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Simple English Wikipedia in Language Lessons
At Avatar Languages we have started to encourage students to add to Wikipedia articles. We have chosen Simple English Wikipedia, which is a version of the online encyclopaedia that is written in a simplified style of English for non-native speakers.
The project has developed out of our students creating podcasts and slideshow presentations about topics that interest them. Often students research for their presentations using Wikipedia and so it was an obvious next step that they should then complete the circle and add to Wikipedia itself. In fact the students are using the normal Wikipedia to find information (as well as many other sources on the web and even through interviews in Second Life), whereas they are adding to the Simple English version of Wikipedia.
Some initial findings are…
- Students find this extremely motivating. Although slideshare presentations and podcasts open up student work to the whole world and some of their presentations have been seen hundreds of times by the general (web-surfing) public, the students seem to be motivated even more by the prospect of not just creating interesting information, but useful content.
- Students are often reluctant to start! It seems to be quite a responsibility and there is a fear of making mistakes (although their teacher will be helping them to correct the text).
- Texts need more correction than with the slideshares and podcasts (which are not so heavily corrected and therefore still contain some small gramatical mistakes when published on the web). Writing in Wikipedia is setting the bar higher.
So far we have not made public who is actually making these additions to Wikipedia - perhaps we will do so in the future. This may help create a sense of achievement for the students and help generate interest in this type of task-based language learning.
We’re not the first to talk about this approach to language learning - AskOlli blog has posted a few articles about it over the last few months - and AskOlli suggests various ways to use Wikipedia in language lessons. However, it does seem to be a very new approach that is gaining interest among language educators.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Hi Howard,
It’s interesting to hear how Simple English Wikipedia is working out for you and your students.
Maybe if your students feel a little intimidated about getting their grammar perfect before posting, you should try editing existing entries together. The featured entries are quite good, but it’s not hard to find entries that need a lot of help. The bar really isn’t that high.
Also you might find this article about university-age students writing regular Wikipedia entries to be interesting: http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/29/wikipedia. In particular the problems they encountered are quite interesting.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Thank you Damon for the link to the article - it’s interesting that Wikipedia is now being seen in a more positive light by educators. I’m including the link you have just given here again… http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/29/wikipedia because i had difficulties opening it in your comment above (because of the period after it I think).