Internet English - Spring 2006

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Internet English is a one-credit, one-semester elective EFL course for students at Kyoto Sangyo University, running from April through mid-July 2006. The purpose of the course is to provide students with the experience of interacting/conversing with people from around the world in English, while simultaneously learning how to communicate on the open Web. Students meet once a week for 14 weeks, come from different academic departments, and range in level from false beginner to intermediate. Most have studied English from textbooks since junior high school, but for many it is the first time they are actually using it in contexts outside the classroom. Your comments on their posts and photos would make a big difference to them. Listed below are links to their sites:

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Comments

  1. Nancy McKeand wrote:

    Thanks, Aaron! I had a great time reading their posts.

    Posted 19 May 2006 at 9:48 am

  2. Emily wrote:

    Hey, fun! I’ll take a look.

    Posted 19 May 2006 at 9:57 am

  3. EFL Geek wrote:

    At my last job I proposed a similar course but was turned down because the internet has nothing to do with learning English - go figure. Anyhow I should put together a new proposal for my current job.

    I’ll definitely be looking at your students blogs shortly.

    Posted 19 May 2006 at 12:55 pm

  4. Nathan Lowell wrote:

    I think I left a comment on each blog. Great fun seeing what they wrote about.

    Thanks, Aaron!

    Posted 19 May 2006 at 9:58 pm

  5. EFL Geek wrote:

    Aaron,

    I thought I would mention that I have started a new EFL & ESL Wiki over at my site. It’s fully integrated with my blog and forums requiring only one login to use. commenting on blog entries still does not require login.

    I am looking forward to contributions by yourself and if you could post a little promo on your blog I would be very grateful. Sorry for the off-topic comment.

    EFL Geek

    Posted 20 May 2006 at 9:16 pm

  6. David Gardiner Garcia wrote:

    What a great idea to learn a new language. I will make sure to make lots of comments so that they get really motivated.

    Posted 21 May 2006 at 11:48 am

  7. Aaron wrote:

    Hi Nancy, Emily, Nathan, David, and EFL Geek. Thank you so much for your comments, and especially those you left on my student’s sites. I am sure they will be very excited to see those. It will really give them a boost of motivation to write and share more.

    EFL Geek, nice to see you have started a wiki related to EFL/ESL. I will link to it in an upcoming post.

    Posted 22 May 2006 at 7:33 am

  8. Emily wrote:

    Are you doing other things in the class in addition to their blogs?

    Posted 22 May 2006 at 7:51 am

  9. daniel wrote:

    i’ll be interested in hearing at the end about the students experience with blogging in English…especially regarding how many of them plan to continue their blog.

    keep us posted.

    Posted 22 May 2006 at 8:40 pm

  10. EFL Geek wrote:

    Left comments on two of your students blogs.

    Posted 22 May 2006 at 9:18 pm

  11. Aaron wrote:

    Emily, we have discussions in class about the process, and often examine in more detail the things we experience online: forms of English slang, patterns of expression, new vocab, content of posts and photos, etc. We are also studying how to write better sentences and paragraphs, as well as correcting some of the posts we have already made online. I try to show them how to communicate better in the internet medium. We have short weekly quizzes as well!

    Daniel, I will have them do a reflective evaluation at the end of the course. In the past, most students expressed an interest in continuing their participatory use of Web applications, but few (to my knowledge) actually continued. I wonder why this is? It would make a good research project to follow up on that over time.

    Thanks for you comments, EFL Geek.

    Posted 23 May 2006 at 8:16 am

  12. towmoons wrote:

    Aha!
    you are Rie’s teacher!!!

    Posted 10 Jun 2006 at 11:31 am

  13. ed wrote:

    Great to see this I’ll check out all the above links and be sure to leave some comments. We’ve just started a classblog witth my pre-int Thai learners. I may well change this next term to individual blogs, using a similar format to this. I’ve found it quite good going so far the learners are all motivated by and use computers alot in their own time so it just seems like a natural progression to this.

    I’m also doing a (materials and resources) diploma assignment about using blogs in ELT. I think I’m going to do a writting skill - focusing on genre analyisis - the genre being ‘comments’ left on blogs - useful and applicable. Perhaps discourse/grammar as my supporting system not sure yet.

    Anyhow please have a lok at our blog and leave some comments, or contact me direct.

    cheers,
    Ed

    Posted 12 Sep 2006 at 4:49 pm

  14. Aaron wrote:

    Hi Ed…It’s great to see your students writing on the internet like that, especially when it motivates them. I’d really love to read your paper when you finish it. Please pass it along.

    Posted 12 Sep 2006 at 8:59 pm

  15. ed wrote:

    Hi Aaron,

    sure thing, I’ll pass it on when it’s all over. Thanks for commenting on my students posts we are happy to have a visitor from the real world! We had it up on our IWBs and it looked great!

    I’m going to do a lesson using blogs including a brief genre analysis of blog ‘comments’ and then putting that knowledge into practice by writing some.

    As discourse conventions of blog comments I have brevity (though not one word), relevance, writen-spoken style, questions, paragraphing, continuation of theme/conversation, links, can you think of any other comment conventions? do you agree with these??

    Anyhow my students, in 3 classes, have enjoyed using a teacher-student (class) blog this term. I’ve given some in house training to 5 of my colleagues who intend to introduce blogging with their classes too.

    Next term I’m going to ask students of one class to take the next step and keep a personal blog and we’ll link it to the teacher blog. Look out blogosphere, Thai EFL is coming your way!!

    regards,
    Ed

    Posted 17 Sep 2006 at 12:14 pm

  16. Ryohei KAKU wrote:

    Hey Aaron!

    It’s been a while since I last talked to you last time, hasn’t it? I’ve been eventually finishing up my thesis (I have only a month left for that…ah!) therefore, I’m having a real hell this month.

    Anyway, it’s great to see how you are doing at Kyoto Sangyo University and your EFL students writing on the internet like that. I’m really into their experiences and what they wrote about!

    Hopefully I will hear from you sometime soon and please keep us posted! Merci:)

    Salut

    Ryohei

    Posted 17 Nov 2006 at 1:13 pm

  17. Shantha-Sri Lanka wrote:

    Nice work. I visited Shota’s weblog and found it interesting.

    Posted 21 Feb 2007 at 12:37 am

  18. Aaron wrote:

    Thanks Shantha. I’m sure Shota would appreciate your comments.

    Are you from Sri Lanka?

    Posted 21 Feb 2007 at 9:40 am

  19. Shantha-Sri Lanka wrote:

    Yes. I am a University English Instructor from Sri Lanka, presently on a research attachment on CALL at Edinburgh, UK

    Posted 21 Feb 2007 at 8:01 pm

  20. Aaron wrote:

    Sounds like an adventure, Shantha!

    Posted 22 Feb 2007 at 7:53 am

  21. Shantha-Sri Lanka wrote:

    Perhaps, a pedagogic adventure,

    Posted 22 Feb 2007 at 6:02 pm

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