Monday, February 20, 2017



ELTAI Business English SIG workshop conducted at Bangalore on 8-7-16 by Ms. Lalitha Murthy.
Feedback from a participant--Ms. Snitha Sail
ELTAI Business English SIG successfully conducted its first workshop on "Enhancing professional Communication skills” sponsored by the CSR dept. of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. Bangalore, on 8th July 2017. The event brought together academicians from different parts of the country and the professionals from TCS to deliberate over the need and relevance of teaching professional communication skills in improving the employability of  graduates.
Lalitha Murthy's very insightful session on 'Professional Communication skills- from an English teacher to a Business English trainer- Strengths and Challenges- helped us look beyond classroom teaching, and taught us dynamics of effective teaching of professional communication skills. She laid a special emphasis on etiquettes in business writing skills, by citing email as an example. She also brought to the front the differences in language used in different forms of writing. In her second session on "Impact of culture on language and communication", Lalita Murthy emphasized the need of becoming aware of and sensitive to cross-cultural differences in a professional environment.
Jayashree Menon demonstrated the effectiveness of task based teaching of business English and kept the audience captivated with several tasks and activities that taught the differences in register.
Dolon Gupta, Global Head, Culture and language Initiatives, TCS Ltd. in her session on "Requirement Gathering in a business context" gave us an insider's view on the prerequisites of a good trainer. Some of the few tips she gave included the significance of knowing the demographics of one's audience, inquiring about the venue of training, understanding the requirements and purpose of the training program and optimizing the time duration of one's training. Her recommendations shall help the participants immensely in becoming more effective teachers.
The warm and yet professional aura created by the organizers added to its successful conduct and made it both memorable and informative for the participants.
 Smita  Sail, Asst professor,
Amrita School of Engineering
Bengaluru.

ELTAI, India.
 NATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ‘ACADEMIC WRITING’
            The English Language Teachers’ Association of India (ELTAI) as part of its strategy to enrol members by offering teachers free teacher development programmes , recently conducted a free workshop on ‘Academic writing’ or 20 selected teachers—one from each of its chapters-- and they were required to conduct a similar workshop in their respective regions and thus strengthen their chapters. It may be pointed out that, with a similar objective in view, two other workshops—one on ‘Virtual learnng’ and another on ‘Mobile learning’ were earlier conducted
The Workshop on ‘Academic Writing’ was conducted on 07/01/2016 and 08/01/2016  at the Annammal College of Education for Women, Thoothukudi in South India.
At each of the four sessions conducted, there was  first a brief presentation by a resource person, followed by ‘hands on experience’ on the part of the participants.
Training was given in the following academic writing skills:
1.     Writing a paper for a professional journal.
2.     Making a presentation.
3.     Writing a research proposal and report. 
4.     Writing a project proposal and report.
In the session on ‘Writing a paper for a professional journal’,  the participants were first  given two research papers and asked to analyze their quality. The observations made during this exercise helped them understand the quality parameters for a good research article.
It was followed by discussion in the whole group.  
In the session on ‘Making a presentation’, the following areas  were covered::
1.     Preparing for a conference presentation
2.     Delivering a conference presentation
3.     Responding to comments and questions
4.     Preparing for oral presentations
5.     Structure of an oral presentation
6.     Checklists for presentation
The resource person also  provided a lot of tips for successful conference and oral presentation.
In the session on ‘Writing Research Reports’ , the  following areas were  covered:
1.     Features of academic English
2.     Academic language styles
3.     Documentation styles
Participants were  provided examples in respect of  choice of words, grammar, signposting and hedging. The resource person also  pointed out common errors in academic English. The participants were given small tasks to be done in groups to understand academic language styles.  The groups were finally asked to present a summary of the discussion in a chart.
In another session, participants were trained in writing a project proposal and report. The following areas were covered:
1.     Need for writing a proposal
2.     Kinds of proposal for projects
3.     Format for proposal writing
4.     Funding agencies for projects
5.     Project for book publishing
The delegates were divided into groups of four. Each group was asked to choose a project title from a list given and asked to draft a proposal , stating its importance,  objectives, methodology, budget, timeframe and evaluation of outcomes..
Feedback.
All the participants termed the workshop  highly useful.





