USING ACTIVITIES IN MOODLE FOR DEVELOPING THE LANGUAGE SKILL WRITING Anka Veselinova, MA, Lector of English Nevena Ristova, MSc, Teaching assistant of IT

About… MOODLE : Course Management System – CMS TEACHING LANGUAGE WRITING SKILLS MOODLE COMPONENTS FOR WRITING Forum Wiki Chat Assignments

moodle.mit.edu.mk Virtual Learning Environment CD in this case stands for “compact discs.” Virtual Learning Environment A challenge for creative teachers due to the rich collection of resources and activities that can be inserted as a content of the course Offers the possibility to access all the course contents at anytime from anywhere

Teaching language writing skills A piece of paper, a pen, and a topic is not enough to intrigue students’ writing In order to get valuable texts from students’ writing, teachers must provide them with good instructions and a context of the assignment Writing enables students to take time and to think about the structures and the vocabulary they use Encourages them to be more creative and use their imagination for academic, creative or business writing 4

Moodle components for writing MOODLE’s main features are related to two principal categories named as resources and activities We recommend teachers to motivate students to write with activities such as forum, wiki, chat and assignments. 5

Moodle components for writing: Forum The Forum is a space for having discussions on different topics where the participants share their attitudes for a certain issue in a form of a message which can be commented by the teacher and the other students/participants The teacher can provide the student with a constructive feedback about the language structures that he/she used for expressing himself/herself. Offers the possibility to the teacher to assess their participation in class and after class by showing an organized table of all discussions that happened among the participants. 6

Extract from the forum: ‘Why are you learning English’ within the course English language 1, created on the MOODLE platform of MIT University 7

Moodle components for writing: Wiki Wiki is a kind of a website that can be edited by all participants, directly in the summary box which doesn’t require any knowledge of a certain program for web designing. Wiki helps developing not only the writing style of each participant but also the sense for working in a team where everyone has a certain segment to deal with 8

Moodle components for writing: Chat Chat is a tool that provides a useful way of starting a conversation in a certain point of time among the participants as a better tool than the insynchronic message sending in the forum options. 9

Moodle components for writing: Assignments A space on the platform where they will gather, check and assess students’ work in a form of an essay, short fiction, research paper, a power point presentation, a text inspired by an image, audio, text, video etc. There are 4 kinds of assignments: Upload a single document Advanced uploading of files Online text Offline activity 10

Extract from the editing space of an assignment within the course English language 1, created on the MOODLE platform of MIT University 11

Conclusion MOODLE as an advanced technology enables teachers to bring virtual and innovative spirit in the classroom that motivates students to develop their writing skills in the process of learning a foreign language. This platform offers a range of writing activities that replace the traditional classroom and encourages students to improve their writing skills by taking part in interesting topics given by the teacher in a form of a Forum, Chat, Wiki and Assignments. We emphasize the teacher’s power to implement MOODLE tools in everyday language classroom by creating space for these diverse writing activities in order to help students upgrade their writing abilities 12