Merve GÜZEL

Audio Visual Aids in ELT

Journal Entry 1

We have experienced lots of tools and websites for this course so far. First of all, I was not
aware there are so many web tools and web sites that we can use for teaching purposes especially
teaching English purposes. Before the lesson, when I was preparing my lesson plans for micro-
teaching, I only used paper-work exercise; however, thanks to this lesson, I have learnt that those
web tools and websites make the lesson both interactive and interesting for students, and also they
are quite time-saving. One of my favorite web tool is mentimeter, and I think it is pretty beneficial
and practical, and it can be used most of the parts of the lessons. It can address more than one skill.
We can use it while teaching grammar, vocabulary, reading, or writing. For example, I would
integrate it in some of my classroom assessments like graded or ungraded quizzes, or ıt would be
used in brainstorming activities. To me, this web tool can be used in different levels; however I do
not think that it is quite helpful for young learners, so it should be limited to just adult learners. Also,
I really liked “pinterest” for teaching purposes. It is a kind of web tool that includes many pictures
that can be shown to students. I would imagine myself using it in brainstorming activities, or for
higher levels, the web tool can be used in debates and discussions. For example, I would open a
picture, and make my students discuss about it. It could be really helpful in terms of improving their
speaking skills. There could be many benefits of using this in classrooms as well as its challenges. For
instance, thanks to it, the results of quizzes, or the thoughts of students on a subject can be get
quickly. As a challenge, I have also mentioned above, we cannot use it in young learners class,
because they would find it challengin to use. One of my favorite websites is breakingnewsenglish as it
is not for teaching English purposes, so it is authentic. The students learn English and some news at
the same time. I would definitely use it in my future classes. It would address reading and writing
skills. For example, I would ask the students to read an article from the website, and write a
reflection about it. This way, they would improve both their reading and writing skills.

There are lots of benefits of using those tools and websites, they are interactive,
communicative and interesting for students. It is quite important that we should use those kind of
tools because we live in a technology area; however it can be challenging when the teachers are not
competent in using internet, or computers. Also, some of the activities that are designed through
those tools and websites needs to be prepared before the lesson.

They all can be used in different levels in Turkish context. For example, they are tools that we
can measure the students’ vocabulary knowledge like wordbooster, socrative, and they are all used
in different levels by changing the items.