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About Me
- Eric [AL 8620]
- Eric Friginal specializes in applied corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, distance learning, discipline-specific writing, bilingual education, technology and language teaching, and the analysis of spoken professional discourse. Prior to joining the GSU faculty, he was a lecturer in the Literacy, Technology, and Professional Writing area of the English Department at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and an instructor at the NAU School of Forestry where he taught on-campus and online courses in technical and professional writing, professional editing, and rhetoric and writing in professional communities. He has also taught ESL/EFL classes and conducted training courses in business English in the Philippines, China, and India. His main research program focuses on the exploration of professional, spoken interaction; the acquisition of fluency in ESL; and the study of language, culture, and cross-cultural communication in the context of outsourced call centers in the Philippines and India serving American customers.
I wanted to discuss www.eslhome.com/esl/esp. This website was mentioned as a great site for selecting content based materials. Teaching content specific material is difficult and time-consuming for the teacher so having one website that provides many links to other websites is excellent. The website had many great resources, but I found several aspects of the website problematic. The website hasn’t been updated in over a year, and as frequent as English changes this is a serious issue. Some of the links cost, like the business handouts website, but the prices seemed reasonable. The website was kind of unclear; I wish that beside each of the links there was some sort of description on what to expect or maybe how to use it. One of the categories they used was EAP, and then there were links for tons of different subjects. That seems to be a broad category that could have been broken down much better. Some links are to newspapers that change every day, and although it’s good to have variety it’s just not clear what the students should be able to get out of it. Prior explicit instruction or specific tasks would have to be given in order for much of the links to be effectively used. Also, some of the topics given only had one (or no) websites underneath it. For example, the Military English category only had one website. Also, when clicking on specific links, some of them did not go where they were supposed to. For example, when clicking on the “IPA for teens” it just went to a description of an undergraduate linguistics program for Tulane University. Overall I think the website is a great resource, but the teacher would have to guide the students through it in order for it to be useful.
ReplyDeleteI explored this website: www.call-esl.com/sampleWebQuests/webquestcontents_htm.htm (suggested in Chapter 7 ‘Communication Skills’). I found several helpful resources for both teachers and students. Unfortunately, most of the resources in this website are not for free. Teachers can only find for free, a sample of curriculum (which may be adaptable according to students’ level and context), and a long list of quizzes based on the topics specified in that curriculum. There’s also a blog for teachers to interact sharing ideas with other colleagues. For students, the website provides a link to attend a pronunciation workshop based on American English accent. The purpose of the workshop is to reduce a foreign accent. As observed in the free demo trial, this workshop seems to be very effective reducing foreign accents. In the video-demo, for example, the instructor explains how to pronounce properly the letter ‘r’ in American English. This letter, for instance, is pronounced differently in French, German, and Spanish so these ESL learners find difficulties pronouncing the ‘r’ sound as required in English. During the four-minute free demo, learners can easily watch how to move the lips and the tongue to produce the ‘r’ sound, and then practice by their own with their word-list suggested in the demo. Therefore, students can improve their pronunciation with a series of explanations like the ‘r’ sound. The main disadvantage of this pronunciation workshop is that students have to pay around 250 dollars to get access to the material. One choice could be that an institution would manage to buy the course and benefit entire group of ESL students. The advantage is that the course is effective and students could really improve their pronunciation and, as a result, their communication skills.
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