ELLs+and+Twitter

ELLs and Twitter

Twitter is a social media site that allows users to connect and communicate with one another. A major aspect of twitter is the hashtag (#) which allows users to tag whatever they like. Users can search and view other hashtags to find similar users who might have something in common.

In terms of teaching ELL students, teachers and educators do use twitter to discuss the education of these students. #ELLChat is a group discussion led by educators of English language learners. These discussions take place each week online for an hour, where members discuss best practices and policies to educating ELL students. This #ELLChat has built up a plethora of resources regarding ELL students and how best to teach them. Members of the chat can ask questions and post answers, as well as debate with others. Something really interesting to know about how the topics are chosen is that the co-hosts of the show search all week to see any news posted about ELL students. Topics for the show come from people who are posting their own questions and writing about problems they may be having that seem common with many tweeters.

In terms of ELL students in general, Twitter may be one of the easier social media sites to use. Where only 140 characters are allowed per tweet, there is not a lot of information posted in any one tweet. Some tweets are merely a sentence or two, so it may be a good starting place to learn English. Twitter is a social media source that is constantly being updated. With such quick and constant updates, ELLs can be exposed to a variety of new vocabulary words. This vocabulary could range from slang to academic, all of which are important for ELLs to understand. The difficulty of deciphering vocabulary depends on the ELLs' level of English.

Something else that is useful with Twitter is that you get to pick and choose the accounts you follow. For ELLs, this means that they get to follow accounts of topics or people that interest them. By doing this they can learn English while maintaining an interest in a specific topic. ELLs can use hashtags to find topics that interest them and subsequently people who are interested in similar things as them. This could allow ELLs to make connections with other people and practice their English via Twitter (direct message, retweeting, etc).

In addition to ELLs using Twitter in their own personal time, teachers can also use Twitter at school to assist ELLs. Again, because Twitter is limited to 140 characters, it can act as a quick writing activity to help ELLs practice their conversational English. Twitter can help ELLs understand point of view- by showing multiple tweets about the same topic the teacher can help ELLs understand different view points. Twitter can also help ELLs work on their collaboration, whether from student to student or from teacher to student.

Overall, Twitter has many resources and activities that can be helpful for ELLs and those who teach ELLs.

Resources: [] @http://www.kaplaninternational.com/blog/how-to-use-twitter-to-learn-english/ @http://conference.pixel-online.net/ICT4LL2012/common/download/Paper_pdf/211-IBT41-FP-Harmandaoglu-ICT2012.pdf