Using Esteem & Steemit To Teach English In Class: The Prelude

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I was in my class the other day. There was pin-drop silence and I was getting rather uncomfortable. You see, I don't like it when the class is quiet, especially a speaking class. I prefer my classes to be noisier and more interactive. That, however does not happen all the time.

My students are a group of ESL (English as a Second Language) learners. They aspire and are looking to further their studies in the United Kingdom or other English speaking countries. To do so, they would have to complete a proficiency test which can be a challenge for them. That is because in my country, students are required to be at least bilingual, if not trilingual. I know three languages and I was fortunate to have English as my first language.

This however is not the case for the other students in my class. As such, they can be rather passive, out of fear that others would make fun of them. Furthermore, they have been told countless times by the system and others that they are not good enough. I hope that I would be able to change and inspire them to practice their language more often. Thus, here's my plan.

The Plan

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I'll be using Steemit in the class as a way for them to post their written tasks. Their posts will be based entirely on potential exam topics. The idea is for them to utilize English outside of the classroom. These students spend a majority of their time speaking and consuming media of other languages. As such, more language use would mean more practice, which would eventually lead to the gradual mastery of it.

For the time being, I'll be posting on this Blog. The reason is that I don't want to use classroom time to run the students through how to use Steemit. That is not the purpose of the class. As such, the Blog would serve as somewhat of an incubator, a gateway before the students start their Steemit journey. That being said, I am hoping that upon seeing the rewards, they would be motivated to know more. That however, is for another class.

For the initial stage of my plan, the students will write and send me a soft-copy of their work. I would then post it and send the link of the post for the students to monitor comments and payouts. All SBD payouts will be returned to them as a reward for their work.

After the students start to see the benefits of the platform and are intend to learn more, I will hold in-class writing activities on Esteem. All of the students have smartphones and esteem is the most convenient option. However, at this stage, I hope they each would have their own Steemit accounts.

My Hope

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I hope that you and Steemit as a whole can help me in this. If you find their posts good, do drop them an upvote. If you find a grammatical error, do let them know in the comments. If you think that their content can be improved upon, do let them know too.

Steemit has been generally a very friendly community and it is my hope that they can practice their writing here. Hopefully one day, they can even practice on @dtube, but I will do so once they are more comfortable with the platform.

Conclusion

This would be the prelude detailing the process of how I plan to run the class. There have been many studies in using facebook or twitter as a way to teach English. I think with Steemit, it would be no different, in fact, I know it would be better. I will write on their progress from time to time. I hope this works out well. If you have any suggestions or comments, do let me know!

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