 


Sunday, February 19, 2017

STARTING A CHAPTER - GUIDELINES
  • For starting a new chapter one is required to collect subscriptions from at least 25 teachers and send the total amount collected by a bank Demand Draft taken in favour of ELTAI and send it to our office at Chennai (Address found in our websites www.eltai.in ) only by Speed post or courier service.
  • In his capacity as the Convenor of the chapter, the one who collects the subscriptions may issue a temporary receipt, if required. And theELTAI office will send individually to all the members enrolled the formal official receipt with the Membership ID after the receipt of the total subscription amount.
  • It is suggested that the following benefits of membership of ELTAI may first be made known to teachers.
    • A free copy of our bi-monthly, Journal of English Language Teaching.
    • Reduced Registration fees for attending all our programmes including our Annual conferences.
    • Preference given to our members in the publication of their articles in our Journals.
    • Eligibility for getting subsidized membership of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language. (IATEFL).
    • Opportunities for interaction with ELT professionals in India and abroad.
    • Access to our E-Journals—The ELT Practitioner, Journal of Technology for ELT and Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literatu.
  • It is easy to enroll members at seminars/workshops/conferences organized by any institution.
  • For any clarification eltai-india@yahoo.co.in may be contacted.

Why join ELTAI?
Membership benefits.

  • A free copy of our bimonthly,'Journal of English Language Teaching.
  • A free copy of our bimonthly,'Journal of English Language Teaching.
  • Reduced registration fees for attending all our programmes.
  • Subsidized membership of IATEFL,UK.--A free copy of its Journal, 'Voices',
    a bimonthly.
  • Free subscription for joining our Special Interest Groups--Literature SIG and Technology SIG.
  • Opportunities for interacting with fellow teachers--both offline nd online.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Aesthetics of Reception: Shakespeare Criticism down the Ages
Nothing can please many and please long but just representations of human nature.
                                                                                                                              Samuel Johnson
An anonymous critic once declared, with a little bit of pardonable jingoism, that if all the writings on Hamlet were to be collected and piled one upon another, it would touch the nearest planet! Fun apart, none can deny that of all writers in this cosmos, it is the Bard-of-Avon who has elicited the widest response to his works from all over the world. Lay readers, students, scholars, critics, theatre-goers, translators—indeed all of them have marvelled at what Harold Bloom terms him as the ‘human invention.’ It is well-nigh impossible to put together all the reactions which have been so continuously pouring over the four centuries. I intend to restrict myself to the critical output on Shakespeare by established critics ever since the plays were staged.
In his own time, Shakespeare met with favourable response; and right from the Restoration in 1660 onwards critics and editors began their focus on the dramatic text and language of Shakespeare and quite naturally the attention shifted from theatre performance to the text, the printed version. A vantageous point to begin our journey would be to start from John Dryden who in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) offers this remark:
To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you may more than see it, you may feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacle of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind, He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can ever say he had a fit subject to his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets.
It was Dryden who declared that the credit of initiating the genre of the tragicomedy goes to Shakespeare for till then ‘the sock and the buskin were not worn by the same poet’, that is the genres of the tragedy and comedy were kept apart from each other and were not practised by one and the same poet.
Samuel Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare (1765) was the sixth edition of the great poet in terms of history of editions (after the folio) The earlier ones were by Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Pope, Lewis Theobald and William Warburton. All of these textual details connected with the definitive, authoritative editions were updated and published by the great bibliographer W.W. Greg as Editorial Problems in Shakespeare.  On his own method of textual editing and emendation, Johnson was of the view that that reading is right which requires many words to prove it wrong, and that emendation is wrong which cannot without much labour appear to be right. In form and spirit, he follows the earlier prefaces. The Preface which was intended as the introduction to his edition of Shakespeare is Johnson’s first work in extended criticism. There are seven units in this long essay: Shakespeare as a poet of nature, a defence of his tragicomedy, his style, his defects, and attack on the dramatic unities in general, the historical background to drama, and finally, his editorial practice. There are some inconsistencies in his views on tragicomedy, in his praise of Shakespeare and the later attack on him, and on his style—“A quibble to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of the way, and sure to engulf him in the mire…… A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it--but these were the characteristic defects—not taken seriously—of his age.” In his own Johnsonian language, his estimate of immortal Shakespeare, who it was said knew little Greek and less Latin, runs thus:
