Book Image

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Book Image

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Overview of this book

That word Moodle keeps cropping up all over the place ñ it's in the newspapers, on other teachers' tongues, in more and more articles. Do you want to find out more about it yourself and learn how to create all sorts of fun and useful online language activities with it? Your search ends right here. This book demystifies Moodle and provides you with answers to your queries. It helps you create engaging online language learning activities using the Moodle platform. It has suggestions and fully working examples for adapting classroom activities to the Virtual Learning Environment. This book breaks down the core components of a typical language syllabus ñ speaking, pronunciation, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and assessment ñ and shows you how to use Moodle 1.9 to create complete, usable activities that practise them. Each chapter starts with activities that are easier to set up and progresses to more complex ones. Nevertheless, it's a recipe book so each activity is independent. We start off with a brief introduction to Moodle so that you're ready to deal with those specific syllabus topics, and conclude with building extended activities that combine all syllabus elements, making your course attractive and effective. Building activities based on the models in this book, you will develop the confidence to set up your own Moodle site with impressive results.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Activity 5: Using Journal for reflective or private writing


Aim: Help students keep a diary

Moodle modules: Journal

Extra programs: None

Ease of setup: *

It is useful to provide a place where students can keep a private journal. This could be a diary of events in their lives, a reflective diary based on their learning, or a way of asking questions about the course they're studying. The text that students write in journal can only be seen by them and the teachers on their course. That text can be graded using percentage marks or a separate marking scheme (called a scale) created by the teacher. The teacher can also simply respond to the student's text by writing a comment or recording one using the NanoGong recorder. See Chapter 2, Getting Started with Moodle for help with creating scales and using the NanoGong recorder.

The module lends itself well to the following sorts of writing:

  • Project diary

  • Reflections on the course

  • Students' questions and teachers' answers

  • Drafts of writing assignments

  • Plans...