Motivating High School students can sometimes be an uphill task. Movies, pop music & video games can all be great suggestions, but usually there is way too much English. What we want is something that’s much simpler, shorter and quick.
And these days that would be ….. Twitter!
I’ve never seen a good reason to use Twitter before, but this is a great tip. Just get your kids to follow a famous movie or pop star. Imagine getting personalised emails from Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, ( or even Barack Obama). The messages are all 140 characters long so are a perfect length for learners.
Technically it’s easy to sign up with the students’ cell phones and you could go even further by getting them to transcribe a diary or do class presentations on the person they are following. Plus it’s all real, real English!
Who are you following? Baby Monkey maybe?
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
It’s certainly effective. It’s also worth getting higher level students to subscribe to or bookmark blogs of foreign celebrities. I learned quite a bit from following a few manzai acts.
Especially, the teenagers get really bored when the teachers use chalk and board. And now it’s facebook ann twitter time, for our digital natives, they will certainly like the idea of using twitter.