Week 6 The change

In my previous post I mentioned that I would like to use Nicenet to make change in one of my English classes. I will post the assignment on a weekly basis supplemented by corresponding links (dictionaries, corpora, videos, podcasts etc). I will also develop a grading rubric for their posts which takes account of content and a linguistic aspect individually.

The students are expected to post at least twice, one post being their response to the assignment, another the comment to the post of their group-mate. The first assignment will be posted next week, the posts are due till the end of the week. I’d like to experiment with assignment emphasising their variety. I assume that all students have access to home Internet.

I believe that supplementing regular conventional classes with a weekly written assignment on the Nicenet will help the students to focus on what they say and how they say it. When giving oral responses in class most students translate in their minds from their mother tongue to English forgetting about relevant grammar, vocabulary, speech patterns etc. There’s the teacher in class whom they can always ask if they are not sure “how to say it”, while in the online classroom the teacher only announces the assignment and “listens” to their replies. The students have all the resources available plus the time to think carefully, which they usually lack in class. I don’t want to try to kill a lot of birds with one stone, but I do hope that this activity will have a “carryover” to their oral speech, and using corpora, English-English dictionaries, choosing proper vocabulary and keeping in mind grammar rules will get into the students’ regular practice.