Thursday, July 18, 2013

Digital technology and writing study

A recent national study determined the pros and cons of using digital technology in classrooms. According to the survey, the majority of middle- and high-school teachers believe digital tools increase student collaboration with apps like Google Docs and help them share their work through social media. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks for formal writing and low marks in “navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition” and “reading and digesting long or complicated texts.”
Kristen Purcell, Judy Buchanan, Linda Friedrich. (2013).The impact of digital tools on student writing and how writing is taught in schools. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. 
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teachers-technology-and-writing.aspx

Friday, July 12, 2013

Internet trends

Now 2.4 billion Internet users exist around the world, an average of 8% increase in a year (3% in the U.S.) The amount of global digital information created and shared give ninefold between 2006 and 2011, to total 2 zettabytes (2 trillion gigabytes). More than 500 million photos are uploaded and shared daily. 100 hours of videos are uploaded onto YouTube each minute.
Meeker, J., & Wu, L. (2013). 2013 Internet trends. Kleiner Perkins Canfield & Byers.
http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2013-internet-trends

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Foreign language teaching research

Effective strategies are those that make input more comprehensible and that help us use writing to solve problems. It may be useful to teach some strategies directly, but some strategies may be innate, and others could develop as a result of comprehensible input. Individuals acquire language subconsciously by understanding aural and written messages, that is, from " “comprehensible input,”and that subconsciously acquired language is far more important in language comprehension and production than consciously learned language. Discussion of strategies in the second language acquisition field has largely been independent of the acquisition-learning distinction. In fact, many of the strategies proposed and investigated in second language education relate to conscious learning (e.g. ways of reviewing for a grammar test or memorizing vocabulary).
Krashen, S. 2013. Should we teach strategies? Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 10(1): 35-39.