Developing writing/speaking skills on Yahoo discussion groups

GOALS enable students to apply prior knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary in a communicative context

It facilitates cultural learning from real life situations among your students; It may be used in debating different issues, researching the target language community and developing cultural awareness.

ICT REQUIERMENTS Multimedia laboratory –Computers –Internet connection –Headphones –Microphones

The students should be able to use Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Mail, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer. They also have to provide their own yahoo addresses.

LESSON PREPARATION find native English universities via the Internet and set up a virtual partnership. contact them to outline plans and collect addresses for your students and subscribe them to the discussion group.

You can either set up your own Yahoo Group or join an already created one.

LESSON STARTER familiarize the students with LANGUAGE USE, TOPIC AREA and TASK. review exemplar messages on a board. set up the TOPIC DISCUSSION

LESSON BODY Students now start discussing with their virtual correspondents on the topic of the day and using the target language. They may either use instant messages or s to exchange their ideas.

INSTANT MESSAGES Instant messages via the Internet are a form of synchronous communication. Participants type messages to each other, which everyone in the 'chat room' can read. Text chat does not need much bandwidth, making it an easy form of synchronous communication to establish from a technological point of view.

It can be an ideal environment for intermediate and advanced students to develop skills of spontaneous communication in the foreign language. Conversation text can also be copied and pasted into a Word document for further work.

EXAMPLE Exploring the traditions and festivals of other countries. exchange key statements in mother tongue, with photos, images and even a sound file of a relevant song attached. create presentations in the target language containing text, image and sound. research the significance, history and development of particular festivals in their mother tongue and then collaborate with students in the virtual group to identify target language for the theme. produce an e-exhibition in the target language, housed on the university website and linking to a similar page on the website of the partner university.

MESSAGES is a cheap, fast, informal and easy-to-use method of written communication with a real audience, giving students time to draft and redraft messages until satisfied and confident with the content. Incoming target language messages give students motivating opportunities to cope with reading unknown language and materials such as digital photos and voice recordings can also be exchanged as attachments.

EXAMPLE Exchanging s on a topical issue Themes such as traffic congestion, litter, junk food or reality television could be used. Students work in teams to agreed headings within each theme, writing initially in mother tongue and amassing useful target language from incoming s. At a given point in the project, each team switches to writing in the target language. Each team creates a final document, in which they make a set of recommendations in the target language. These can be shared between partner universities or placed on respective websites.

CONCLUSION –produce a short written text with some questions and statements expressing opinions and reasons for these; –new cultural facts; –express in simple target language how these compare to their own experience.