More and more teachers of English are making their own blogs to use as a complementary resource for their English lessons at school. We all know the web is a fantastic breakthrough for learning foreign languages and let’s face it, students do not learn in the same way as they did ten years ago. We can blame technology or we can use it to our advantage, so why not make the most of it in our lessons?
Teaching effectively is not easy since students are all different and are not interested in the same subjects. In the same way, the environment of students nowadays is not the same as the environment of most teachers. We teachers grew up in a text-based culture but today's students are "digital natives." They have grown up in an environment that has always included computers, the Internet, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players or iPods. Teachers, on the other hand, are "digital immigrants" and speak digital as a second language. We can no longer, however, teach in the same way. Even though digital may be our second language, as digital immigrants we can become more collaborative in our approach, while learning from the digital natives in our classes.
It is a well-attested fact that ESL students who use computers in the classroom have an added motivation to learn and show remarkable progress. And that is because they feel so at home using technology they can’t stop. They find it hard to open their notebooks or grammar books but sitting at the laptop to do their assignment seems as easy as pie, and really stimulating too. And that is what teaching should be all about_ entertaining when educating and instilling knowledge, as the Enlightened said back in the 18th Century.
Having a blog and sharing information, exercises, videos, songs, etc. is a perfect tool if you are lucky enough to teach at a high-school where students have real access to the internet and are provided with a PC each. In blogs you can find anything related to English, from all kinds of exercises on the four skills (speaking, listening, writing and reading) to really useful podcasts on pronunciation, situational English or specialized language. Lots of blogs provide you with general dictionaries, thesaurus, slang or phrasal verbs dictionaries, as well as translators and pronunciation or visual dictionaries.
· There are blogs aimed at helping teachers of ESL (English as a Second Language) by providing ideas, materials, tutorials, etc. Worksheets, powerpoints, etc are free for teachers to download and use in their classes. Myeslworld.blogspot.com is a good blog to get these resources from. Recursosparaprofesores.blogspot.com is another good example. It gives information about free online courses for teachers, interesting web pages such as The British Council, Google UK , BBC learning website or Bravenet (in the last one you can learn to make your own website)
· Many teachers use their blogs to give students projects to do. They later mark these assignments and post them in the blog, which makes students get more motivated and excited. There are also slideshare or powerpoint presentations on the grammar points studied in class and links to websites where students can practice what they have already studied. In iesplayadearinagaenglishwithlydia.blogspot.com you have a good example. And primary teachers also use blogs for their younger students. Have a look at beatriz_englishteacher.blogspot.com.
· With some blogs and willpower you could actually learn English online, since there are lots of self-study and reference materials. In fabiteacher.blogspot.com they supply a great deal of practice and reference material from all over the web in just one place. You can find you tube videos and podcasts, all kinds of dictionaries and thesaurus, idioms and slang compilations, listening and reading practice from the BBC learning English website and the British Council one , etc. It’s really complete and extraordinarily useful!
· Some other blogs give you plenty of ideas to get proficient in English by using all the means at your hand and on the web. And if you still need us, teachers, you could attend online lesson with Skype, a software videoconference programme thanks to which you needn’t leave your house to be in touch with other people. Get the information at El Blog del Inglés or just click on www.ebpai.com
Sonia Blaya Albert
yourenglishblog.blogia.com
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