Leda Andoniou and Kosmas Vlachos Hellenic 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 messages, discussion lists, blogs and wikis and made available to a wider audience via the Internet 2

 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 3

 Word Processing-based Activities for a Language Class and  Language Learning Techniques Implemented through Word Processing 4

 Idea generation  Focusing  Structuring  Drafting  Evaluating  Reviewing  Editing 5

 Motivation  Accuracy  Concentration  Promotion of drafting and redrafting  Errors = ephemeral  Immediate audience 6

 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. 8

 Hybrid nature of electronic mail engenders features of both written and spoken language  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 ed texts, see Biesenbach-Lucas S. & Weasenforth D. (2001). and word-processing in the ESL classroom: how the medium affects the message. Language Learning and Technology 5(1), Retrieved from 9

 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 10

 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 in foreign language teaching: Rationale and suggestions. The Internet TESL Journal VII(3). Retrieved from

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 will be put to develop or consolidate learning 12

 eTwinning, an initiative from the European Commission: x.htm x.htm  ePals:  European Schoolnet:  European Schools Project: