Literature strikes back

The IATEFL ltsig Diana Eastment / Travel grant scholarship winners this year are Dimitris Primalis and Chryssanthe Sotiriou, who work in schools that have class sets of tablets. 

They are both interested in how best to get students reading literature using new technology

The speakers first showed 2 examples of literature and asked the audience to think about the following: Layout, lexis, length of text, visual aids, learning styles, skills.

Next, half of the audience  were first asked to listen to an excerpt of the film (http://i.imgur.com/ywKjqEw.jpg) Rebecca while the others blocked their ears. After this those who blocked their ears were asked to watch the same excerpt of the film without sound. The audience then shared notes and talked together.

The idea of doing an activity like this is to stimulate learner interest. The speakers believe that this is the only way to get a ten year old boy to read a novel such as Rebecca. They use http://www.edmodo.com/ to stimulate the discussion and then in class afterwards they were motivated to read the book.

Chryssanthe has used the site http://www.60secondrecap.com/ to help motivate the students. Here there are short videos about books and she has found it is very popular.the speakers have also used Skype in the classroom, inviting authors and other experts into the classroom this way.

Dimitris also uses things like sounds to stimulate interest, first playing some sounds related to a paragraph from a book he wanted the students to read and following up with the actual book chapter (the Day of the Triffids, in this example).

The students also use interactive course books with their laptops. In class, they look at some of the p ages, then the students are encouraged to read at home. There is also videos that go with this too. After reading and watching, the students are asked to respond on a site such as http://en.linoit.com/ or to put their favorite words into a site such as http://www.tagxedo.com/

Chryssanthe finishes by emphasizing that you can integrate technology into your classroom by getting involved and getting Trainner and becoming engaged with it in order to share that literature is something that they shouldn't be scared of, that they can learn to enjoy and learn from.