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted varied with shades and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.
When you come next to the Romantic age, here is Coleridge’s dispassionate judgement:
As proof positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakespeare by this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the human faculties, as reason, or the moral law, the will, the feeling of the coincidence or the two called the conscience, the understanding, or prudence, wit, fancy, imagination, judgment, and then of the objects on which these are to be employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming caprices of nature, the capabilities, that is, the actual and the ideal of the human mind, conceive as an individual or a social being, as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise or in a war field of temptation: and then compare with Shakespeare under each of these heads all or any of the writers in prose and verse that have ever lived! Who, that is competent to judge doubts the result?
Charles and his sister Mary Lamb were avid readers of Elizabethan drama. It is said they read together all the plays of Shakespeare twice over every year. As a regular theatre-goer Lamb felt that the depth of Shakespeare’s plays cannot be seen through ocular aids; they have to be felt on the pulse through an imaginative response that can be aided only by reading. Stage presentation cannot do justice to the play. His work On the Tragedies of Shakespeare came out in 1811. The tragic experience of a play will always remain ‘unplumbed and unplummable by the best actors and producers.
Appreciation of a play by Shakespeare through his character portrayal begins with William Hazlitt, one of the most notable critics of the Romantic age. In his trend-setting book Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817), he evaluates the playwright on the basis of the real, life-like portrayal of his characters. “Macbeth and Lear, Othello and Hamlet are usually reckoned Shakespeare’s four principal tragedies. Lear stands first for the profound intensity of passion; Macbeth for the wilderness of the imagination and the rapidity of action; Othello for the progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling; Hamlet for the refined development of thought and sentiment.” With him began what has now come to be called the character school of Shakespearean criticism, later on to be taken up for more serious study and interpretation by Dr A.C. Bradley. Charles De Quincey’s famous essay “On the knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” is a penetrating and philosophic piece of criticism. The Porter scene (II, 3) in which Macduff and Lennox knock at the gates of Duncan’s castle Inverness is usually taken to mean a comic interlude to relieve the mental tension the after effect of the most foul murder. “We must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested—laid asleep—tranced—racked into a dead armistice; time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must be self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect … the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced….”  The Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle in his famous work On Heroes and Hero-worship remarks that history is nothing but the biography of the Great Man. In the light of this remark he puts to test Shakespeare’s work and concludes that he is a hero poet. Likewise Carlyle’s contemporary, the American philosopher, essayist and transcendalist Emerson in his Representative Men eulogises and extols the virtues in Shakespeare’s works. The two of them opine that it was Shakespeare who had created the European imaginative empire.
            Criticism came to occupy its place in the universities only in the beginning of the twentieth century. Until then men of letters combined criticism and scholarship and articulated their views in journals. The situation now is different: criticism does not—indeed cannot exist outside the academia. Coleridge, Hazlitt, Carlyle and De Quincey did not belong to the university fold. George Saintsbury was the first to effect some reforms. Edward Dowden published his biographical criticism Shakespeare: His Mind and Art. Dr AC. Bradley and W.R. Ker were the critics of prominence—the first among the academic critics--entering the university for the spread of their critical enterprise. At a time when Walter Raleigh and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch were occupying positions of prominence in the two citadels of learning, criticism came into its own in the beginning of the twentieth century. The most distinguished of them all was the redoubtable Dr A. C. Bradley. His Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was so much of a bible for Indian students. It used to be a wisecrack that Shakespeare failed in the ‘Shakespeare’ paper because he had failed to read Bradley. A critic Guy Boas composed this limerick: I dreamed last night that Shakespeare’s ghost/Sat for a civil service post,/The English paper of the year/Contained a question on King Lear,/
