Nowadays, most students in middle school have their own computers in my home country. Some of them even got their own blogs to write a diary of life experiences such as school life, diet experience or traveling. Consequently, a blog for L2 teaching can be more appealing to students than just learning with textbooks. I will use a bog for teaching in the following ways:
1. Using the blog as a place where students can discuss some question or post some response about the class:
Standard for Foreign Language Learning Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
I would ask students to post responses toward the class in target language on the blog. In this way, students can practice their writing skill and review what they learn in class. Further, students can help each other when reading others' post and sometimes offer some suggestions to help their classmates.
1. Using the blog as a place where students can discuss some question or post some response about the class:
Standard for Foreign Language Learning Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
I would ask students to post responses toward the class in target language on the blog. In this way, students can practice their writing skill and review what they learn in class. Further, students can help each other when reading others' post and sometimes offer some suggestions to help their classmates.
2. Using the blog as a place for student to learn more about the language and various culture:
Standard for Foreign Language Learning Standard 3.2: Students acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures.
Learning a language is not just listening to teacher's teaching but leave all the textbooks behind after class. It is a process that includes knowing another culture so as to understand the difference from the background they come from. So, I will post some further information such as articles about cultural difference on my blog.
3. Transforming the blog from a website into a communicative tool for teacher and students:
Standard for Foreign Language Learning Standard Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.
Some students may be afraid of asking question in class or discover their problems after reviewing what they learned, a blog is a good way for students to post their problems in private while teacher can reply them right away. To help them use the language as much as possible, I would encourage my students to present their questions in target language either in private or public. If they feel like to, they can comment or reply in target language.
Standard for Foreign Language Learning Standard Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.
Some students may be afraid of asking question in class or discover their problems after reviewing what they learned, a blog is a good way for students to post their problems in private while teacher can reply them right away. To help them use the language as much as possible, I would encourage my students to present their questions in target language either in private or public. If they feel like to, they can comment or reply in target language.
These are the ideas that I come up with to combine a learning blog with teaching. In my opinion, the ultimate mission should cultivate and improve the standards of L2 students who are able to make use of the four languages skill in the society. This does not mean their language abilities must become as great as native speakers, while I hope students at least will no longer be afraid of using target language in front of people.
These are all good ways to utilize blogs for teaching/learning L2.
ReplyDelete