Skip to main content

Writing Messages: Communication Opportunities for EFL Students

2 Ways to Mark All Text Messages as Read on iPhone 

This is a blog entry that I will compose over a few days, perhaps a few weeks since I am pretty busy trying to create my own speaking opportunities in Japanese. To start off, I want to share some successes that have turned into firm beliefs about acquiring fluency and confidence in an L2.

Like most people studying a language, I feel excited to try out my new language skills, vocabulary, and phrases, but a little unsure too because of my lack of real-life practice (I'm busy, and also shy sometimes). In short, all of us who study a second language whether by desire or necessity need more speaking time. So, if we cannot get an abundance of real-world speaking time, writing messages is a pretty good substitute and one that is time efficient and practical.

Where can we write messages these days? We can write a message to our roommates/flatmates or family members (in our target language) to pick up the clothes in the living room, to not forget to pay that electric bill! Stick them on the fridge. If it is a short and simple note, your non-L2 speaking housemate or family member will understand it probably. Your family and roommates may enjoy (or be annoyed) by the new and interesting messages in a different language other than their own. As foreign language teachers, what about assigning message writing as homework? 

    "Write messages this week to all your family members about real issues and stick them on the fridge. Take a picture of them and show me next week."

Besides the old-fashioned note-on-the-fridge, I have found Facebook helpful. I have lots of Japanese-speaking "friends" and making a commitment to only write in Japanese to my friends has really helped! I feel my motivation has increased because I feel like I am using my new language in a meaningful way ( and people answer and respond to my posts!). Beyond just feeling good about it, I can actually exchange important information about events or topics in discussion. At this point, I will mention that I usually write from 1 sentence to around three sentences. Not much because we don't have so much time, but even a little message can increase our motivation and connection to our L2.  A message can be short and sweet. Write just enough to give yourself a sense of accomplishment, give yourself a "speaking" opportunity, and convey some real-world information or your feelings. 

...More coming later. 


Thank you!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching & Learning: Week 6

                                  A blog is a great way to keep track of the work we do. I have really enjoyed keeping a record of my work this way and I want to start a blog as a project as soon as I finish my courses. I have already begun to use a Padlet website for something I call "5 Minute Grammar" and I want to work on this so it is user-friendly and helpful for English language learners. Blogging is also in line with part of my learning philosophy, which is to create things and especially to create things with the content we need to learn. Utsunomiya University Monday, October 3: I taught three 90-minute classes: Integrated English IIB (x2), and Advanced English EAP Arts & Sciences.  I really enjoyed my first two days back at this school and I also feel that I have taken a step forward in my teaching, especially in the last month or so. I prepared fairly we...

Teaching, Learning, Adjusting: Week 3

       This past week I spent time preparing lessons and teaching. On Tuesday, September 13, I prepared a lesson and taught my private adult class. On Wednesday, September 14, I taught my first lesson in a new class. On Friday, September 16th, I taught my first two classes at Teikyo University for the fall semester. I also ended this week teaching private lessons at a day-long high school AP program at Utsunomiya University. Every few months I am involved in this pre-college program for high school students. This is called I-PU and I have included a link (Japanese only,  I cannot find an English version, unfortunately). For this week's blog, I will mainly list events and summarize happenings.  Ben's Class / Tuesday, 9/13 Our Classroom. Next week, I hope to bring in some examples of work from this adult class. We went through a PowerPoint pdf of adjectives ending in -ing / -ed   and discussed examples and we engaged in a pass-around activity by having h...