Monday, June 30, 2008
Expectations!
Lately, I've been wondering what people are actually expecting when they sign up for a live online language course. There are a lot of really good schools out on the web and I wonder if the students really get what they are expecting. As a LANCELOT trained teacher, I am trained to teach online using all four skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. There are many really good virtual classrooms that allow me to teach this way. However, do the students expect this type of teaching or are they just expecting a chat, or a conversation over Skype, Yahoo, or MSN. When I first started looking into this type of teaching--that is what I thought. I've realized that many people think that live online teaching is just that--a conversation over Skype. Is that teaching? Is it effective? Why do the students keep coming back for that type of training? I have high expectations because of my training, but am realizing that until the students are exposed to this type of training--they are happy with free conversation in a simple virtual classroom that allows camera and a chat function or a class where we are just on Skype. Are my expectations too high?
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1 comment:
Hi Holly,
You make some great points here and I think the bottom line is that different students have different needs. That's why there are such a variety of online language learning environments popping up. They give the student the opportunity to have a "cusomized" language learning experience! Some will want formal teaching and some will want to polish their conversational skills and they can all have what they want!
Thank you for joining us at eduFire, I hope you are very successful and have fun too!
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