Discuss about power distance betweeen the teacher and student from your native culture. How would a student or teacher solve a non-academic problem in and out of the classroom. What exactly is the person in the role as teacher allowed to do as far as classroom discipline is concerned. Does a difference exist based on gender discrimination, and if so, please elaborate as much as possible.  If you have experience abroad, please describe, to the best of your ability, what you have witnessed first-hand or what you have learned from a secondary source. What advice would you offer foreign students planning on studying in your home country?

• Watch the video.
• Compose between 5-8 sentences based upon your life experiences.
• No time restraints for this entry.

Compose a paragraph (5-8 sentences) about the film My Sassy Girl. Express your feelings towards the main characters of the story and how the plot unravels towards the final scene.

• Watch the YouTube video.
• one week to complete
• limited to two revisions

Compose a paragraph (5-8 sentences) about Windstruck. Comparison analysis with the first movie is highly recommended. Did you manage to shed a tear or two? If not, watch it again. 

• Watch the YouTube Video.
• one week to complete
• limited to two revisions

Watching movies reinforces linguistic acquisition skills. To find actual US television channels, please visit my Culture page and utilize the drop down menu in the top right-hand corner. If you currently find yourself outside of the United States, you will more than likely need to use a proxy server to view selected streaming videos. Otherwise, take advantage of a tracking site to view soap operas, situational comedies, and films.

Improve your knowledge of native English speaking countries’ cultures as well as English dialectal manifestations of rhythm and intonation through authentic content.

• Watch the YouTube Video.
• one week to complete your work
• limited to two revisions

Go ahead and have fun with this article.

• Watch the YouTube video.
• You are limited to two revisions
• within a time span of one week

Is time travel possible and if so, how would you utilize this fantastic technology for improving society?

Free English classes on-line offer both advantages and disadvantages over traditional on and off-line classrooms. A deft foreign language learner, whether a student or teacher, must analyze educational content, recognizing what would be in his or her best interest. I highly recommend taking advantage of free English classrooms as a supplementary learning resource while utilizing a traditional classroom for fundamental concepts and professional on-line English training schools for continued growth in the target language.

Students should keep in mind that free English programs are generally not designed specifically for students from a particular region, not unlike mainstream textbooks. Overall quality of free English schools typically leaves much to be desired. Curriculum development, web design, navigation, presentation, and content accuracy unnecessarily challenge visiting students. Site administrators and instructors habitually provide limited hours of availability with sparse feedback and a sluggish response time: 24-hour customer service and technical support would be a contradiction in terms.

Supply and demand render a student-teacher ratio too high for individualized attention. Free English schools frequently fail to offer teacher training programs, relying on affiliate marketing to solve curriculum deficiencies. Hence, are free English schools indeed gratuitous? Sponsored links, advertisements, and programs such as Google AdSense produce income for web sites. Although free English schools do not charge students, such web sites are still able to generate revenue.

Another tactic is to present limited content while extending the concept of premium content at an affordable price. For example, a free English school could present a static text environment to foreign language learners with audio and video content requiring a form of payment acceptable to the school’s accountant. Without previous knowledge about instructors, teaching platforms or methodologies utilized, students should inquire about free trials.

Adroit teaching professionals and foreign language students alike should avail of high quality English language learning material on-line. Blogs (web journals), RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, podcasts, Skypecasts, and screencasts are typically free in nature. In addition, reading and writing exercises should take advantage of free English chatrooms although I strongly warn students to beware of sexual harassment from wicked predators on and off-line.

Moreover, I steadily uphold and advocate the utilization of on and off-line gaming with native speakers to enhance fluency in the target language. Newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television shows, and movies just await the eager foreign language learner: all forms of media should be taken advantage of to ensure correct linguistic input. Teachers should guarantee that on-line educational content is visible to all virtual classroom participants, as certain countries tend to ban entire servers in order to confine knowledge not approved by governmental agencies.

Whether at home, school or at work, your imagination is the limit as far as being able to take advantage of the learning resources surrounding you to effectively learn another language. Full-immersion does not require a student to travel abroad: utilize what the Internet has to offer by listening, speaking, reading and writing to your heart’s content with native and non-native speakers of the target language from the comfort of your own home. Discard ties and opt for pyjamas.

Foreign language study in a virtual classroom through e-learning offers several advantages over classical mediums for foreign language learning and provides state of the art foreign language training, furnishing multimedia in the classroom previously deemed impossible. Multimedia classrooms armed with the Internet render a historical precedent of a positive language learning environment which celebrates cultural diversity, cross cultural awareness through cross cultural exchange, and intercultural communication unlike never before.

Virtual classrooms managed effectively still honor traditional assessment techniques, classroom activities, classroom management skills, and classroom discipline strategies. Teaching a foreign language in a professional virtual classroom, especially in the fields of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) specifically enhances language acquisition by providing an opportunity for lightning fast delivery of authentic teaching, studying, and learning resources by educated native speakers of the target language.

Innovative language learning technology found within the virtual classroom incorporates a whole language learning approach, enabling a holistic foreign language curriculum focusing on learning, studying, and teaching English phonetics, grammar, and culture. Virtual lessons capture the moment while surpassing demanding requirements found in conventional classrooms while dramatically augmenting linguistic receptive skills (listening and reading) in addition to productive skills (speaking and writing). In the realm of business English, video conferencing provides a constant stream of opportunities for cross cultural nonverbal communication analysis.

Eric Paul Monroe

http://www.eric-tesol.com/