TEXTING : Teaching/Learning Technique

Do you get annoyed when your students concentrate on using their mobile phones to text each other rather than focusing on the lesson? How could we harness this enthusiasm for the purposes of English study? This month we look at ideas for exploiting text messaging in class. Next month we’ll see what else a mobile phone can do.

Fast textingTell students your phone number then get them to prepare to write a text message. Explain that their aim is to type in an exact copy of a text you will show them. When ready they should send it to you. The first three perfect answers you receive will be the winners. Reveal a prepared short story (using any grammar items you want to practise) written on the board or a large piece of paper. Students must now rapidly enter and send the text. The unpredictable speed of phone transmission will add an element of randomness to which messages you receive first. Check the texts carefully and reject those with any mistakes.

Mini sagasThe standard text has a limit of 160 characters (letters and spaces). This can be used to set an interesting challenge, especially for higher level students, e.g. ‘Write a complete story that has a beginning, middle and end in less than 160 characters’. Try other ideas e.g. ‘Write a complaint to a shop’, ‘Write a poem’, etc. Make the writing more challenging by requiring the text to be exactly 160 characters – not any more or less.

SMS translation(Note: SMS = a ‘text message’ or a ‘text’.) Download and make copies of an SMS dictionary from the internet (web-search: ‘SMS dictionary’). This will tell you lots of abbreviations such as CUL8R (See you later) LOL (Laugh out loud) T2GO (Time to Go). Distribute a short message to groups and get them to use the SMS dictionary to translate it into using abbreviations. Then do the reverse - hand out a short printed message that uses some of the abbreviations and ask groups to prepare a translation into ‘real’ English.

SMS consequencesEach group of students discusses and writes the first line of a story (max. 50 characters) then sends it to the next group. Each group then continues the story they receive (again max. 50) and sends it on again. This time they finish the story (60 characters). There will be some fun reading the results.

Predictive textMany phones have predictive text – i.e. the phone guesses the most likely word you want based on which keys you press. But this can lead to some errors too. For example, typing the word ‘home’ uses the same keystrokes as ‘good’ (‘ghi’ share the same key - as do ‘mno’ and ‘d-e-f’) and the phone may choose the wrong word. Write a short text including some of these errors e.g. “Last might I arrived good at 6 o’block” and see if students can work out the correct words by studying their phone keyboards for letters that share keys.

Using Computers to Teach English

Although less familiar than word processors, mulitmedia presentation programs (e.g. Microsoft PowerPoint) are a good way of storing and showing images and text in unusual ways – as a high-tech slide show. Here are some teaching ideas, all suitable for classrooms with only a single computer.

Fast flash pictures
· Select 10-15 interesting pictures off the Internet (www.google.com has an excellent image search facility).
· Paste one full screen image onto each slide of a presentation.
· Set the display time for each image to 1 second.
· Gather students around the screen and then play the 'show' once – each picture will flash past quickly.
· Afterwards students meet up in small groups and try to construct a list of all the items they can remember seeing in the pictures. After 5 minutes replay the show – and then again whenever it seems useful.

Fast flash vocabulary

Do the same – but instead of pictures, show recently studied words (maybe all from one lexical area, e.g. kitchen words).

Fast flash stories

You could extend the Fast flash pictures activity by telling students that all the pictures connect to make a story. Students discuss, work out and write a short narrative.

Fast flash texts
· Prepare a slide with a short written text on it (maybe from the next coursebook unit?).
· Make sure the print is large enough to be readable by people standing in front of it.
· Make a second blank slide. Set up the program so that you can manually flick between text slide and blank slide with a mouse click.
· Start with the blank slide visible. Divide the class into teams of 4-5 students.
· Ask an easy gist question and get the first group to come to the screen.
· Flash the text at them for a very short time e.g. 10 seconds – then send them away to discuss and come to a joint answer.
· While they are discussing, the second, third team etc. will also come and see the same flashed text.
· When all have seen and written their answer, repeat the activity, moving on to more difficult questions (and longer viewing times).
· At some point you'll need to show them a normal printed text – but the flash technique can be an interesting and exciting lead-in.

Fast flash dictation
· Select a short text and divide it into short 'chunks' (i.e. coherent pieces shorter than a sentence).
· Put one chunk, in large print, on each slide, each followed by a blank slide, so that playing all the slides in sequence will cycle through the whole text.
· In class, display all the slides once, giving students time to read and understand them.
· Then play it through again more slowly, briefly flashing a text chunk followed by a blank slide.
· Students should write down each chunk. Flash the texts faster than it would be possible to copy them down – so that students have to work on catching the whole meaning and structure of each chunk rather than just copying the individual words.

Teaching English with Authentic Materials

Catalogues, shop brochures and leaflets are a type of authentic material often available free and in quantity. Here are some ideas for using these, whether printed in English or another language. (If you don't have such material locally, you could use advertisements cut out from magazines instead.)

Catalogue search You'll need multiple copies of the same brochure or catalogue for this listening comprehension task. Prepare about 6-10 questions that require learners to understand a short but detailed description of what a person is looking for e.g. "Mary loves to pick flowers from her garden and wants to display them in her home – but has nowhere to put them." Learners look through their catalogue and find the best product, writing it next to the person's name. This is an interesting task because it doesn't lead to single 'right' answers, but to further comparison and discussion when everyone has made their choices.

Catalogue raceA similar idea – but this time you'll need English language catalogues to make it useful. Prepare about 15-20 short, snappy questions that require students to fast-read through the text and find specific information. Example questions: "How much is a DBX23 toaster?"; "What colour is the After All perfume bottle?"; "How high can the toy frog jump?". Give students time to familiarize themselves with the organization of the catalogues – then ask questions fairly quickly, forcing them to flick through the pages and read fast.

'Killer product' Learners should browse their catalogue and choose a 'killer' (i.e. really brilliant) product. They then have 10-15 minutes to prepare a short presentation to persuade the class why their product is the one everyone should buy. They can invent any new information about it, add new features, even change the purpose of it. When all are ready everyone makes their sales pitch one by one and at the end the class votes for the one product they most want to own.

Bargain hunting Choose about 7-10 unusual catalogue items. Make teams. Give out an ima

ginary £200 to each team. Auction the products one by one, giving elaborate, enticing descriptions (but not saying the original prices). Teams bid for products they want to buy; highest bid wins each item. At the end, reveal the real prices and calculate who has achieved the best bargains.

Christmas shoppingAsk learners to think of a friend or relative and write a short description (age, personality etc) and a brief list of the kind of things they like and don't like. When ready, they should pass this list on to another student. Now hand out some Christmas or New Year 'gift idea' catalogues. Students work in pairs. Assign each pair an imaginary amount of money e.g. £25. Each pair now has two people to 'shop for'. They should look at the products, make suggestions to each other, justify choices, offer alternatives and finally reach a compromise of one present for each person. When finished they meet up with the original list writers and explain what they have decided to buy and why. The writers can then tell them whether they chose well for the actual person or not!