Reflection on Week 6 Reading

I do agree that we need to take into account the students' need and ability when we design CALL material and I find The Richards & Rodgers model very useful: Approach, Design and Procedure. What we learnt a couple of weeks ago were the ways to evaluate a CALL programme-operational description, learner fit and teacher fit.
To begin a CALL programme, if we are not confident enough, we can try a small scale one like the one aims at developing a learning strategy to make the programme under our full control.

Reflection on Week 5 reading

I agree that online communication does have a lot of advantages like people are less stressed, more "outspoken" and with high participation rate. I came across a student who had emotional problems two years ago but with good English standard. He was so afraid of talking to anyone, including teacher that he fidgeted when you were talking to him. However, when I sent him emails, he replied to me almost instantly and fluently. I think online communication really gave him room for communication, which he could hardly do in real life situation.

After reading the study, I am still not quite sure how I can help students bridge the gap between online communication and the face-to-face one. A person who is good at online communication does not necessarily mean that he is also good at the real life one. How can I make use of the online communication to improve someone’s face-to-face communication skills?