WEEK 11

Thursday, march 30, 2017

WEEK 11: Using Mobile Phones in the Classroom

Rate: 5

My initial reaction to this article was curiosity about the activities it will present of the Usege of Mobile Phones in the Language Classroom. 

Somethings I learned from this article and that every teacher should know were some interesting ideas to implement in the classroom. Here are some examples to develop each of the English skills. 

Reading

Use mobile phone memory to distribute reading material: Teachers can share unlimited reading materials for their students. Students can easily download this material and start to read it wherever they want in their phones. To emphasis the task, teacher can ask their students to use the voice recorder to take notes about the books while they are reading. The books, along with students’ reflections, can then be discussed during the next class. Also, it is ideal to ask student to use blogs, twitter or any social networks to describe their routine along the day.

Speaking

Use the mobile phone for a language exchange: teachers could encourage reluctant student to start speaking by stablishing a language exchange with students who want to learn each other’s native language.  They may use skype or any other app to stablish contact with the other person such as imo, whatsapp, etc.

Writing

One interesting technique to motivate students to develop their writing skill is circular writing. Teachers should ask students to create a story together by contributing one text message at a time. Each student writes a sentence or two and then sends this on to the next student, who adds another message, and so on until the story is complete. The teacher is copied and has a record of the story as it emerges.  Other interesting activity is the use the Text Messaging feature for tandem learning. In this activity two students who wish to learn each other’s native language pair up and exchange text messages.

Listening

Use the Voice Memo Recorder feature to record language from media outlets: students are asked to collect language samples from TV or radio to analyze where they were collected, and provide feedback. And as the previous activity, teachers can ask students to interviews or conversations they engage in outside the classroom to periodically provide feedback in the classroom. Remember that the main objective of these activities is to get students to use the language as much as possible.

Vocabulary

To build a vocabulary lot in students while learning a second language, teachers have the option to take notes on the English they read or hear outside of school and either present the notes to the class or send them to you as a text message. Instead of giving regular homework, you can ask students to hunt for specific language forms (e.g., common nouns, the past perfect tense, formulaic expressions), and the student who collects the largest number of correct samples wins. Learners have a tendency to tune out when a classroom lesson is over; this activity helps circumvent that problem by breaking the boundary between class time and daily activities.

My favorite quote from the article was “phones are ideals tool to support learning, which states that learning is more likely to take place when information is contextually relevant and can be put to immediate use.” I consider this truly important because if students have access to relevant information for practicing a second language, they will find learning easy and interactive.