Which Shakespeare answered very badly/Because he had not read his Bradley.”
 Middleton Murry thought that it was the greatest single work of criticism in English, while Leavis and the Scrutiny  scholars forcibly pushed Bradley off the pedestal. Bradley was a committed student of Hegel. No wonder then that his ahead aesthetic theory was based on Hegel’s philosophy of tragedy. He was most at home in German metaphysics. The English had known the meaning of tragedy from the Aristotelian tradition, and its effect on the audience by arousing the twin emotions of pity and fear. For Bradley reality is one and the same. All things which exist are only imperfect manifestations of the real one, the infinite. Evil is that which alienates the part from the whole. Finite is imperfect while the infinite is perfect. Finally moral order is restored and harmony prevails. Tragedy as an art is the very image of this human drama. Tragedy defends and confirms this order of the world. The tragic hero goes against this order succumbs and submits. “We feel that this spirit, even in the error and defeat, rises by its greatness into ideal union with the power that overwhelms it.” Passive suffering cannot lead to the tragic. A tragic hero is one who is responsible for his actions. There is no element of chance in tragedy. The concept of poetic justice that virtue is rewarded and evil punished is alien to the tragic spirit. To understand tragedy Bradley has to look at the characters because actions issue through the characters. It is this insistence on character that has come in for much criticism.
 L.C. Knights made a scathing attack on him in his famous essay, “How many children had Lady Lady Macbeth?” The rejection of Bradley came from different quarters: from those who maintained that Shakespeare’s plays should be discussed as effective stage drams; Granville Barker took up Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and the practical matters and problems of staging Shakespeare in Prefaces to Shakespeare that appeared in 12 volumes over a period of 20 years; from those who thought that he was unhistorical in his concept of tragedy, from those, the Scrutiny group of critics who wanted to interpret Shakespeare’s plays as poems in terms of imagery and themes. Bradley relied upon his personal emotional reactions to Shakespeare. He succeeded in inculcating in us something about the profundities of Shakespeare’s plays and laid the foundations for a philosophic criticism of Shakespeare practised later by such well-known critics as Middleton Murry and Wilson Knight.    L.C. Knights, the co-editor of Scrutiny, however, wanted to reject this character approach that dominated Shakespeare criticism and so mockingly wrote the essay “How many children?”a classic of modern criticism. His position is that “the only profitable approach to Shakespeare is a consideration of his plays as dramatic poems, of his use of language to obtain a total complex emotional response.” He demonstrates this method by exploring the twin themes of reversal of values and unnatural disorder in the play Macbeth by a close examination treating it as a poem and not as a play. This attention to the organic poetic unity that expresses the intention of the playwright was the next step in Shakespeare criticism, followed by a great many New critics like Derek Traversi (Approach to Shakespeare), Robert Heilman (This Great Stage )among others. This lop-sided insistence on the words alone to the exclusion of other elements such as the plot and constructive features of the play came in for rejection at the hands of a group Neo-Aristotelians. They argued in favour of treating the play as play taking into consideration all constitutive elements: plot, character, dialogue, music and spectacle all of which together built up a play. Ronald Crane, Elder Olson and others formed this group which came to be known as the Chicago Neo-Aristotelians.
