read out loud as she checks.
They also do a corpus search and create a concordance for Tuk’s word ‘segue.’
They discover that it is only used infrequently—there were only two instances in the
entire 100-million word BNC. Moreover, one of them was in the name of a company,
and both instances were found in written texts. They concluded that the Indonesian
student was probably right. It probably is not likely to be used often in conversation.
Tuk says that she will let him know.
The teacher tells the students again to turn back to their computers in pairs. The
teacher directs the pairs to a YouTube site, where they watch a rock band performing
its latest hit song. The students watch the video and listen to the song. Then the
teacher tells them, ‘Please now work together with your partner to post a comment on
your reactions to the performance. What did you think about it? Did you enjoy the
performance? Why?’ They follow the same procedure with another YouTube site, this
one focusing on diet-related health concerns. Most of the pairs focus on the postings
on their page and work together on writing and co-editing clever and relevant
comments in response. One of the pairs asks the teacher which is correct: ‘There’s a
lot of reasons to like this performance’ or ‘There are a lot of reasons to like this
performance.’ The teacher replies that the second sentence is correct according to the
grammar rule, but sentences like the first sentence are often used by native speakers
of English these days.
The final step in the lesson is for the students to do a quick review of their wiki
project. For this step, they work in small groups, with each working at one computer.
Each group has decided upon a particular Thai dance to research and write about.
There is not time in the class on that day to add any new material; the teacher tells
them they will do this in the next class. For now, the members of each group are
helping each other decide what they need to add or how to improve what is on the
wiki. Later in the semester, they will be making group presentations in class on their
dances, using PowerPoint slides.
The assignment for the next class is threefold. Students should:1 Update their blogs.
2 Visit and update their Facebook pages and respond to classmates’ pages.
3 Think about and do some research on the wiki topic. They should each write a
rough draft of the new material that they want to add, and e-mail it to the teacher
before the next class. The teacher will comment on their drafts, return the drafts to
them electronically, and archive, or save the students’ drafts in an electronic
portfolio that she has created for each student.