developing writing/speaking skills on yahoo discussion groups
TRANSCRIPT
GOALS
• enable students to apply prior knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary in a communicative context
• It facilitates cultural learning from real life situations among your students;
• It may be used in debating different issues, researching the target language community and developing cultural awareness.
• The students should be able to use Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Mail, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• They also have to provide their own e-mail yahoo addresses.
LESSON PREPARATION
• find native English universities via the Internet and set up a virtual partnership.
• contact them to outline plans and collect email addresses for your students and subscribe them to the discussion group.
LESSON STARTER
• familiarize the students with LANGUAGE USE, TOPIC AREA and TASK.
• review exemplar e-mail messages on a board.
• set up the TOPIC DISCUSSION
LESSON BODY • Students now start discussing with their virtual correspondents on
the topic of the day and using the target language.
• They may either use instant messages or e-mails to exchange their ideas.
INSTANT MESSAGES• Instant messages via the
Internet are a form of synchronous communication.
• Participants type messages to each other, which everyone in the 'chat room' can read.
• Text chat does not need much bandwidth, making it an easy form of synchronous communication to establish from a technological point of view.
• It can be an ideal environment for intermediate and advanced students to develop skills of spontaneous communication in the foreign language.
• Conversation text can also be copied and pasted into a Word document for further work.
EXAMPLE
• Exploring the traditions and festivals of other countries.
• exchange key statements in mother tongue, with photos, images and even a sound file of a relevant song attached.
• create presentations in the target language containing text, image and sound.
• research the significance, history and development of particular festivals in their mother tongue and then collaborate with students in the virtual group to identify target language for the theme.
• produce an e-exhibition in the target language, housed on the university website and linking to a similar page on the website of the partner university.
E-MAIL MESSAGES• E-mail is a cheap, fast, informal and easy-to-use method of written
communication with a real audience, giving students time to draft and redraft messages until satisfied and confident with the content.
• Incoming target language messages give students motivating opportunities to cope with reading unknown language and materials such as digital photos and voice recordings can also be exchanged as attachments.
EXAMPLE
• Exchanging emails on a topical issue
• Themes such as traffic congestion, litter, junk food or reality television could be used.
• Students work in teams to agreed headings within each theme, writing initially in mother tongue and amassing useful target language from incoming emails.
• At a given point in the project, each team switches to writing in the target language.
• Each team creates a final document, in which they make a set of recommendations in the target language.
• These can be shared between partner universities or placed on respective websites.
CONCLUSION
– produce a short written text with some questions and statements expressing opinions and reasons for these;
– new cultural facts;
– express in simple target language how these compare to their own experience.