Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[amyloum]

hey guys!

I'm interested in using technolgoy to make to teach EFL. I'm an instructor of EFL and I teach adults. Through my experience I've noticed that students face a great difficulty to produce good quality essays and they are poorly motivated to write. I'm thinking of using the internet as a tool to facilitate the writing process for my students or in other words I want to design an online writing course. However, I'm facing some difficulties to design this task. Could you plz give me some tips about what should I include in this task or how can I make it work for my students? What are the possible pitfalls that I might face?

thanx in advance

[pugachevV]

The hard part about writing in a foreign language is looking up all the words you don't know, so an online dictionary is the first thing I would recommend.
You can also buy a version of the Oxford Concise English Dictionary on a disc and call it up with a couple of keystrokes.
Programmes such as Google Translate, will also give you a rough translation into English from many languages, which with a bit of work, you can make into acceptable English.

[Lorikeet]

I'd say you should think about how and what you want them to write. Are you going to have them make their own blogs? Are you going to have them respond to each other? Will you give a topic and have them respond on your blog? Will you have a forum? Will you have them just write and discuss it on a forum? If you know the answers to those questions, you can better plan.

[Corey]

Maybe try the teachers' forum
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