Leading an anonymous discussion
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| You can learn how to use chat:
to practise lexical competence and to develop fluency for expressing your opinion, agreeing, disagreeing, giving arguments
to practise turn-taking/conversation strategies in discussions (reacting spontaneously to arguments of others)
to practise oral interaction
to raise language awareness
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- Link to a tool you might use >>
In order to perform this activity you need a group of between 5 and 10 students.
The task is to discuss a controversial topic anonymously.
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Each participant logs onto the chatroom using a nickname that hides his/her true identity; -->
the teacher reveals his/her true identity and takes on the role of discussion leader;
after the discussion, the log files may be saved and/or printed out;
Enter the command "save" (without quotes) in order to save the complete chat as html-file.
incorrect language forms and remaining open questions can be discussed in class.
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Various studies comparing electronic and face-to-face discussion have shown that:
participation in electronic discussion is more balanced: also shyer students are more likely to contribute;
electronic discussion is similar to written texts in terms of language complexity;
electronic discussion also resembles face-to-face discussion as it is spontaneous and proceeds quickly;
electronic discussion promotes peer-to-peer correction as well as auto correction. -->
For more details see
Warschauer (1996) >>
Tudini (2003) >>
Of course, online chatting cannot replace face-to-face interaction. It should be considered as an alternative instructional method that can be used to promote oral proficiency. |
- View a possible result >>
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