Using Twitter as a weekly writing activity

How to use twitter in the classroom....

Another thing I used in my classroom was twitter (http://www.twitter.com/).

I used this site as a diary for my students.  They had to write in it once a week.  The purpose was to have them produce English writing once a week.  I did not check their grammar, subject, or anything else.  If they asked me personally, then I did, but the purpose was for them to write in English a little bit a week.

One of the best things for this site is that it is dated, so you know who wrote what and when.

At the beginning of the semester, I gave out my students a handout:

At the end of the semester, my students handed in the sheets to me.  I would go online, into their twitter account, and check to see if they did the writing. 

This is the second semester I did this and I will continue to do so in the future.

Other ideas I have are:

1.  Giving them weekly topics to write about.  Short questions that require short answers.
2.  Use this as a mini-blog for low level students or grade school students. 

Summary, twitter is an excellent way for students to produce writing in English on a weekly (daily) basis.  Even though it may be only 140 characters long, producing a few sentences is better than not writing at all.

The feedback I get from my students are positive and does improve their writing skills.

A few semesters ago, I took "Multimedia" with Professor Curtis Porter.

Some ideas of multimedia applications were presented in class.  Here is one of the ideas I used with my students.

The website is http://www.glogster.com/

This is a website where students can make multimedia posters.  They can add text, pictures, videos, music, etc.  I have done this with my students as an assignment.

The great thing about this site is that it is only in English.  Without formal explaination, I asked the students what I wanted, gave them the site, and do the best they can. 

I collected all the posters and put them up on my bulletin board at school.

Here are a few examples:

Try it out.  After the students finish their assignment, they feel a great sense of accomplishments, especially because everything is in English.

Lesson Plan

Here is my lesson plan for Critical Pedegogies for the Spring Semester of 2012.

The idea is based on the story of the blind men describing a different part of the elephant.

Level:  This lesson is flexible to be used with all levels, adjustments would be needed.

Class size:  Flexible

Goals:  There are actually a few goals intended when doing this lesson. 

The critical pedegogies' goal - to let students realize that what they think may not be the bigger picture.  One point of view is not enough to see the whole story.

The English goal - For students to use their creativity and English freely within a loose boundaries.  Also, for students to realize perfect English is not always necessary, utterances of communication is more essential than grammar itself.

I took frames from a short commercial called "3 Generations".   Depending on the class size and groups you want to make, I made about 8 frames.  There are 2 handouts.

(It seems I cannot upload files, or at least I can figure it out so I will leave the images)

1.  First you give each group one picture.  You ask the group to write all the words they can think about when looking at the picture.  Don't give any more directions than this.  It is up to you as the teacher if they can use a dictionary or not.  I would assume, higher levels would not need them.

Since I cannot upload the files, here is a sample and you can make one on your own with the pictures below.

2.  After writing their words, they can label each word to see if it is a noun, adjective, verb, or adverb.  You can skip this part.  I only did it to give some extra work for my students.

3.  Then I would hand out the next handout.  They would list the words, translate it, label it (optional), then write out sentences.

4.  After they write their sentences, as a class, add all the sentences together to see what kind of story they wrote.  

5.  Then show the video.

Here is the link to this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFyicQr2a1M

6.  Have a class discussion on the video, the class' story and the similarities and differences. 

You may get very different results than I did, however, I think the class' engagement in this activity will surprise you as much as it did for me.

Good luck....

