summaries of four discussed chapters

SUMMARY OF DISCUSSIONS

Introduction

 For this assignment, we recorded a total of four videos. Each of them is a discussion of the chapter we were responsible for the week. We both had different ideas for example, when I thought the topic had benefits, my friend thought it had more negative effects. So, we sometimes agreed to disagree. We clearly verbalized our own ideas to each other and tried to see the topics from different aspects, together. Then, we shared our ideas with each other and talked about them, recording our discussions.

 

Content

 The first topic was distant language teaching with technology. We discussed advantages and disadvantages of online classes. I can say that I was mostly talking about its negative sides. I always mentioned how it is so important to see your students face to face because it is not only students who need the motivation for education. But, as a benefit I agreed that it can be made pedagogically suitable but, again, it’s totally up to the teacher. We also discussed CMC communities and their aim which is to learn new languages and interact with the natives. We shared our experiences and briefly, we closed the discussion for the first week.

 For the second week our topic was forms of presence in online environment, we talked about the importance of presence during online classes and how it helps teacher stay motivated. We discussed three aspects of presence as well, which are; social presence, psychological presence and emotional presence. There was no disagreement on this topic as we both thought that presence with all aspects is really important for the continuation of education, especially for distance education and both for teachers and the students.

 We had a discussion about online learner engagement on our third week. We talked about three types of interaction which are; learner-instructor interaction, learner-learner interaction and lastly learner-content interaction. We included some tools that are being used for during online classes. We also talked about the two engagement perspectives which are; behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement. And, personally I found it quite interesting to make both cognitive and behavioral engagements coexist. Then, we finished our discussion talking about how we would know that our students are engaging or not.

 And for the last week, we discussed flipped classroom. For this one, we can say that my pair was ready to fight me. We disagreed too many times within 10 minutes. We talked about how traditional classroom and flipped classroom procedures are so different that traditional one is teacher-centered while flipped one is student-centered. We, again, had a discussion about benefits and negative sides of flipped classroom procedure and for me, negative sides were more visible. I mostly talked about hoe inconvenient it is because even though there’s no homework, students still bring school to their homes. I also added age difference and variety of the classes being a difficulty too but my pair seemed so eager to actually use this procedure in the future.

 

Conclusion

 To conclude, we can say that through four weeks and discussions of at least 10 minutes, the one that made us disagree the most was the last discussion because my pair was so interested in the procedure that he thought of using it in his own classroom. Overall, these discussions helped us see from each other’s perspectives and grasp all the ideas from each topic. There were some parts I wasn’t able to catch and some for my pair but the other one always mentioned the lacked parts. We enjoyed our discussions.

 

References

Chapelle, C. A., & Sauro, S. (2019). The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning. John Wiley & Sons.

Hiver, P., Al-Hoorie, A. H., & Mercer, S. (2020). Student engagement in the language classroom. Multilingual Matters.

Lehman, R. M., & Conceição, S. C. (2010). Creating a sense of presence in online teaching: How to "Be there" for distance learners. John Wiley & Sons.

A systematic review of research on flipped language classrooms: Theoretical foundations, learning activities, tools, research topics and findings. (2020, November 13). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2020.1839502

(n.d.). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLOUlbAgs0