Tag: interaction

Why bother with blogging?

Why bother with blogging?

Because it’s fun and it enhances language learning. Today begins the second-year undergraduate remote blogging course for the third year running. I started the ball rolling by posting a message in the forum welcoming students and asking the following question: why develop a blogging course for students enrolled in English? The short answer was because…

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Masked, bimodal and distance teaching

Masked, bimodal and distance teaching

Radio silence since September! Did I lose my voice? What happened? Well here’s what happened. I fumbled my way, masked and panting through September. Quite often breathless and sometimes even dizzy as I rushed from classroom to classroom.  I became expert at mad gesticulating to make up for mumbling in a foreign language. Only muffled…

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Battling with dialogic discourse

Battling with dialogic discourse

The electricity was rewired in my study. Okay. You rewired the electricity in my study. Credit where credit is due. You rewired the electricity in my study whilst I was out. My first proper out since lockdown began. Why is that significant? Just so that people know clearly where their sympathies should lie. This out…

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Chattering Classes 2

Chattering Classes 2

Online real-time written conversations in English. A facet of digital literacy. As explained in the previous post on this subject, we have been using online chats with our third-year undergraduates as a means of replacing classroom conversation workshops during lockdown. In the last week of online chatting, I took the opportunity of informally asking students…

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Creative Confinement (Blogging Course 2020)

Creative Confinement (Blogging Course 2020)

All through lockdown, second-year, distance-learning EFL students at Paul Valéry University have been persevering with their blogging course and finally (10 weeks into the 12-week course) have set up their blogs and begun posting. This is only the second year that this course has existed and it still feels fresh, exciting and worthwhile. In addition,…

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