Today I taught one subject in two different classes. Actually, there wasn’t much teaching done since the students had to take a placement exam for the majority of the class. The first class of students were Beginner’s level English while the second class of students were Intermediate level. I didn’t want to use Vietnamese in the classroom but due to a lack of understanding, I had to. During the orientation, I also learned that the Demo for EDO (English Discoveries Online) proved difficult to understand for everyone. Some moreso than others. The good thing about this particular subject is that we are allowed to create our own syllabus custom tailored to the class.

To help with the syllabus and structure for the rest of the quarter, I asked the students what aspects of the English language they would like to work on. Here is their response:

1. Speaking
2. Listening
3. Writing
4. Reading
5. Pronunciation
6. Intonation
7. Grammar
8. Vocabulary

To make the learning process less boring, I asked them to provide a list of topics that interest them.

1. Business
2. Travel
3. Music
4. Study
5. Entertainment

Trying to use technology to teach is a difficult task because you have to teach the students how to use it before you, the teacher, can use it to teach them a new subject.

With that said, here is the goal for next week: exercises to do together in class on speaking and listening utilizing EDO, plus homework to take home to do on their own. Oh yeah, the topic is music (my favorite!).

Looks like I’m going to have to break out some ECC training.