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Meet Rachel

I plan to start a web-based course where learners watch a DVD film, check the synopsis, read a critical dialogue of the main characters and reviews on WWW, respond to a discussion board, and most importantly, exchange ideas concerning the issues posed in the film. I have already done this sort of online course. However, since my students' proficiency level was limited, actually they did not interact profoundly enough. In particular they just couldn't discuss some questions I posed on the discussion board in English.

So, I would like to seek any help from your community.

If you're interested, the DVD film that I'm going to post on the Blackboard is "Man of Honor." I'll pose some questions for participants to chat about. Any comment about this movie discussion and my article is welcome.

I look forward to hearing from you.

By the way, my personal website: http://jcchung.homestead.com

Best regards,

Rachel Chung

Chinese Military Academy
Taiwan

Vance responds, May 3, 2001

Thanks for your email. I hope you don't mind if I share it with the Webheads group. There are many teachers in the group who might be interested in these questions, and also it's great to get to know you better.

I visited your url, http://jcchung.homestead.com, and it was nice to meet you and see you with your class of students. In fact Maggi and I were online at the time and we both had a look at it. Maggi's comment was "interesting." It's a very nice site. You've done a lot of work on it.

On 15 May 2001, Rachel sent more information ...

My pilot study was about EFL students' (lower-intermediate proficiency level) synchronous and asynchronous interaction within groups and with peers in Japan. I assumed that they would be just as shy to express themselves as in a f2f classroom. Actually, they liked the online communicative mode which encouraged them to talk without paying much attention to structure. This meaning-based communication focused on content and exchange of ideas and allowed them much more practice and turn-taking. Unfortunately, only those who were motivated to improve their langage ability participated the discussion most and were restricted to certain simple and not very profound issues posed on the discussion board.

The problem might be the course materials and documents. They were not rich and not well-guided for that proficiency level students. Hence, this time my project will be adjusted to add more pictures and the story from the DVD film that was watched by the majority (Men of Honor, about a black navy diver who fought against racism and toward his goal, check my Blackboard: http://www.blackboard.com/courses/moviefan/). Since I'm not skilled with web-site editing and web-based learning, I believe Vance or other experts in Webheads can give me comments and suggestions to make the communciation more suitable and well-organized online, thereby enriching the interaction, particularly synchronously.

Please anyone who is interested checked my article entitled "Web-Based Activities and Second Language Acquisition: Interaction in Intra- and Inter-Classrooms" from the research link of my homepage http://jcchung.homestead.com/

Please forgive some disorder of the Tables occurring on the web page.

All the best to everyone of Webheads,

Rachel

And again on 4 June, 2001, Rachel sent this request ...

Dear Efwebheads members,

Recently I have been editing a sort of web-based learning course with WebCT. The aim of this course is to discuss some issues arising from the film- Men of Honor. It's based on Carl Brashear's true story. He was the first African American naval diver in U. S. history. The film mostly focused on the process of how Carl (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) determined to succeed in the vocation he believes he was born for and how he fought the regulations and everntually reached the rarely-attanined rank of Master Chief, despite of the antagonistic forces of institional and personal racism. You can check "English captions" from the link "About the Movie" if you haven't watched the film. Other links under "About the Movie" are its synopsis, reviews, and true story. I plan to give this course to my lower-intermediate freshmen soon and would like to hear your comments.

I would like anyone who is interested in web-based course to check the sentences or grammars for me. Any comment or suggestion is highly appreciated. Furthermore, if you're interested in the survey, please feel free to do it. Most importantly, I'll be much pleased if you can pose more questions for me.

Currently, I have added the following members' names to gain the access. Anyone else insterested in that, please e-mail me.

My course URL is: http://v35trials.webct.com/
Please use your first name as user ID and initial password:
Vance Stevens
Michael Coghlan
Maggi MAD
John Steele
Ying Lan
Fizza Ali
Moral Lann
Arif Altun

Thanks for your kind help.

Rachel Chung



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