Ebaby! Blog

ESL students spend a lot of time online and it can be a great opportunity for them to meet native English speakers. I mean, 85% of American college students are on Facebook and the majority are active members. Our ESL/EFL students could be meeting a lot of Americans online.

But more than the obvious social benefits, social networking can improve students’ English. Just look around English, baby! and you can see how social networking lets learners experiment with language in a friendly, communicative setting. Still, not many people are convinced that social networking can or should be integrated into the classroom. It’s a nice extracurricular activity, but most teachers can’t see the teaching potential.

Well, the truth is social networking is great reading and writing practice! And I am going to take advantage of that in my ESL class. I am integrating social networking sites into a reading strategies lesson. One important reading strategy is inference. Inference means interpreting beyond what is actually written and making bigger conclusions. Look around any social networking site and you’ll find there is a lot to infer. People say one thing, but they mean another. My students are going to use this handout that I found online. The handout wasn’t developed to be used with social networking profiles, but it helps students separate what people say from what they mean. And it seems to fit perfectly with the activity. Students will write a few quotes from a profile and say what they think they mean on the handout. Then, they will write a paragraph about what they think about the person.

Here is an example of inference from lastbreath. His profile was the first one I read today. He says, “Things I Like: romantic dinner” He means, “I like romance. I want romance.” He says, “Favorite Movie: romantic and romantic comedy” He means, “I am a good boyfriend and I really want romance ,” and maybe, “I want a girlfriend.” You could even infer things from his screen name.

The point is that as teachers we need to monopolize on our students’ free time. They spend a lot of time online and an English social networking site will really help their English. It will improve their reading skills and maybe it will make it easier for them to make inferences.

This is just one idea. And we need to think of more ideas because online social networking is a great way for ESL students to practice reading and writing.

This week one of my coworkers shared a great grouping activity with me. I love this activity because dividing students up into groups can be so complicated. But sometimes all you need is a nice random grouping of students for an activity.

• Begin by selecting a subskill or theme, like simple past or pronunciation.
• Decide the size of the group, for example, groups of 3-4.
• Make words or sentences that deal with the theme. Words or sentence should clearly sort into groups.
• In class, tell students the theme and the size of group.
• Have students walk around and share their words or sentences.
• Students try to find a similarity in order to form the correct sized group.

Here is a specific example: This week, we were working on simple past. I wanted to make groups of three. I started by writing 3 sentences with one simple past grammar mistake in each. Then, I wrote 3 more sentences with 2 mistakes in each. And so on until I had enough for my class. During class, I gave each student a sentence. I had them read their sentences to themselves first and told them that they would be divided into groups of three. I told them to find the similarity in the sentences. I gave them a hint that the similarity had to do with simple past grammar. I gave students time to walk around and share their sentences. I gave them hints if they need it. At the end of the activity, they had found people with the same number of mistakes in their sentences. They were in perfect groups of three and they had already practiced simple past.

Here is another example for vocabulary: To divide your class into four groups, you could give each student a word (a noun, adjective, verb and adverb) and have students try to figure out what factor would divide the class into four groups. Give them hints and they should be able to realize that the form of the word is the important feature.

No matter what you choose to do, this activity is great for a number of reasons. Firstly, it easily divides students into groups. The groups can be random (if you hand-out the words/sentences randomly or the teacher can select the groups by assigning each student a specific word/sentence. Secondly, it is a good activity to prepare students for any type of group work. It gets them thinking and working with others. I loved this idea! It is so great to have nice colleagues to share ideas with. If any of you have classroom ideas, blog about them and give me a link. I would love to hear your classroom ideas too.