This week in the Hub, we were joined by Yelena Sobol a teacher with years of experience working in countries such as China, Cyprus and Kazakhstan. She is also an ambassador for iDialogue, an innovative platform enabling English language learners from around the world to connect. To start with, Yelena talked about some of the problems with students have with speaking: fear a speaking in public, a lack of vocabulary and gaps in grammar, issues with listening and in some cases, a strong accent which affects intelligibility.
As well as teaching students the linguistic aspect, it’s important to consider cultural education – in fact, one of the 21st century skills is cross-cultural understanding. This can also be a question of language – for example, Yelena talked about some of the difference between American and British English – but it also covers traditions and customs, cuisine, lifestyles, social structures, and so on.
Cultural exchanges have been taking place for years, with letter-writing schemes and visits to other countries. Whilst it’s trickier to travel abroad at the moment, there are still many ways in which we can connect. Whilst iDialogue originally started as a letter exchange programme, when they moved online, they set up a digital penpal scheme. This enables students to chat to new friends around the world in a safe environment.
Another feature of the platform is the opportunity for collaboration between classes. As well as giving students the chance to talk to people their own age in a different country, it also allows them to have a glimpse of life inside the classroom. The platform also offers virtual road trips: live videos in which people take participants on a tour of where they live. This means students can ask questions in real-time and get an answer from someone in the know.
They also run power hours with experts and in the past, guests have included astronauts, journalists, authors and robotics engineers. Meeting real-life role models is incredibly motivating for the students and again gives them the opportunity to practise English in real communication.
There are lots of other features on the site as well: students can set up debates, share their own experiences and participate in challenges. For example, in one challenge, students had to collect and weigh all the rubbish they created in a 24-hour period. They compared how much each person had, and then estimated how much rubbish they would produce in a week, a month, a year, and so on, which led on to a discussion about how to cut back on waste. Another challenge involved a happiness calendar or a period of 21 days in which they needed to complete a mini-challenge each day, such as playing with a younger sibling, meditating for five minutes, watching the sunrise…lots of fun ideas which allowed students to experience different things which they might not have done before.
There are further features for teachers, such as being able to set up assessments or set extra activities for some students. You can also see analytics to get an idea of students engagement with the different features of the platform which can help you to choose future topics for your classes.
The team at iDialogue have very kindly offered Hubsters a one-month free trial of the platform. Please note, I’m not sure if that is valid from the date of the webinar or when you sign up – best check with Maria, who posted about the offer at the start of the webinar.
