The learning of a language is more effective in context and for a specific purpose. The learners' fluency is often also more efficiently augmented when placing students in real situations where communication and collaboration are regarded as key to the learning process. Bearing in mind that knowledge is more easily acquired, and that, most importantly, knowing (the process) is better developed in active situations, this presentation aims at briefly introducing an EFL classroom example where such approach has been applied. The digital presentation below will exemplify how learners can be engaged in a collaborative environment, and encouraged to take ownership of their project as creators and publishers, while using free web 2.0 tools.
Adventures in Podland
Encouraging adult EFL students to materialize their knowledge and try to produce some language in class is definitely a hard task. They are positive that they could never learn another language! What then can we do to convince them of the opposite? That has been, in fact, one of my quests in the last few years. I have noticed that podcasting helps students to grow more confident of their language skills. It is a good complement for teaching listening and speaking. And that is why I decided to experiment with podcasting into cyberspace. Link to article: My Adventures in Podland: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/secet.asp?CID=1391&DID=7400 (TESOL members only).
What happens when you take 24 students, 2 teachers, 2 English classes, a computer and propel them into cyberspace? From Stem to Stern, a collaborative blog! Two teachers, Cristina Costa and her colleague Ramona Dietrich, were looking for English language writing alternatives and thought that blogging offered a fresh perspective (Presentation available
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.