After the advent of Structuralism and Deconstruction, Shakespeare criticism took a different turn, veering away from the interpretative methodology, spearheaded by the New Historicists Stephen Greenblatt and his followers. New Historicism is based on a parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts (chosen from the archive) both of which belong roughly to the same historical period. It does not privilege the literary text. It does not attempt to ‘foreground’ the literary text and treat history as its background as was done by Tillyard in his Elizabethan World Picture (1943). Literary and all other discourses are given equal importance: the one is used to read and interpret the other. The two are seen to mutually interrogate, contradict, modify and inform each other. In other words it textualises history and historicises the text. Social structures are determined by ‘discursive practices.’ Their high powered journal Representations became its organ, promoting essays that gave a historicist reading of literature of the Renaissance and Elizabethan age. It is more of a practice than an interpretation or a theory. To quote Greenblatt, “the work of art is the product of a negotiation between a creator or class of creators, equipped with a complex, communally shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and practices of society.” Most of the plays of Shakespeare have been subjected to this new historicist reading and this has marked a new wave in Shakespeare criticism.
The British version Cultural materialism, a critical method of enquiry gained currency in the mid-1980s. Jonathan Dollimore and Catherine Sinfield in their book of essays (Political Shakespeare) on religion, ideology and power in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries provided a reading based on political commitment. This served as an alternative to the conventional Christian framework of Shakespeare criticism which had run its course for more than four hundred years. By way of an example, let us juxtapose the readings of Greenblatt and Dollimore of King  Lear. In his essay “Shakespeare and the Exorcists”Greenblatt makes a comparative study of the play in relation to an unnoticed social document, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Imposture written by one Harsnett in 1603 two years before Shakespeare’s play made its first appearance. Harsnett exposes exorcists as frauds and persuades the State to punish them. Greenblatt proves with textual evidence that Shakespeare uses the theatre for a similar purpose of ritual demystification of the supernatural. There is a deeper and unexpressed institutional exchange of the two texts. Dollimore employing a similar method of engaging with the historical, social and political realities concludes that the materialist conception challenges all forms of literary criticism premised on essentialist humanism and idealist culture. Such a radical reading of Shakespeare throws overboard the idea of a timeless, humane and civilising Shakespeare replacing it with the one anchored in social, political and ideological concepts of his historical moment.
            Leaving aside these critical estimates based on some or the other critical assumptions, there have been an enormous variety of contributions on different aspects of Shakespeare studies. The Oxford Renaissance scholar Dover Wilson, the editor of the New Cambridge series of Shakespeare’s works along with Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote two influential studies, “What happens in Hamlet?” and “Fortunes of Falstaff” as an answer to Bradley’s “The Rejection of Falstaff.” Terry Eagleton’s Shakespeare and Society (1967) and William Shakespeare (1986) are two major studies based on his treatment of the literary text in relation to moral, historical and political realities. Shakespeare’s works are inseparable from Elizabethan social issues. In the Western Canon, a work by Harold Bloom which makes a list of 22 authors who form the fulcrum, the foundation for a liberal education affords the central place to Shakespeare and Dante. The two have divided the western world between them. For sheer cognitive acuity, linguistic energy and power of imagination they achieve canonical centrality.
            ‘Negative Capability’ and ‘Objective Correlative’ are two among the best known critical vocabulary used in relation to Shakespeare’s works. Keats, defining Negative capability says, “At once it struck me, what quality went to form a man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—that is Negative Capability when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” T. S. Eliot coins the term ‘objective correlative’ in his famous essay “Hamlet and his Problems”. “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative,’ in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion, such that when the external facts which terminate in sensory experience are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” Using this formula Eliot dismissed the play Hamlet as an artistic failure. The yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production Shakespeare Survey has been publishing international scholarship in English regularly since 1948, and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism.
There have been poetic tributes to the Bard-of Avon pouring in from all quarters all the ages. It was Ben Jonson, who firsts composed “To the memory of my beloved author William Shakespeare.” It is most appropriate to conclude with the best well-known of them by Matthew Arnold:
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask Thou smilest and art still
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his space
To the foiled searching of mortality;
And thou who didst the stars and sunbeams did know,
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secured,
Didst tread on earth unguessed at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

