formats and edit audio with ease and versitility. These features allow teachers and learners to create high quality audio files which can be used to practice skills such as listening, speaking, and pronunciation. Read the full review (pdf) about Audacity and its use in ESL classrooms. This review was published in TESL-EJ online Journal. For more on using Audacity for language teaching, check my work below.

Cross-cultural Mistakes in Job Interviews

This unit is about Job Interviews and concepts associated with them in The United States. The goal of this unit is to better prepare non-native speakers of ENglish for a Job interview situation in the future, and help them develop essential English skills, like listening and speaking along the way. I hope that ESL students will find this unit helpful. This unit will also provide students with handouts of expressions and phases that are appropriate in this type of situation, and those which are not. Some of the activities will require that students interact with a computer, some with their classmates, and some will include both.

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Sing n Learn

linking

Sing n Learn is an interactive website meant to help learners practice chosen syntactic, lexical, and phonetic aspects of the English language. The goal of this teaching unit is to show learners that learning English is not a dull thing; it can be conducted in an enjoyable setting where they would be having fun and learning at the same time. This unit is not complete in itself; it is meant to be used as practice or supplementary practice for other teaching materials. It includes a variety of activities that teachers can use whenever they deem appropriate in their class. The whole idea of the teaching unit revolves around the listening practice of popular songs that most of the anticipated population are familiar with. And even if students are not familiar with these songs, they are still considered a very motivating element especially for learners aged 12-18.

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Jump and Walk: Pronunciation Practice

This activity will reinforce learners’ perception of unstressed syllables. Many learners who have become aware of stressed syllables still have a problem with the unstressed ones, pronouncing them with a strong vowel. The short and quick jumps of this exercise will remind the learners of how short their weak syllables should be no matter what letter they may contain.