Ngugi's Article

In our group discussion, our main focus was on the culture within the language.  Sometimes we teach English without realizing the cultural impact it may have.  Sometimes these differences can change not only the understanding of the language but by the use of it, change people's behaviour.  One story that came from our group discussion was this, students of different ages were in a classroom.  Most of the students were beginners of the language.  During break, the students went out to play.  A few minutes later, a few students came back crying.  The native teacher asked, why are you crying?  They had a fight.  The teacher asked why.  The answer, he is younger than me but didn't use the honorific terms.  He used language as if we were the same age.  The other student said, I didn't mean too.  Then I thought about this story for awhile.  Even for me, being a second generation Korean, I live in this country, I want to respect this culture, however, I don't know which line to cross.  Here is a story about myself, I used to be a director of an English Camp for elementary and middle school students.  The camp was usually around 4 weeks long.  We would have native teachers and Korean university students working at the camp as teachers.  After the first week, Korean university students would just call me by my name, "Huggy".  At first, I was perplexed inside, then irritated, finally angry.  I don't know why, I just was.  The western culture inside of me would not mind,  but since we were in Korea, shouldn't Korean culture reign, therefore I had a right to be angry.  Even though we spoke English, that should not be a passport for them to use the Western culture on me.  In the end, I didn't fight any of them, I didn't have any ill feelings towards anyone, I just wondered where do I have to draw the line.  Where does Western culture end and Korean culture begin, or vis versa?  How does language play its part?  To this day, I am still wondering.  Until a good answer is suggested, I will just go with the flow and bury my own personal cultural feelings away.

Heinekin Beer Commericals

As there are a lot of great commericals, I believe Heinekin and Budweiser are the two leading beer companies that make great funny commericals, but with a strong message behind them.  As my intention was to do a brand comparison of commericals, it became to big for the scope of the assignment, therefore I narrowed it to this commerical.

Heinekin Light - Lady Music

Here is a famous movie star, Maurice, lounging at home, while a young man is exploring his home.  It starts off by him saying,

"My friend Maurice has led an active social life. A very active social life. Maurice?"

What does very active social life refer to?  Having many friends, partying, .....

As he says this, he refers to the wall of many pictures then narrows in on one picture of  a beautiful, sexy, young girl in a sexual seductive position in her panties.  Then pans out, always having a wall of pictures in the background. 
Maurice: "Yeah?"

Now holding a record (considering Maurice's age, something he bought in the past and a vintage item that he still uses now) of Peter Cetera (a famous member of the Chicago, then went solo.  Know for his high tone love songs.) .  He asks, 


"You like Peter Cetera?"

There is a hint of sarcasm in his question.  "How can you like this artist?"  Only females like him.  This was his intended question.


Maurice: "Noooo. But they do. (gestures over shoulder at wall covered in photos of ladies who are part of Maurice's "active social life".) Yeah, the ladies love Cetera. And if you love the ladies, by default, you love Cetera."

Maurice gives the young gentleman a logical word of advice.  If A=B, and B=C, then by default, A=C. 
A= Maurice, B=ladies, C=Peter Cetera's music.
"So, I love Peter Cetera?"

The last thing Maurice says,

Maurice: "You got it."
 
Then a young beautiful attractive lady walks by.
 
Like a teacher, a lesson and a moral was given.  This is a strong message.  There is no direct message towards a beer, only images.  It's a lesson about life.  If you want something, then you must like what the something likes, even if you don't.  The only relations it has towards the beer is its suggestion.  When you want to pick up a woman, usually somewhere alcohol is consumed, to be successful, you need Heinekin because anything else will not be successful. 
 
As the ad may be funny, there is a strong brand message.  Usually at bars, you see Heinekin posters, billboards, and coasters to remind you or even stronger, to reinforce the idea of its commercial.  When you have a choice, Heinekin should be chosen because it will lead you to be more successful in what you do.  Then men will have to think about previous experiences where they struck out (not successful when picking up a woman), then remind them of the drink they were drinking.  The association of that beer/alcohol beverage lead them to their failure, so the next time, when in a similiar situation, drinking Heinekin will lead to  more success.  And by drinking Heinekin, using the logic from the commerical, the overall success, when retrospecting the past, came from drinking Heinekin.  After writing this, I want to have a Heinekin right now, wait, I'm married.  I guess it doesn't matter what I drink.

