Teaching with TIKTOK! Are you serious?
- goekaytasci32
- 27. Okt. 2021
- 2 Min. Lesezeit
TikTok is a massively popular video app among teens and tweens. Users can upload and share 60 second videos of everything from dancing to lip syncing to funny animal videos. Users can follow, comment, and like each video. They can also search for accounts and hashtags they are interested in.
There is no doubt, that the use of social media like TikTok could have potential negative effects on our students: addiction, bullying, comparison are just some examples. In addition, our students already spend a lot of time with their smartphones. So is it a good idea to bring TikTok into classrooms? Of course, every teacher should decide for himself. I think that as teachers, we can either completely ban this tool from our classrooms or show our students that you can also use it to learn English in a simple and fun way. Did you know that there are many excellent ESL teachers on TikTok who post a lot of short videos on all sorts of topics (like grammar, pronunciation, synonyms, vocabulary, etc.) every day?
I have decided to take a closer look and during my research on TikTok, I came across some very good ESL teachers and their learning videos. One of these teachers is Mike - aka Mike the Chameleon. Mike has an “Answer 16 questions in 60 seconds” Challenge in one of his videos. He asks 16 questions with very short breaks. His followers try to answer as many questions as possible. I liked this exercise and I tried it with my students. I first showed them the video and they also tried to answer the questions. After that, I asked my students for advice on how we could implement this game in class. At home I put together a set of 11x15 similar questions. One idea was that each student would try to answer as many of the 15 questions as possible. Another input/idea was, that all students must get up. The teacher asks each student a question. Anyone who can answer instantly may stay, otherwise they must sit down. My students liked both versions and after playing this challenge, some of them even started following Mike the Chameleon on TikTok…
This encouraged me to try out another talking activity from Mike – this time it was the “Finish my Sentence” Challenge. And again, I prepared about 70 beginning sentences. After showing Mike’s TikTok Challenge, we played this activity in class. It was a great opportunity for my students to think and react spontaneously and in addition, their answers and reactions were mostly very funny. All in all, my TikTok experiment worked very well, and I will continue to look for creative exercises on this social media platform. If you also want to implement these exercises in class, you will find detailed instructions and the collection of questions for download. By the way: you don't have to be registered on TikTok - just follow the link on the info sheet. Have fun!
Kommentare