Comment dit-on "tweet" en français? (Mod 7)

I came across a post by Shelly Blake-Plock called Back to School: Ideas for Twitter in the Foreign Language Classroom from the blog TeachPaperless. In this post, Blake-Plock describes how Twitter can be used with translation exercises or verb parsing. I agree that foreign language learning does entail some degree of rote memorization (particularly of verbs) and I think these suggestions could really help teachers to switch it up a bit. I could also see myself using student-created Tweets as a precursor to having the students write on their blogs. Tweeting short answers to teacher questions is a great way for students to begin getting used to using tools on the web to create content. And it is also conveniently simple in 140 characters or less.

In this blog post entitled Que fais-tu? Twitter for Language & Culture, Joe Dale discusses the idea of integrating Twitter into second language class. His post is a response to the original article called Que-fais-tu? Twitter for Language & Culture, by Sharon Scinicaiello. Dale commended Scinicaiello for suggesting using Twitter to follow news updates from the French or francophone media. The headline tweets would most likely be easier for students to absorb, rather than a full -length article. Sometimes students can be very overwhelmed when faced with authentic texts meant for native speakers. I think this would be a great way for students to feel a sense of accomplishment from reading French. The beauty of this system is that the full text is still available for those that are interested.

Scinicaiello also talks about the concept of using Twitter to follow people posting from France as a way of identifying slang and common abbreviations. I was so excited by this idea that I immediately started looking at tweets from the French to see what they were saying! This is definitely an activity that I believe students would love to do. When I was student teaching, it seemed that my students were always most interested when learning about a cultural aspect they could relate to. They wanted to know how the French students dressed, what kind of music they listened to, etc. Twitter brings a way to connect students with the slang and expressions French students are currently using. Incroyable!

Twitter would also be great for student dialogues in the target language. The old-fashioned way would be having the students pen and paper a dialogue on a specific topic to be performed in class. By introducing Twitter to this activity, I could follow the progress of the students as they write the conversation. Hopefully my future district will allow the educational use of Twitter in school!