In this post, with the help of ELT experts Lindsay Clandfield and Jill Hadfield, we’re delving into the online world. We’re discussing how their Teacher Development title, Interaction Online, can be used for English language teaching and learning.
Jill is based in New Zealand and Lindsay lives in Spain, so we felt very lucky to be able to catch up with both authors in the same place at the same time! What’s even more impressive is that the pair wrote their newest Teacher Development title over Skype. With this in mind, we can’t think of a better placed duo to talk about how technology can facilitate human to human interaction in the language learning classroom.
For years, forums and chat rooms have been used to deliver online learning. Sadly, though, the activities surrounding these often revolve around writing and discussing. In light of this, Lindsay and Jill felt like doing something new with the tools that teachers and learners have at their fingertips. Together, they set themselves the challenge of providing a variety of different ways to develop English language skills through online interaction.
Lindsay and Jill have come up with lots of creative ways to create the same buzz of a speaking or writing activity, within the realms of the online world! Take social media, for instance – just by looking at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you can tell that people really enjoy writing things to one another and they get a lot of pleasure out of doing so. Lindsay and Jill’s aim is to empower teachers like you to be able to bring the same level of enthusiasm into your language learning classrooms.
If you want to watch the full conversation between our awesome duo, just click on the video below!
If you enjoyed listening to Lindsay and Jill, you might also want to watch Scott Thornbury as he chats all about language!