I work at a two year university (technical college).  This semester, I teach students from the multimedia, interior design, international tourism, and leisure sports major students.  Most are false beginners that really never passed the beginner's level of any English course.  My students know English, vocabulary, grammar, a little bit of reading, some listening skills, however, everything is so scattered (meaning their levels) that when I enter the classroom, it seems they are at the lowest level.  Yet, individually, some are proficient and very few I can have a conversation. 

For the lesson plan, I will be using my most difficult students, Leisure Sports major.  The reason is simple, there is less diversity in English levels among the students and the textbook for this class is so simple that any other lesson would not make any difference (.....no, let me rephrase that....), they may learn some English.  I meet with my students every Friday from 2 to 4 pm.  There are around 45 students registered and about 35 are present in the classroom on any given Friday. 

What do I want to accomplish with my class?  For them to get serious and learn English.

What do I want to accomplish with my lesson?  Every class, I always try to think of a way to make the students learn something without them realizing that they are even studying.  This does not mean of the ways of playing a game.  The challenge is that if I used a task based assignment, it will not work because of their low communication skills and low classroom etiquettes.  Therefore, I will think about a new lesson plan to achieve this goal. 

Reflection on "Exploring the Possibilities for EFL Critical Pedagogy in Korea...."

Anyone who reads this article who does not have any teaching experience may conclude Korean students in middle and high school levels English is great. So they speak with some grammatical and pronunciation errors, but "boy, do they express themselves well." I mean, she chose "two different EFL classes in South Korea, primarily during May 2001 through July 2001." Later in the article, she specifies "...in a large city in South Korea...in a middle-class neighborhood."

I was teaching at a high school in Daegu during this time, and it was the 3rd largest city in Korea, in a middle-class area, also doing after school classes. I don't remember my students debating about some topic. Maybe if they did, I wouldn't of been transfered to another school and would of been the star "foreign teacher" in the city.

My first point is that the article somehow artifically studied students that does not reflect the general student population. Since this article was written 10 years ago, I suspect that these students' English education was not learned in the school system, nor at language institutes. More so for the middle school students, how can they express themselves so eloquently when they only learned the language for a year or two at school and a few more years in high school. Language institutes at the time were more into teaching students reading and listening, not speaking or writing, like they are now. So, that leaves one possible answer, most of these students were English educated outside the country (around this time, the boom of sending students abroad started because the country graduated from IMF, the currency appreciated, and the English boom began...). Therefore, many middle class students were going abroad to learn English.

The article does not reveal nor does it hint on the students' English history. Therefore, the study is artifically studying students that are Western educated. Yes, this is a big assumption. My arguement above may be thin, however, my experience of almost 13 years in this country leads me to believe this because, not once did I ever had the frustration like the English teacher in the high school. As the author states the teachers intentions, "...he was seriously trying to engage his students in exploration of culture, with the goal of enhancing students' knowledge and skills in intercultural communication through examination and integration of the target culture and Korean culture. The teacher's goal for the students was to enable them to "explaing the concepts of culture in their own languages and understand how culture-conflicts occur and how they can handle them properly""

First of all, to even concieve to have a class discussion on culture, especially in grade school, one must assume, the students' language level must be a certain minimun to even start a discussion. Secondly, in most classrooms, even when they are grouped, advance, intermediate, beginner, there is a huge discripancy between certain skills. Students are usually grouped based on their grammar and reading levels. Therefore, the difference in the students level of speaking and writing is huge. In Korea, you cannot assume that if a student can read well, they can also write well, or listen well then speak well. There is no connection. Teachers in general do not connect these skills, most students learn them independently, therefore Korean students are quite poor in transfering these skills to enhance another.

My second arguement is, therefore, it is hard to have any fruitful discussion in any class, especially culture, students skill are all over the map. The questions then becomes, who will you concentrate on, the higher level students, then the middle and lower level starts to feel English is too hard or impossible. Focus on the middle level, then the higher levels are bored, and lower level distracts the class, or the lower level, then the whole class sleeps.

The high school teacher states, "If a singer is carrying his message through his songs, teachers do that through their teachings." My response to that is, "I wish my students listened to one type of music."