When thinking about technology for teaching L2 reading, I thought, "Why not have students build their own PLNs?" One way to start is with blogs. Students can either setup a RSS Reader or just subscribe to multiple blogs by inserting their email address into the subscribe boxes on each site. There are many blogs written in foreign languages. This can be a fun way for students to explore a topic of interest (i.e., photography) while learning a language.
Here are some examples:
- Top 100 Blogs in Spanish (learn about technology in Spanish with the Tecnologia blog)
- The 50 Best Blogs for French and Francophiles
- The Most Popular Blogs in German
And, of course, there are thousands of blogs in English on pretty much any topic. Just google the topic with the word "blog" (e.g., "photography blog").
RSS readers are not limited to blogs, either. Students can subscribe to the news (http://www.lemonde.fr/), youtube channels, flickr photostreams, and anything else with a "feed."
Once students get comfortable using blogs for reading, maybe they can branch out to social networking sites in foreign languages (see "Twitter Launches in Spanish") for more reading material.
Of course, it is essential that students are vigilant about the credibility, authenticity, and accuracy of the content and grammar on these sites. You don't want students reading a blog with bad grammar and picking up bad habits. However, you can use these erroneous blogs as learning tools and ask students how they would correct various posts.
Hi Torrey, I think this is a great idea. Students could really easily find a lot of reading material on subjects of their interest. I want to go sign up for Chinese blogs myself right now!
ReplyDeleteI am still trying to figure out how to do the RSS Reader. Thanks for the link to this in your post. (Actually, I am really curious how you make the neat highlighted word links imbedded in the blog. Maybe we can learn it in class one of these days, or I will come bug you about it! :) )
Thanks, Torrey! Appreciated the useful comments on my own blog posts:). So, I'm actually struggling with the whole finding a blog I would follow thing. I just clicked on the link to the top 100 blogs in Spanish. Not all of them are blogs, first of all, which seemed odd, the couple of blogs I clicked on, booooring! It seems wise to maybe find a few blogs for students to pick from as it's really overwhelming the number of blogs out there and it's quite time consuming wading through alll the crap out there!! I'll try googling and see if that works better... blog de baile maybe :).
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