The Picture Discussion in the oral component in Chinese language, hones students’ ability to comprehend at the interpretative and evaluative levels. Students are expected to give fluent and coherent articulation of their interpretation. Currently the problem encountered by students is that there is no platform for them to review, receive and track their oral competencies. Moreover due to time constraint, teachers are not able to provide immediate feedback on their speaking skills.
To bridge this gap, a team of Mother Tongue teachers adopted Modified Teaching Model by May Chew (2007) with the help of Google Applications. Thus the project investigates the extent to which ICT-facilitated pedagogical approaches increases effective feedback in Assessment for Learning through self-directed online task in a typical class of about 40 students as compared to one without ICT facilitation.
A Google site was set up to serve as a platform with links to other ICTs tools (e.g Vocaroo, Youtube, Google Docs) that allows students to review and identify area for improvement for their speaking. The site also encourages self-directed learning. An assessment done at the end of the year proved that this is a viable pedagogy; improved student’s speaking skills greatly from the time before intervention.
As such, flipped classroom setting was created online first to ensure students’ master the techniques to Picture Discussion. Thereafter the teacher reinforced the techniques during lessons. Students were expected to record their speaking using Vocaroo, an online software. Students then would paste the link of their recordings onto Goggle Doc in Google Site. Subsequently teachers would provide constructive comments on students’ recordings using the Goggle Docs online. Students would be able to review the comments given by their teachers, and from then on, learn how to improve on it. Recordings of videos produced by the teachers that were uploaded onto Youtube were also linked to the Goggle Site so that students can conduct self-directed learning at home. They will compare their recordings to teachers’ recording and improve their speaking skills
Based on this new method of learning, it was found that both the Normal Academic and Express students performed better than the targeted results in their MT oral examination. SPSS results showed that this pedagogy adopted had helped the students to improve.
Senior Educational Technology Officer, Ministry of Education
Elaine conducts classroom research on implementation principles for sustainable and scalable applications of ICT for enriched learning experiences. She has shared her findings at various international conferences. Elaine also promotes a culture of active experimentation and reflective... Read More →
