Implementing CALL in the Malaysian Secondary Classroom

If you had the chance would you utilize ICT (CALL) in your teaching?

If I had the chance, I would obviously utilize ICT ( CALL ) in my teaching. Based from what i've gone through during my practicum, students will be more excited and eager to learn when there is something new for them. The ordinary and typical chalk and talk is not practical anymore. Plus, being teenagers they love something that is related to their life and internet is obviously today's lifestyle for them. So, I would really love to integrate ICT in my teaching as it can grab my students attention and increase their understanding toward certain topics.

How do you think it would help (or would not help) your students to learn English?

In my opinon, students will gain a lot of advantages if teacher like me utilize ICT in my English classroom. They will be more interested thus pay more attention to things that I teach them. Students attention spans are very short so to help them stay focus in class and comprehend the whole learning process. I believe this is due to the fact that students are attracted to something that is unusual and colorful. Other than that, CALL can help my students to find exercises and activities that suit their proficiency level. This is vey useful for my weaker class as they can find easy and non complicated activities that involve songs and pictures to improve their English. So, they can have fun while learn English.

What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing CALL in the Malaysian schools?

The advantages of implementing CALL in Malaysia school is that students have the opportunity to get in touch or communicate with teacher or people worldwide whenever they want. When there is questions or issues that they do not understand, they can simply email or chat with them. The only disadvantage is that students will easily get distracted thus lose their focus in learning. There will be time where students browse other things and neglecting the fact that they need to browse only the webpage instructed by the teacher.


What are the barriers in implementing CALL in the Malaysian classroom?

As far as i concerned, the only barrier in implementing CALL in the Malaysian classroom is :

FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS

The Education Ministry should allocate more money to buy computers and provide internet connection in every school. The fact that there are lack of ICT facilities in school to the extend every 10 students need to share one computer whenever there is a need to use computer is really frustating. The school should be given more money to provide internet and computer for the students. If there issue of money has not resolve, the idea of implementing CALL in Malaysian classroom would never be realistic

LESSON PLAN BASED ON CALL

DARE TO DREAM

Level: Form 4

Time: 45 minutes

Aims:
1) Find information of famous people in Malaysia.
2) Fill in the information in famous people worksheet provided in Word document.
3) Exchange the information obtained with each other

Technical requirements:
1)One computer per student or group 2-3 students, with an Internet connection and a Web browser
2) LCD projector and screen

Preparation:
1. Web page : www.nicoldavidonline.com
2. Prepare word document worksheet.
3. Search Engine : www.google.com and www.wikipedia.com

Procedure:
· Teacher greets the students.
· Teacher shows photo of famous people to students
· Teacher asks students whether they know the person.
· Teacher asks them to guess the topic for today’s class.

- Teacher explains to students that they are going to learn on the topic of famous people in Malaysia.
- Teacher goes to www.nicoldavidonline.com and show the web page through LCD projector to students.
-Teacher asks students several questions:

1) What is Nicol’s full name?
2) What is her contribution to the country?
3) What is her biggest achievement in her career so far?

- Teacher explains to students that they can obtain all the answers for the questions given in the webpage.

-Teacher asks for a volunteer to navigate the webpage and demonstrate to the class on how to gather the necessary information to answer those questions.

- Teacher asks students to list down Malaysian famous personalities that they know.

- Teacher then put students in a group of three.

- Each group will be asked to find information on famous personalities in Malaysia. Each group will get different famous personality.

- Students are asked to open famous people word document’s file in their Word Document.

- Students are asked to type in all the information of their assigned famous personalities in the word document.

- Students are asked to use search engine such as www.google.com or www.wikipedia.com to find related web on their assigned famous personality.

- Each group is given 15 minutes to complete the task.

- Once it is done, representative from each group will present their findings to the whole class.

- Teacher highlights the moral values of the lesson.

- Teacher summarizes the lesson by acknowledging the importance of having a dream and work hard to achieve it. .