Grammar quizzes

Today we went to Chris Greave's Virtual Language Centre and tried our luck with the grammar roulette. Some were luckier than others... It was a useful exercise because we learned about different categories of error and it was a nice, fun way of testing our proof-reading skills. Once we had spent a while playing this game, we made up some quizzes of our own, using the hot potatoes software. That was nice too becuase it introduced an element of competition against each other - not just against the machine.

When I asked the students if they thought this was a useful activity they seemed to think that it would help their proofreading skills, and that they could use what they had learned for their general academic writing. Personally, I hope they go back to the site a few times to try and re-inforce what they learned as well. It seems to me that this kind of activity is useful for raising awareness but the effects wear off rather quickly!

The landmark game

It's been almost a week since we played the landmark game which is essentially a variation on the kind of information search games that I've been getting students to do in the Internet cafe over the last couple of weeks. Things are finally starting to catch up with me and so I haven't put this activity on the web yet, but essentially these are the main steps:

1. Students search for information about a famous place, preferably one that won't be known to other students
2. They then write a number of 'I'-statements about the place, for example 'I am one of the tallest buildings in the world'.
3. The I-statements are posted to a forum and other students try to find the landmark by searching the internet as well.

This worked fairly well in terms of getting students involved and there was good interaction around the computer again, but I'd like to find a way of sharing information off the computer for this activity as well. It probably just needs some kind of follow up like a group discussion where students have an opportunity to say why they chose thier landmarks, and maybe come up with some different ways of categorising or ranking them.

Students seemed to enjoy the activity, but also commented that there could have been better opportunities for face-to-face interaction. And of course, someone commented that there weren't enough biscuits to go around, or something like that.... sigh....