We made it! One of my colleagues, Aslı Abak Sen, and I created an online speaking website for our students. Discuss With Us is one of the time and place independent tools breaking the traditional ways of interaction by shifting the authority from teachers to students. We have been using it for three months and our students love it! This in turn contributes to the goal of creating a collaborative classroom atmosphere by breaking the nature of teacher- centered discussions with computer-mediated discussions.
Students interact with a real audience in the target language via computer-mediated discussions and this authentic nature of interaction augments student motivation. This kind of learning consisting of interacting with classmates outside the class, chatting in real time, and using the computer to communicate enhances student motivation. This also boosts active learning because students tend to speak more due to the novelty factor and they take the initiative to explore new information in the learning process. In addition, since their discussions are saved online weekly, they are accessible for later review, and students are given feedback each week based on their performances. And that also plays an important role in increasing student motivation. Thus, the students have the chance to see the benefits of blending face-to-face discussions and computer-mediated discussions by comparing their previous speaking test results with the one they take at the end of the module.
I am proud of our website -http://www.discusswithus.net/- and hope that you find it both useful and informational. Please check us out:)
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