Twitter - making ELT on trend!!!

Almost everyone has a Twitter account now. You can find almost everything ranging from your friends' most recent status to private lives of Hollywood stars. Although being criticised for amplifying mundane, Twitter is a very powerful sharing community where teachers can find a constant supply of useful articles, website links, lesson plans and many more. Indeed, some teachers have already taken advantage of the Twitter's format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies. Like what the famous educator, Russell Standard said, "[Twitter] could replace regular search engines as a means of finding classroom ideas".

Here are some ideas how English teachers can go with the Twitter flow for their teaching.

1. Comparing different views by subscribing to different mainstream newspaper

Teachers can provide the classes different mainstream and independent news feed with different perspective/ biases as a way to compare and contrast different views on current issues

Are the two views towards Donald Trump the same or different?

2. Tracking useful links and resources through hashtag 

There are always useful links and resources that teachers want to share to their students. Teachers can create their own unique hashtags for their classes so that students can refer to a collection of resources when they want to do revision later.

When students search this unique hashtag #YOYOslang, all the slangs that were taught by this teacher will appear.

3. Write a story or a poem

The 140-character format of Twitter is perfect for collective story/ poem writing. Some teachers also like to take advantage of this format for seriealized writing in small chunks to build up the suspense of the story. 

An example of how students can build up on a mysterious story opening provided by the teacher. The hashtag can help everyone in the class to see the development of the story so far.

4. Giving individual feedback

Teachers can use the "Message" function to send personal feedback on students' assignments or students can in turn ask their teachers questions privately.

Teachers can share a particular tweet individually in the private chat box to let the student know clearly which tweet you are referring to.

5. Sharing quotes or proverbs

One way to make an argument more convincing is to support your elaboration with a quote or probers. Teachers can share or retweet some useful quotes or proverbs and demonstrate how to use them to support their ideas.

6. Role Play

Similar to sharing quotes or proverbs, teachers can ask students to pretend certain famous fictional characters and talk like them.

An example of talking like Miss Honey from the book, Matilda.

7. Writing reviews

The Twitter format is a great way to write precise and concise micro reviews of different movies and books.

An example of a film review for the movie, The Danish Girl.

8. Playing word games

Post a daily challenge asking kids to unscramble anagrams, contribute synonyms or antonyms or give a definition for any vocabulary or spelling words as another way of getting them more involved in the English lesson.

Students can retweet and reply to this questions to build up a list of synonyms  on their own.

9. Facilitating discussions

Teachers can use Twitter to continue with the unfinished discussion in class or even open up a new topic to let students discuss intelligently. 

An example of extended literature discussion at home.

10. Assigning homework, posting exam syllabus and keeping parents in touch

Teachers can tweet about the daily assignment or the upcoming dates for tests and exams. Parents can also subscribe to the teachers' account to get the updated news of what their kids have to do in the next few weeks.

Sources

50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2016, from http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom 

R., Stannard. (2011). How English language teachers can go with the Twitter flow. Retrieved March 26, 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/11/twitter-for-english-language-teachers 

Hope you all find the ideas useful and keep your teaching on trend! xx