Eric Paul Monroe: Virtual Classroom Blog

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?

Here I proofread my students’ homework, highlighting grammar, syntax, orthographic, and punctuation errors in addition to stylistic concerns. Students should revise and proofread their work before ultimate submission.

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.

Please feel free to post a comment about my on-line school, provide constructive criticism or offer suggestions about what type of learning resource you would like to find here. Please provide the following information so that I may contact you in a prompt, professional manner:

• your name
• e-mail address
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

Distance learning requires a virtual classroom that facilitates qualitative higher education where highly motivated students are willing to take advantage of state of the art technologies to ensure knowledge transfer. E-learning consists of both real-time and asynchronous classes, meeting the needs of flexible modern students with multiple extracurricular responsibilities. On-line foreign language programs should provide a virtual community that captures and captivates foreign language learners with meaningful dynamic content while utilizing the target language as the medium of communication.

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.

Collaboration in the target language within an on-line foreign language program reinforces the concept of a communicative curriculum. Keeping the target audience in mind, educational content providers should heed the adage that content is king. Correct input in the target language diminishes the possibility of future grammatical and phonological errors in addition to cultural misinterpretations. On-line programs for studying foreign languages should manipulate traditional teaching methodologies to construct a positive learning environment where fluency in the target language with native to near native accuracy, according to the foreign language learner’s proficiency level, would be the norm instead of the exception.

Motivation is key: students are looking for direction, discipline, and engaging language acquisition strategies which encompass beyond mere rote memory techniques. Morality and culture specific values enrich academic curricula, rendering a unique and established student-teacher identity. Foreign language institutions should take advantage of dynamic mnemonic devices to reach visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners alike, maximizing student retention. Moreover, foreign language educators should provide on and off-line support and feedback in the form of constructive criticism to foreign language learners. Typical interactive language training software pales in comparison once contrasted with a professional on-line educator of the target language.

Technically, site navigation should facilitate content location within two or three clicks. Placement of traditional academic outlines, headers, dynamic menus, and search fields should all follow a logical route to desired content. Optimal content for asynchronous classes consists of interactive text, audio, and video content geared towards effective linguistic education through appealing subject matter. Teaching platforms should incorporate serviceable whiteboards, file transfer protocols, and desktop sharing, which far surpasses the traditional speed of delivery in most academic settings worldwide. Blogs, forums, voice threads, and future types of discussion boards further promote a stable on-line community where global communication becomes an academic reality both inside and outside of traditional physical classrooms.

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 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 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).

Beyond the realm of business, video conferencing provides a constant stream of opportunities for cross-cultural nonverbal communication analysis. I would venture to say that the humanistic approach of audio and video conferencing creates a more cohesive student-teacher relationship than through such three dimensional virtual classrooms where cartoon aliases are created in cyberspace. At any rate, I have found that your imagination is really your only limit while teaching on-line: just remember to utilize the target language as the medium of communication when engaging in conversations with your students.

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/