Lets chat about chat

1
Lets chat about chat

• Doug Worsham
• doug_at_lss.wisc.edu
• Shannon Spasova
• shannon_at_lss.wisc.edu
• LS Learning Support Services
• http//lss.wisc.edu/doug/chat

2
Lets chat about chats

• Personal
• Have you ever tried chatting or instant-messaging
  (IM)?
• If so, what did you like about it? dislike?
• If not, would you like to try?
• Academic
• What are your hopes, dreams, worries, and fears
  about leading a chat with your students?
• What is the connection between the word(s) on
  your card and chat?

3
Today

• A typical chat class
• Mini-chat
• Planning a great chat session
• Why we love to chat

4
A typical chat

• Before class
• Log in to all chat rooms
• Pre-chat activities
• Warm-ups, reviews
• Chat
• Help students log in
• Monitor chat rooms and answer questions
• After the chat
• Copy the chat logs

5
Mini Chat Groups

• Group 1 - Pre-Chat activities
• What are some things you can do to help your
  students get ready for the chat?
• Group 2 - During the chat
• What are some things you can do during the chat
  to help your students?
• Group 3 - Follow-up Activities
• What are some good follow-up activities for the
  chat?
• Group 4 Chat logs
• How can you use the chat logs to learn more about
  your students? create future activities?

6
Chatting in a foreign language

• increases participation
• increases turn-taking more opportunities to
  produce in the target language
• decreases worries and demands time to think,
  dont need to worry about pronunciation, less
  need to worry about losing face,
  Student-to-Student interaction
• changes participation dynamic
• Students who communicate very little in the
  traditional classroom environment sometimes
  communicate much more in chats

7
Chatting in a foreign language

• builds confidence
• Students realize that they can make meaning in
  the target language
• makes the language real.
• No longer merely a classroom abstraction, the
  target language becomes a real, concrete, useable
  language.
• fun!

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• Chatting improves the quantity and quality of
  face-to-face (F2F) discussion.
• It helps students generate ideas and experiment
  with language in preparation for a F2F discussion.