Exo 2 - Prep Page

Hot Potatoes Exercises by Michael Marzio, for the 2005 REO Workshop with home base at the Real_English_Online Yahoo! Group .

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This is the first example of our "fun pages" where we write freely about what we're trying to do in this Workshop, exercise by exercise. Every fun page is entitled Exo (#) - Prep Page

There is one or more exercise ("exo") after each prep page.

As we're experimenting in order to find the most logical way to design this workshop for teachers/exercise makers, and not just for students, we also include comments and questions in the exercises themselves. We will decide on the best design as we advance forwards. BTW, there is a link to my blog on every prep page from here to the end. It reads as follows: Please click here to post comments or questions on my blog.

I wrote the first exo without a prep page. The introduction from David Crystal's interview was enough to get the "prep point" across.

This work is being done April 11 - 15, 2005, taking into account the feedback provided by Dennis, Fernanda, and Elizabeth posted at the Real_English_Online Yahoo! Group.

This is the general description column.

Exo 2: This is traditionally the student's first activity after viewing a video in Real English Online: "Vocabulary". This type of exercise is designed to facilitate comprehension of the video before the student is asked any questions about it, and hopefully to make it possible for weaker students do all the exercises based on the video.

This short example includes a section concerning spontaneous pronunciation vs Standard English pronunciation. We will try to "rip apart the language" to make sense of everything we hear in the next few activities.

After reading the text on this page, click here for the Brentney Video and some examples of the way I try to help the student with difficult vocabulary in a video by making "Multimedia Flashcards".

This is the same link as "Click here to go to Exo 2" below. You will no longer see this box. Each Page has only the 2 links below - either go to the corresponding exo, or go back to the Table of Contents.

This is the "Technical" Hot Pot / General Pedagogy Question column.

I had to change the Hot Potatoes htm source code generated by the Jmatch Hot Potato in order to remove an unnecessary button. This is the most important change I made, taking out the following line of code from the original HP source code:

<button class="FuncButton" onmouseover="FuncBtnOver(this)" onfocus="FuncBtnOver(this)" onmouseout="FuncBtnOut(this)" onblur="FuncBtnOut(this)" onmousedown="FuncBtnDown(this)" onmouseup="FuncBtnOut(this)" onclick="DeleteItem()"><font face=verdana size=2 color="#ff0099"><b>Delete</b></font></button>

That's the code which creates the Delete button, which is useful when a student wants to remove a "Flashcard" vocabulary Item, but which is confusing when you are using Jmatch with Flashcard output for a presentation like the 6-part David Crystal-inspired presentation you just saw in Exo 1.

Now we are also going to use Jmatch with Flashcard output for the upcoming Vocabulary activities. Note that 4 media are used here: text, pictures, video, and sound files.

But to get back to the pedagogical aspect, what about the "principle" of beginning with Vocabulary "flashcards" in the first place? Is this the best way to begin?

So far our general approach has been as follows:

1 - Watch entire video.

2 - Look at the multimedia "flashcards" for vocabulary preparation.

3 - Watch a single dialogue.

4 - Begin Exercises for this video.

Please post your questions or comments on my blog.

After reading this page: