WEEK 7: THE USE OF INTERNET TO IMPROVE STUDENTS SKILLS

Based on the article Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction by Jarek Krajka. 

The author explore the issue of the use of the Internet as a teaching aid, or as a teaching medium, through which students are taught how to write different writing genres. The use of the internet in this part of learning process is important because students can improve their writing skill which sometimes become difficult for many students because they did not find the correct way to write in English, some activities that can help studens to improve their writing skill can be for example: write a letter for a friend, a biography, a description of a person, a for­and­against essay, a notice and an advertisement, a description of a festival or ceremony, a description of a book-film-play, those activities can be very helpful for learners. Using the internet students can use others other means to improve your writing in English, for example write an e-mail another clear example can be write blogs as us. As students we are writing every single week a blog, base in what we understand about the articles that we read and them we post our blog in a digital classroom, this activity  helps us to understand reading and in turn to keep improving in writing. In  the same way  other students can use this medium to improve their writing skills.The idea of public displaying of student text with the help of a student home page highly motivates students to writing and having their works published, and removes the psychological barriers they might have with displaying ordinary writing. As for the characteristics of a web classroom, the authors claim that it has a widened and authentic reading audience; that peer response is becoming more common and easier; compositions have a greater attraction with their aesthetic appeal and students search to produce attractive work.

Writing instruction should be enriched with the Internet component, in order to provide students with choice, variety, authenticity, and recency and to give them a real purpose for writing,  something that motivate them to write, it can be about to discuss about a video game, a soccer game or topic related of technology that are topics that call students attention and can motivate them to write, but not is good option that they write about news or topics related with social problems because most of the time students are not interesting about the social problems .

The second article Using Internet­Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL offer some web sites resources where we can find some reading material which can herl students to iimprove their reading skill, because is an important skill in English learning process. In many places, access to Internet technology has become easier than access to resources for purchasing printed books. For teachers and students with Internet access, it is time to reconsider how English reading practice might be expanded through the use of online children's and young adult literature. Also, the use of internet become interesting for learners for those reasons is recomendable that students use the internet for develop their skills. in the article mention some useful web-sites of literature in English; for example Magic Keys: which contain illustrated stories at a wide range of difficulty levels. This web-sites will help a lot learners of differents levels and also the ilustrations can help to understand the reading. another web-site is ByGosh: this web-site offer short ilustrated stories, poems and short novels can be found in this web-site, this site it is recomend for intermedian learners.

Definitely the use of internet help a lot the learners process because internet is an important tool where students can find many web-sites that can help them to improve their skills.