Activities for promoting Communication and Collaboration

1.

Tool Web page xranormal.com

Interaction Student pair
Roles Both students sit in front of one computer
and start creating their own characters
while sharing opinions and ideas. Once
they have their characters, setting and all
the elements for their video ready, they
must start sharing their opinions and ideas
in order to come up with an interesting
dialog that they will write.
Choice Students decide on the characteristics of
their own characters and the things those
characters are going to say as well as the
pronunciation they would have, etc.
Reason to listen and respond Students must cooperate in the generation
of ideas since they both have to come up
with an interesting dialog for their video.
They will later share it in class with the rest
of the students.

2.

Tool Social Network: Facebook

Interaction Students and members of the class.
Roles One student is going to upload a picture
one particular day. The picture should be
related to a topic that the teacher provided
previously. All students in the class must
take a look at the picture that has been
uploaded and decide if they like it or nor by
clicking on the button Like. After that, they
must write they reason why they like it or
not. Next day, another student is going to
upload a different picture and the process
will be repeated. When all students have
finished, the picture that has more likes is
the winner.
 Choice One student decides which picture is going
to upload and he/she is expected to
support his/her decision. The rest of the
students have the right to decide whether
they like the picture or not and also provide
some arguments that support their
decision.
Reasons to listen and respond When voting and giving arguments and
reasons to support decisions, it is common
to see debates among students who
defend their point of view. This helps to
improve communication and make the use
of the target language easier and almost
unnoticeable.

3.

Tool The use of the web page interpals.net

Interaction Student and off-site partners
Roles Each student would have a topic once in a
week. He/she has to exchange ideas with
his/her outside partner to later come up
with conclusions regarding the topic. Then,
those conclusions are going to be
presented to the whole group and will be
discussed in a debate.
Choice Each student would have the opportunity
to choice his/her pen pal (an outside
person to work with) and would also have
the chance to decide which information is
the one that is going to be presented.
Reasons to listen and respond Since students have to come up with
interesting conclusions, they must
exchange as many ideas as they can.
Besides, it is always appealing for students
to interact with people that are not from
the same class, and sometimes neither
from the same country.