Leda Andoniou and Kosmas Vlachos Hellenic Open University.

Leda Andoniou and Kosmas VlachosHellenic Open University

The commonest ICT tool for creating and manipulating text

Enables teachers to produce professional-looking documents that can be printed and used as handouts or worksheets for learners

Speeds up the process of making materials

Makes materials instantly available

Easy to differentiate the material to suit new classes

Materials can be copied into email messages, discussion lists, blogs and wikis and made available to a wider audience via the Internet

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ABC Cards, Prompt Cards, Flashcards and Turn and Learn cards - using colourful large fonts

Wordsnakes Vocab Exercises, e.g. allocating items to a table Conjugating verbs Reordering and unjumbling exercises or lines

(textsalad) Expanding a plain text by inserting appropriate

adjectives and adverbs Gap-filling exercises, e.g. adjectives in English Cloze procedure Matching exercises Multiple-choice exercises - including exercises

enhanced by pictures

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Word Processing-based Activities for a Language Class http://edvista.com/claire/wp.html and

Language Learning Techniques Implemented through Word Processing

http://www.vancestevens.com/wordproc.htm

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Idea generation Focusing Structuring

Drafting Evaluating Reviewing Editing

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Motivation Accuracy Concentration Promotion of drafting and redrafting Errors = ephemeral Immediate audience

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The ability to send messages one-to-one or one-to-many with equal ease and speed,

The provisional nature of text to be sent out and the flexibility of incoming text for exploitation in other applications,

Being able to receive and send messages when convenient.

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Hybrid nature of e-mail: electronic mail engenders features of both written and spoken language

E-mail texts resemble oral communication in that ellipsis and colloquialisms are more prominent there are fewer cohesive lexical items they tend to be short

For a comparison between word processed and emailed texts, see Biesenbach-Lucas S. & Weasenforth D. (2001). Email and word-processing in the ESL classroom: how the medium affects the message. Language Learning and Technology 5(1), 135-165. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num1/weasenforth/default.html

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extends language learning time and place provides a context for real-world

communication and authentic interaction expands topics beyond classroom-based

ones promotes student-centered language

learning. encourages equal opportunity

participation motivates by removing the fear of making

errors opens up group work possibilities allows incoming messages to be imported

into a word-processed file or into authoring packages in order to be exploited for their linguistic content

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Getting to know each other Sharing and comparing experiences International research Developing cultural awareness

Exploring the traditions and festivals of other countries

Researching the target language country through the Contact us section of websites

Story-telling Debating issues Cross-curricular projects

See also: Gonglewski, M., Meloni, C. and J. Brant (2001). Using e-mail in foreign language teaching: Rationale and suggestions. The Internet TESL Journal VII(3). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Meloni-Email.html

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Decide on: the timetable for correspondence, whether pupils will work individually or

in teams, the topics to cover, the amount of target language to use

and when, and the uses to which email will be put to

develop or consolidate learning

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eTwinning, an initiative from the European Commission: http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm

ePals: http://www.epals.com European Schoolnet:

http://www.eun.org European Schools Project:

http://www.europeanschoolsproject.org

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