                                                                                                      M.S. Nagarajan

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Dear All, 
Teachers of English working at  any  level--primary, secondary or tertiary--are invited to give a detailed account of any of the successful lessons they have given so far in any format. Last date for submission is 31st January 2017
Contributions should be sent before the end of January 
 to <saras_linguistics@yahoo.co.in  cc <eltai_india@yahoo.co.in>
 
Cash awards will be given to the three selected best papers at each level.
S. Rajagopalan

Thursday, October 13, 2016

EDMODO-A beneficial digital tool for ELT






edmodo – a beneficial digital tool for English language teachers














Sree Lakshmi Ammanamanchi,
Lecturer,English Language Centre,
Al Musanna College of Technology,
Al Muladah,Sultanate of Oman.
sreelu1610@gmail.com





Abstract
The paper aims at investigating the usefulness of m-learning in teaching English. It is focused on Edmodo, a web platform which enables sharing information, participating in the discussions, passing the tests, and monitoring the progress. It contains information about the usefulness of this application, its advantages, and the principles of work. The paper explains why it is beneficial for the community. It also examines possible limitations and relevant issues that can occur.
























Web technologies are known to become an indispensable constituent of learning the process. Teachers, children, and parents use a wide range of applications to develop a diverse learning environment and improve participation, feedback, and interactivity. One of the newest applications which are currently used in learning foreign languages is Edmodo. It is a network platform which enables students and teachers to share educational applications and content, connect and collaborate with each other, and access notifications, grades, homework, and class discussions[1]. Although Edmodo has several limitations and raises some relevant issues, it is still regarded as a useful tool in learning English.
Usefulness
Edmodo offers a wide array of advantages to its users. Kumelashvili (2016) states that it is the greatest challenge for a teacher to meet the varied needs of learners in a classroom. Edmodo seems to solve this problem by allowing tutors to post homework online, thus helping to differentiate it. Differentiation of the tasks helps students to study effectively whereas the teachers can monitor their progress through testing, quizzes, and polls. Edmodo poll is a tool which is used by the teachers to examine what skills should be developed – reading, writing, listening, or speaking[2]. This knowledge allows planning homework assignments regarding students` needs.
Edmodo strengthens a sense of community in learners, making them feel respected and significant. Students make a connection between their interests, curriculum, and life experiences, thus understanding better the purpose of each task and the overall objective of the course. This knowledge appears to increase the effectiveness of learning process. With the help of Edmodo, the teachers create a motivating environment in which supportive adults push learners slightly beyond so that they can learn without the assistance. Kumelashvili (2016) has discovered that the use of this application stimulates students to reduce the time between the tasks given[3]. Edmodo also allows to leave commentaries and share opinions and experiences about the tasks and resources.
Edmodo does not only facilitate the differentiation of the tasks but also allows to attach a variety of file types, including Word doc, MP3, PPT, gif, PDF, Excel, jpeg, and others. The users can share web site links and embed flash objects such as Google forms, games, YouTube videos, etc. Games can help to learn new vocabulary items or grammar rules. Giang and Minh (2014) state that it is possible to make tests and games in Microsoft Office Word or similar software, including Cross-Word. The materials are then uploaded to the home page. As soon as the task is uploaded, the students receive notifications and are required to complete it within the given amount of time[4]. If they manage to do the assignment, they will be automatically marked. However, if the students fail, they will get a warning.
The video also conveys useful information about foreign language and helps to train listening. Each file can be supported with useful links to assignment or note (online dictionaries, forums, etc.). Testing materials are also convenient as this platform enables teachers to create quizzes, analyze the results, and estimate whether the learning goals have been accomplished. The analysis allows a tutor to make appropriate changes in the program, types of activities, etc[5]. Evidently, Edmodo makes the learning environment more flexible and adaptive to students` needs.
Student activity in Edmodo can be monitored. It means that teachers can examine how much time is spent on the learning process, how many times a student visits the platform, what they are interested in, and what commentaries or question they post[6]. Tutors can monitor the level of learners` productivity and determine what types of activity are the most engaging and efficient. Edmodo presupposes “quiet discussion,” meaning that the students can communication only in written form. The avoidance of verbal discussion is a good way to give a voice to all the learners, including the quietest and shy participants. Students feel less nervous and express their thoughts in a clear, comprehensible form. 
This application is free to use. The teachers have to register and create a domain for their school. The site is beneficial as the administrators are empowered to send links, alerts, notes, and polls to the school, class, teachers, and parents. The events and reminders can be added to the calendar that can be viewed by both students and educators[7]. Edmodo is an application which has been designed for Windows, IOS, and Android and can be easily downloaded from Apple or Google store. It increases the mobility of the learning process as students and teachers get an opportunity to participate in activities, regardless of the location. 
Finally, Edmodo aims at involving the community in the learning process. For this reason, it ensures that parents can become a part of educational process. It is possible for them to create parent accounts and get access to assignments and grades of their children. They are also allowed to communicate directly with the teachers. The tutors also get an opportunity to inform the parents about the forthcoming events, missed assignments, and students` progress. The online platform has archives which allow reviewing the materials later if it is necessary[8]. If an assignment is made successfully, the teacher can also delete it.
Limitations and Relevant Issues
Although Edmodo offers multiple advantages to its users, there are still some limitations that can prevent the learners from the successful performance. The greatest obstacle that prevents teachers and students from full reliance on Edmodo is associated with the quality of electronic devices. Edmodo has been designed for mobile devices and PCs. Its core objective is to provide remote control to the discussion section, materials, and assignments. If a student is unable to download this application to their mobile device, the effectiveness of Edmodo is being significantly decreased. The insufficient memory of smartphone makes it impossible to download Edmodo and join educational process[9]. Limited access to learning materials makes it difficult to pass the test successfully. The second limitation is associated with a battery charge of the device. Low battery voltage may prevent a student from passing the quiz or doing the assignment on time. Finally, the use of Edmodo requires the users to have the Internet connection. Otherwise, they cannot access the information, participate in the discussion or any relevant assignment[10]. It limits the working process, making it less convenient than face-to-face interaction. The limitations raise several issues, concerning the effectiveness of M-learning. To ensure adequate systematic learning, the schools, where Edmodo is used, are expected to provide every learner with the updated tablets or smartphones. Moreover, it is necessary to create the areas with uninterrupted Internet connection so to enable students to join the classes quickly. It will guarantee equality in learning, access to information, and participation in quizzes or discussions. 
In closing, it is necessary to say that m-learning has recently become one of the most progressive ways to learn English. It can be used both as a primary and as a supportive tool for teachers. It enables them to share useful learning materials with the students, monitors their interest in the subject and progress in acquiring four skills which are reading, writing, listening, and speaking. A teacher gets an opportunity to upload files of different formats and encourage students to join discussions. Regardless of its limitations, Edmodo increases the effectiveness of learning process.


