Activity Two Write-Up

Activity One Write-Up Sample The theme of the web lesson is survival English focusing on booking and checking in at a hotel. It is designed for ESL intermediate students, especially for Taiwanese university or college freshman English course as a supplement to use in class activities or after-class self-study and preparation for next class. This web lesson provides both authentic and instructional materials for students to improve their survival English and also practice their listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. It will be useful and helpful for their future business trip or any kind of trip in English-speaking countries. This web lesson includes 7 links. Students begin their virtual journey by following each webpage's direction to finish all the tasks and assignments! The introduction page gives them hints for what are they going to do. The second to the fifth page each will be used for one two-hour class as a pre-class preparation, in-class activities, and after-class self-study and practice. The introduction page serves as a warm-up to let students to understand what is the theme of this lesson and what are they going to do in the following classes. Students can warm up a little bit by checking out the four links and then start the virtual journey in English-speaking countries! The links are English-speaking countries travel guide, VirtualTourist.com - Travel Guides, Maps, Photos, Forums, Deals, more, Round the world Travel Guide, and Like to travel around the world. These websites are informative, authentic and useful but very complex ones with much information which require the instructor to give more directions for students to follow and to prevent students from getting lost or scared. So I just choose them for warm-up activity to let students have a rough idea about this lesson. The first link serves as the first stop in the virtual journey. I choose the website “10 days in Manchester”. From this website, students will learn some useful English phrases and words that will help students to learn how to book and find a room in a hotel in English-speaking countries. Students will follow the directions and finish all the steps, tasks, exercises and quizzes by themselves before class. Then they have to prepare for the questions I give them for the coming class’s practice and discussion. This is an interesting and useful website. I like the bad and good day scenario which let students know that everything doesn’t always go smoothly in the real world, and bad situation happens all the time. It also shows what and how they can react when bad things happen. I think this website could do better if it also provides students with some cultural tips in English-speaking countries, such as tip culture, table or conversation manners. The second stop is in the United States. This time I ask students try to book a hotel online. I ask students to check out http://www.hotels.com/, follow my directions

1 and answer questions to be prepared for next class's sharing and discussion. This activity requires them to surf the authentic website by following the directions I give them. This is a very authentic and useful website which students can actually use in real life to find and book a hotel room in the United States. With clear direction from the instructor, it is a very good website to be included in a web lesson. The third one is a listening activity for hotel check-in. There are three tasks on the website: Pre-listening, listening, and post-listening activities. I ask students to do the listening task at home and be prepared for task one and three for next class's sharing, practice, and discussion. (http://www.esl-lab.com/checkin/checkinrd1.htm) The listening activity is a little difficult and fast for students to understand at the first time but it gives students some kind of challenge and let them know that people in real world don’t talk like what they heard on tape with slow speed and perfect and clear pronunciation. The audio part is authentic but not a very good example for politeness and good manners in a telephone conversation. And it will be clearer and better if the two roles played by two different person and both by male and female. The final one is a follow-up activity. This website provides other useful links for survival English. I ask students to check the first and the last two websites for the next coming class to learn more useful English for travel. The links I choose here provides many useful survival tips and advices for travel in English-speaking countries. I would like to make a handout with the tips, advices and information provided on these websites for next coming class’s material to discuss with students and class activities. (http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Survival_English/) (http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/ec/~nozawa/English1.html) (http://www.eslcalifornia.com/webpages/survival_1.htm) (http://www.teacherjoe.us/Travel.html) The other two links are for resources and for fun. For the resources, I put four links of online dictionary and map for students to use for this unit. (Online map 1, Online map 2, Online dictionary 1, Online dictionary 2) Students can use the map to check out the locations of the two stops. When they meet a word they don't understand, they can check up the word on online dictionary. These four links are very useful as important tools to help students to learn more from this web lesson. For entertainment part, students can relax a little bit while still practicing English when they play the online hangman game. (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~chan0687/mysite/hangman.htm) The comments from classmates are very positive. They think my web lesson is interesting, authentic and very practical. One of them think it is too much work for a lesson. Since it is a lesson designed for four two-hour classes, and each worksheet is just for one class, this problem can be solved by added clearer explanation on the

2 track description. Also, this track was designed mainly for giving students more work to do at home and learn to be a more active learner instead just learn passively in class. I think this web lesson could be even more perfect if I add a reflection and evaluation part for students to channel their voices, ideas, feelings, and thoughts about this web lesson for future improvement. I would like to hear what they like or dislike, what they found interesting or not, what motivate them to learn, what they found most useful and helpful for them and what they think could be improved in this web lesson.