Adaptive learning has been the new buzz word in Language teaching community for some time. It sounds so promising. Students will learn only those things they do not know and they will practise what is needed for them to remember. And of course everything will be computer based and the students will be able to learn at the moments they feel like it.
Sounds great, however there are many pitfalls. I recommend the text on Adaptive learning and teaching at http://the-round.com/resource/a-short-guide-to-adaptive-learning-in-english-language-teaching/. To show you how such an adaptive learning activity could look, I have created a simple adaptive learning activity on Dates.
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It is really simple, because it will repeat the thing the student does not master only once. Ideally the programme should offer a different explanation (based on your mistakes) each time you fail to learn something. Here I mostly offer the same explanation, but I have tried this in one case.
Dates – activities
Thus at the end the students will be able to form Dates in English using the ordinal numbers from first to twelfth (plus twenty-first, twenty-second and twenty-first). If you want to teach the all the dates go to the following post on DATES .
Here is the adaptive learning activity. As it is in HTML 5 it should work on any device. Just follow the instructions and if you learn all the dates you will be give a chance to play a game. Enjoy.
If you would like to see the adaptive learning activity on the full screen click the button:
Dates – adaptive learning
Dates – Share
To say dates in English is quite simple. However, as there are two ways to do this, students often get confused and mix both of them together. I hope that this post will help them clarify this extremely important area.
Dates – mind map
To be able to say dates in English correctly, it is necessary to know the ordinal numbers. Most of the ordinal numbers are made by adding the ending -th.(If you have a problem with this sound, I strongly recommend this BBC video) However, as always, there are several exceptions to this rule. The rules are explained in ther upper right corner of the mind map.
Notice the way the change of spelling of the words twenty and thirty. In English there are only two ways to say dates. You can either start with the month and then say THE and the ordinal number, or you can say THE + the ordinal number + OF + the month. Do not mix the two ways!!!
Dates – games
In the second game, called On target, your task is to choose the correct way a given date is said. I believe that if you play this game twice or three times you will learn the correct way to say the dates.
Dates – On targetIf you come to this site using a mobile device you might hate the fact that most of the games do not play there. That is why I am trying to add a few HTML5 games to play even there. Here is one of them.
Find the ordinal numbers: Ordinal numbers – Find the words