PGI410188-41010064DO/ME (20202) - Tecnologias em Ensino e Aprendizagem

Hello everyone!

All the activities provided by Staley (2013) for vocabulary learning and practice are very engaging, and I bet both children and adults would enjoy many of them. The author is also concerned with offering ideas for learners of different proficiency levels, and he suggests some variations to make the activities more or less demanding. Another positive aspect is that the activities do not require too much preparation on the teacher's part. In some cases, it is necessary to find a suitable tool and learn how to use it, for example, to the creation of online puzzles and quizzes. However, the teacher's main task is to guide students to explore and create the games on their own. Thus, this kind of idea seems to have a twofold advantage: it gives a more active role for the learner in the proposal, and it reduces a little the extra work of preparing lots of materials.

As Stanley argues, the vocabulary acquisition takes time and many exposure to the content in order to be retained "by heart". Considering this and the need to encourage students' autonomy to make their own researches and create their own strategies to explore how they process learning better, I see that the several methodological options adopted by teachers do more than just doing a different class to students, instead, the activities encourage a creative part on making sense of contents and also help developing a detachment from traditional materials and learning strategies. 

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I thought it was particularly interesting the author's viewpoint on vocabulary learning. The author emphasizes that the students will (mostly) learn vocabulary outside the classroom, thus, the teachers' role becomes teaching the students how to take advantage of technology to do this instead of only thinking about how this will happen in the classroom. I agree with the author about these issues and I think it is something we should take into consideration since as already mentioned in the examples, we as teachers do not have so much time to deal with all the vocabulary that our students need in order to be fluent. 

The activities proposed are very interesting and different from the practices I have in my own experience as a teacher. As already mentioned in the examples of comments and also by my colleagues, the students will have an active role in the learning process and the materials are not so hard for teachers to prepare. I was particularly impressed with the number of tools available! And the activities I liked the most are the ones in which students need to move to perform (such as the Scavenger Hunt). I will certainly try to use these practices in my own classes.

Hello, everyone!

Stanley's suggestions for vocabulary activities are very interesting. His book may be a great opportunity for those teachers who have less time to plan classes, such as public school ones. Besides, I really think there is a broad range of possibilities for us to use as well as ways to adapt them to our contexts. 

Hello, everyone!

Stanley's suggestions are really useful and agree with him when he states that "teachers need to introduce learners to strategies for learning vocabulary effectively and encouraging learner autonomy" (p. 39). Many of the suggestions in fact promote learners' autonomy, and they also reduce teacher's workload. We can use the suggestions on different devices, and the activities can engage students in active learning as well. The ones I like the most were the activities 3.5, 3.7, and 3.15.

As all of the previously mentioned posts, I have also found Stanley’s activities interesting and engaging. He highlights the importance of learner autonomy for learning vocabulary effectively and also gives emphasis to the use of aimed vocabulary in context rather than just loose words or phrases. In addition, I would say that selecting his proposed activities in accordance with the target group and also adapting them to the context of use are key elements for a positive result.

Teaching vocabulary is one of the main pillars for successful language learning and the book  “Language Learning with Technology” by Graham Stanley provides excellent guidance on how to explore this area using technology as a powerful helper.

Stanley points out that it is important to promote learners’ autonomy when teaching vocabulary. He emphasizes that our role as teachers is to select and introduce the most appropriate tools to foster vocabulary development.

In my practice as a teacher, when selecting and suggesting technology guided activities, I usually take into account learners interests and realities. As said by Stanley, “ learners engage with words and phrases emotionally” (p.39), then, selecting activities that match learners interests is really decisive, in my view. Also, it is necessary to be aware of learners’ reality before suggesting any activity, teachers have to check if learners can access the technology device required by the activity. It may seem unnecessary as we live in the digital era, yet, the reality in our country and schools is far from the ideal, and then, teachers have to adapt and deal with limited resources. In this sense, the activities suggested by Stanley can be easily adapted to smartphone use (almost all the students have one) proving thus, to be an instrumental material!!

The activities presented by Stanley in the book are very useful and creative. They can be a great source of inspiration and reflection about how to teach vocabulary. I think technological resources can be of great value to practice vocabulary, such as online games, because students can learn while having fun and being autonomous of their choices. Using new vocabulary in real contexts can be very helpful to retain the information in the mental lexicon. 

Hello everyone,

In Stanley's book "Language Learning with Technology" the author provides a variety of different activities connected to technology that teachers may be interested in using for providing their students a more meaningful and enriching method when developing a specific skill, such as: Vocabulary, Grammar, Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking and/or Pronunciation. The first skill mentioned by the author is Vocabulary. For vocabulary to be better retained by learners, it is important for them to encounter the target words multiple times and also practice them in contextualized situations before they actually learn the specific vocabulary. Therefore, the activities provided in the book could not only be done in class but could also encourage students to do them outside of the classroom, consequently motivating them to become more autonomous in their learning process. The activities provided by the author are also separated by levels, making it easier for teachers to choose from; variations for some specific activities are also proposed, in case teachers need to adapt them. The choice of the technological devices to be chosen for each activity is also something interesting, since the author encourage teachers to not only work with desktop computers, but also mobile phones, projectors and cameras. I particularly liked many of the activities proposed by the author, and I will try to adapt them in my future classes.

The use of digital technology has changed, and continues to change, our lives. These advances have brought considerable opportunities for L2 vocabulary learning and teaching. Throughout the Stanley’s book there is much practical discussion about how to integrate technology into language learning contexts. It provides a huge range of language learning activities which greatly facilitate how L2 vocabulary items are acquired.

Lots of research has been carried out on reading and technology. For example, last week in a PPGI event, there was a very good talk with Professor Lalo Salmeron about digital reading. He said that digital literacy and digital reading are intertwined as these processes involve students’ ability to access and retrieve; integrate and interpret and reflect and evaluate the available information.  But, how can we, teachers, foster students digital literacy, particularly through digital reading? Stanley’s “ Language Learning with Technology” (2013) offers precious guidance.  In order to promote reading literacy, Stanley suggests activities that  teachers can use to develop reading-skills using digital resources.  The activities suggested (as well as the websites, apps) focus on reading sub-skills such as skimming, scanning, reading for gist, activating schema, and inferencing. And more important, all the activities are user-friendly and interesting.  

Hello, everyone!

I totally agree with Stanley when he states that teachers have the important role of selecting and introducing students to apps and tools for developing their language skills. It enables students to be autonomous, motivated and interested. Also, the activities suggested by the author are interesting and practical to be performed in class. I personally enjoyed the word-game tournament (3.3 p.43) because of the positive impact it has on students’ interest and engagement in the activity.

Hi everyone!

Just like Fernanda mentioned, I thought it was interesting that Stanley mentioned that most of the vocabulary learning will take place outside of the classroom. I definitely agree on that, and I liked that the author sees it as a continuous and growing practice to learn vocabulary, hence some of the activities proposed are ongoing, as to create a habit of looking for new words and meanings in the students. I specially liked the activity online word-game tournament, as it is a game that is continuously played between the students and the teacher. Scrabble or Words With Friends are amazing games that help a lot with vocabulary (it certainly helped me a lot ).

As Stanley argues, vocabulary learning requires many encounters with words. Moreover, he mentions that knowing words involves also knowing chunks. Considering it, I found it interesting that the author proposes that students should learn how to learn vocabulary in a strategic way, stead of learning pre-established words that teachers propose. Thinking about the activities that Stanley proposes, they are diverse, and some of them do not require much equipment and can be easily done in the classroom.