Was just trying to gather up a handful of twitter handles to share with my students next week as a useful way for them to follow people on Twitter and actually found this to be quite a difficult task!
I've managed to find about 15 I thought useful... but I'm sure they are more out there.
I've managed to find about 15 I thought useful... but I'm sure they are more out there.
So, go on, help me out, would you - if you're tweeting out with suggestions and references, links to materials, daily tips on Learning English or basically you have a pro account where you tweet hoping that English Language Learners will eventually find your stuff to learn from, then do please add your name and twitter handle below and I'll put together another TweepML list.
And of course, if you're a teacher who knows of others or who's already compiled a list, do please share it with us!
Those on my list already include:
- LearnEnglish_BC
- RealiaEnglish
- MadridTeacher
- SimpleEnglish
- SeanBanville
- FaizaK
- EnglishSpark
- English247
- EnglishCafe
- BBC LearnEnglish
- BBC WorldService
- VOALearnEnglish
- Spiegel in English
- Bild in English (*German gossip rag in English)
- Al Jazeer in English
- Macmillan Dictionary
- Wordpowerskills
- BusinessSpotlight* aimed at German speakers
- Spotlight* aimed at German speakers
#ELL?
#learnenglish?
#something else?
A word of web 2.0 advice
Do remember that Twitter is a place of conversation not just a marketplace to yell and sell your wares, so you really should be following your learners in return and a general tip: if you collaborate with each other, rather than simply tweeting out in non-ending streams then your tweets will probably be seen a lot more often by the students you all actually want to reach!
Download for English Language Teachers
Previous Postings you may find interesting
- Guide to Using Twitter for English Language Teachers
- Add your name in the comments if you're an English Language Teacher talking to other ELTers
- More pages to share with language learners
The Lists - one click to follow all the people listed in each separate list
- Tweeplm list1, 100 Great Educators on Twitter to follow
- Tweeplm list2, More great English Language Teachers to follow on Twitter
- Tweeplm list3, Educational tweeters, aimed at English Language Learners
Best, Karenne
imagecredit: twitterbird by xioubin low on Flickr.com
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Great idea, Karenne!
I compiled a Twitter list a while back on our @english247 account for students, which has some more people who Tweet links for English learners you might like to add to your list:
http://twitter.com/english247/learn-english-online-free
Sue :-)
One of the most common hashtags I see is #twinglish but that may be geared a bit to Japanese learners of English.
Two of the "powers" behind the hashtag are @MakotoIshiwata and @mayumi_ishihara. Makoto is president of Kaplan Japan and Mayumi has written a book (or more) about using Twitter to learn English. There are other hashtags, but since #twinglish updates are largely in English, it may be the most useful for non-Japanese :-)
Here's a good post on Clarissa's (@talkclouds)blog talking about the effort: http://www.talktotheclouds.com/2010/04/27/twitter-for-ells-elts/
Clarissa also posts on Twitter for language learners under the handle @readable.
Great idea, Karenne, as usual!
Ha! You've done it again - doing my homework for me!
It's a list I will want to give all my students when we have to say goodbye and I'm wanting to give them ideas for further study.
Thank you!
thanks for this - just started a two week course with visiting HS students..
perfect timing
I'd add @PremierSkills to the list - tweets about the British Council site with the Premier League. Lots of interesting stuff there and quite a few videos. Timely too.
Thanks Karenne for including our Twitter feed in your list.
I'd be interested to hear what your students are saying about Twitter. Do you encourage them to write as well as follow?
I find that it takes quite a bit of persuading to get students to try it out. The initial reaction tends to be "this is daft", but if shown the right feeds they can get hooked.
If your students are more advanced learners of business English, I would also recommend The Economist's Twitter feed. Why not have some authentic material in there too? The tweets are just as good as the magazine but so much shorter. They don't even have to click through if they don't want to - they can just learn from the tweets.
http://twitter.com/theeconomist
Note to the commenter Rick (sorry other readers you won't know what I am referring to) but no, Rick, I'm sorry - that is spamming my blog... I write for an audience and my visitors and readers aren't easy targets - to be honest, it's just really not done to visit people's blogs with little regard for their articles but simply to promote your work no matter how "good" it is to you.
Thank you very much for asking, I do appreciate it.
The best advice I can give you is that you continue to work on your product, to refine it, get real students using it and in time if it is indeed what you claim it to be, and good enough then the bloggers will catch up to you and begin to promote your work all by themselves.
In the meantime, sincerely, good luck with your project!
Kind regards,
Karenne