Bibliography
Bayne, Gail Alleyne. “Asynchronous Communication Tools,” Foundations of Distance Education, 2015.
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, “Collaborative Learning with Edmodo: An Effective Language Teacher Training Tool,” DLIFLC, 2011. 
Fernández-Ulloa, Teresa. “Teaching with Social Networks: Facebook, Twitter and.” California State University, 2013: 1-59. 
Giang, Tran Ngoc and Nguyen van Minh. “Edmodo – a New Effective Blended Learning Solution.” Leadership and Management in Higher Education for Sustainable Development, 2014: 1-6.
Kumelashvili, Khatuna. “Teaching Foreign Language by Using Technology – Virtual Classroom Edmodo.” Online Journal of Humanities 1, no. 1 (2016): 1-7.
Stroud, Casey. “Edmodo: A White Paper.” Connecting Technology & Curriculum, 2010.
“The Edmodo Teacher Guide. The Social Learning Network for the Classroom.” Edmodo, 2016.
Uzun, Erman. “Students’ Attitude Towards Edmodo as a Supplementary Tool for Higher Education.” Mersin University, 2015: 78-83.








[1]Teresa Fernández-Ulloa, “Teaching with Social Networks: Facebook, Twitter and,” California State University, 2013: 46.
[2]KhatunaKumelashvili, “Teaching Foreign Language by Using Technology – Virtual Classroom Edmodo,” Online Journal of Humanities 1, no. 1 (2016): 3.
[3]Ibid., 4.
[4]Casey Stroud, “Edmodo: A White Paper,” Connecting Technology & Curriculum, 2010.
[5] “The Edmodo Teacher Guide. The Social Learning Network for the Classroom,” Edmodo, 2016.
[6]Gail Alleyne Bayne, “Asynchronous Communication Tools,” Foundations of Distance Education, 2015.
[7]Tran Ngoc Giang and Nguyen van Minh, “Edmodo – a New Effective Blended Learning Solution,” Leadership and Management in Higher Education for Sustainable Development, 2014: 3
[8]Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, “Collaborative Learning with Edmodo: An Effective Language Teacher Training Tool,” DLIFLC, 2011. 
[9]Al-Said, Khaleel. “Students' Perceptions of Edmodo and Mobile Learning and their Real Barriers towards Them.” The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology 14, no. 2 (2015):167-180.
[10]ErmanUzun, “Students’ Attitude Towards Edmodo as a Supplementary Tool for Higher Education,” Mersin University, 2015: 82.  

Monday, September 26, 2016

Guidelines for contributors for our Journals.

Guidelines for Our Contributors for our Journals.

Articles on ELT are welcome.  Share your ideas, innovations, experiences, teaching tips, material reviews and web matters with your fellow professionals. 
 REQUIREMENTS
A4, Font size: Times New Roman 12, Double Spaced, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.  Title of the article should be in Caps, bold, centered.
Abstract in about 150 words
Full paper should not be in more than 2000 words.
Articles should be sent only as AN EMAIL ATTACHMENT – AS A WORD DOCUMENT to eltai_india@yahoo.co.in with a copy to 
srajagopalan7@gmail.com (CDsand Hard copies will not be accepted.)
A photo of the author should also be sent in the .jpg file format as an email attachment along with the article.