(Social Networking Sites for Teaching English, Part-1 & Social Networking Sites for Teaching English, Part-2)
Social Networking Sites for Teaching English, Part-3
Subtitle: Using Facebook to Teach English – I
by Tarun Patel
Facebook is the social networking site with most of its members from YGen. In addition to having a network of people, Facebook empowers its members with a variety of applications which could help them improve their skills and share their expertise as well.
For language teachers Facebook could prove to be a boon if utilized well. I am going to divide this article into two parts. In part-1 we will focus on how to utilize Facebook without applications and the second part will deal with the Facebook with Applications.
Here are some ways to use Facebook for teaching English:
FORM TEACHING GROUPS
Ask your students to become a member of Facebook. Start communicating with them on Facebook and keep an eye on their language while they are sending messages. Instruct them to not to use the short terms for IM (Instant Messaging).
Give them a time when all are online of even it would work if they visit Facebook at their ease and keep chatting with the group members. The role of teacher in this task is going to be that of moderator.
How to create a group! ? J
This video covers how to create a group on Facebook. Facebook groups are generally used to create community organizations online. Making a group on Facebook is easy and you can create one in minutes.
Before creating a group on Facebook, you should read the terms of service. Facebook notes that groups that attack a specific person or group of people (e.g. racist, sexist, or other hate groups) will not be tolerated. Creating such a group will result in the immediate termination of your Facebook account.
USING Facebook PAGES
A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your ideas with Facebook users. You can create Facebook page a few minutes with Facebook’s simple interface.
With Facebook pages, you can interact with your students. Once you have set up a page, you have a specific address where your learners can drop in and interact.
The following are the features of Facebook Pages which could be optimized for teaching English:
– Voting: You can make your students write articles, poems, short stories etc. the other students can vote for the content if they like it. This will motivate those who will write and also to those who will read. Also the voting will bring in a competition and make the students improve the quality of their writings.
– Comments: Also the teacher and students can comment on the write ups. Teacher can especially correct if the students have made some mistakes in their expressions. For example, the teacher can rewrite the erroneous sentences in the correct form and indirectly teach students to write correctly.
– The Facebook Pages also have sections like ‘Info’, ‘Resources’, ‘Photos’. ‘Video’ and ‘Notes’. These areas could be utilized to give certain tasks to the students. The teacher can put the details regarding good books, blogs or websites on ‘Resources’ section of the page, or s/he can write the instructions for the students in the ‘Notes’ section.
It is always good to write and read on ‘hot to teach effectively’. But the things could be tasted only by putting them into practice. So unless we use Facebook for teaching, it would not be worth going on talking about ‘what more’ could be done.
Here I take a pause in the series. The next article will have details on various applications that could be used to make the English teaching process more effective.
Wish you a great week ahead!
–Tarun