Implementing Communicative Language Teaching in an ESL Classroom with
Peeragogy on Facebook

\section{Introduction}

Peeragogy is a way to describe peer learning and peer production. For
the past few years, I have been working with others to research how
peers learn and how they learn best. Teaching English as a Foreign
Language has long had an indirect peer component with many
methodologies, especially Communicative Language Teaching (CLT),
making use of pair work as students work together to complete
assignments to improve their English language skills. As Jack Richards
wrote in “Communicative Language Teaching Today” (2006):

“Communicative language teaching sets as its goal the teaching of
communicative competence. … With CLT began a movement away from
traditional lesson formats where the focus was on mastery of different
items of grammar and practice through controlled activities such as
memorization of dialogs and drills, and toward the use of pair work
activities, role plays, group work activities and project work.”

To try and take that one step further in early 2014, I had my students
try to develop a place online where they could learn English from one
another online with as little teacher intervention as
possible. Ideally they would take ownership over the activity and
continue using after their participation in our school ended.

\section{Methods}

My class had 4 students at the time: a young man from Saudi Arabia, a
gentleman from Brazil and 2 ladies from Thailand.

I gave the students each copy of the “Peeragogy in Action” portion of
the Open Book (http://openbook.okfn.org/). It was over their level,
but I have found success with giving students texts that are too
difficult for them and then forcing them to figure it out in pairs or
small groups. It does not work with all classes, but if you have a
group that is willing to push themselves it works.

They read the opening paragraphs individually then discussed in pairs
and finally we went over it as a class. They grasped the idea of peer
learning online. I am sure the pictures helped. I did not make them
read the duration of the text. Instead I had them implement the first
action step by answering its questions.

\begin{quote}
1 Setting the initial challenge and building a framework for
accountability among participants is an important starting point.

What are you interested in learning?  What is your primary intended
outcome?  What problem do you hope to solve?  How collaborative does
your project need to be?  How will the participants’ expertise in the
topic vary?  What sort of support will you and other participants
require? What problems won’t you solve?
\end{quote}

In addition I e-mailed out the following homework assignments to help
them think about what they were going to do:

\begin{itemize}
\item 4 Dec 2013 2 | Read the first 3 paragraphs of the Peeragogy lesson
plan.
\item 5 Dec 2013 1 | Answer questions from the Peeragogy lesson plan and
research technological tools you could use in your Peeragogy group.
\item 9 Dec 2013 2 | E-mail me the answers to these 2 questions: What
job/role do you want in your Peeragogy group? AND What is 1 (or more)
technological tool(s) your group can use?
\end{itemize}

After perusing the possibilities for online collaboration, the
students decided to use Facebook. Everybody already had an account and
they were familiar with how the site worked. They developed a page and
decided to name it with a portmanteau based on their own names
(https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/). The way they decided to use it
was to find resources online that covered the same subjects we had
been learning in class that day.

The students were excited about the activity in general. They were not
jumping in the air for joy each time they posted at home I imagine,
but in the context of other writing work they were required to do,
they seemed to enjoy it as much, if not more. Some examples of how it
was used before on various grammar points:

\begin{itemize}
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/posts/732343456800040 count v
uncount nouns
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/posts/656759214363006
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/posts/685901754795368
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/posts/684761211576089 adverbs of
frequency
\end{itemize}

Students also used it as part of their project work. For example this
student posted about the food she would make for her “Descriptive
Cuisine Project”:

\begin{itemize}
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/photos/a.1452139071676150.1073741827.1445504492339608/1466393716917352/?type=1 cuisine project
\end{itemize}

Additonally some students kindly used it as a platform to wish happy
birthday to yours truly:

\begin{itemize}
\item https://www.facebook.com/dremuraja/posts/677749002264027 birthday wish
\end{itemize}

\section{Discussion} 

Ideally students would be using page on their own
motivation. Both during the time I was teaching them and after I left
and the instructor who followed me continued using it, the only way we
got them to work was by having them do it for homework.  Two of the
students left class, one to return to his home country another
advanced to a higher level course. Neither of them used the Facebook
page afterwards 2 students no longer in class have stopped
contributing. The 2 remaining students have updated it as part of
teacher assigned homework, until they also left the class. In total
there were 45 posts, which was a fun sign on them using English
outside of class in public, but they did not continue using it once
they left the class, which was part of the original goal. As an
additional note the page got 27 likes, and I believe the likes made
encouraged the students to use the page more while it was operational.

\section{Conclusion}

Overall I would consider the experiment a successful
one. Students demonstrated their comprehension of divergent topics by
sharing resources they themselves found on those topics, in addition
they collaborated online more than they would have outside of class
hours without the Page. As an advocate of Free Software and Open
Education, I was not especially thrilled with Facebook as their
choice, but I wanted them to take ownership of the endeavor and that
happened. I do feel that they closed nature of Facebook limited the
possibilities of extending the experiment, but that claim is unproven
at the moment. In sum, I feel they had as much fun as they could doing
homework during the process: essentially they enjoyed using English
online outside the classroom and I feel this fact is something that
other instructors can build on, regardless of platoform. As examples,
it inspired me in subsequent experiments I did with Peeragogy as the
Test of English as a Foreign Langauge (TOEFL) instructor,
experimenting with Google Docs, a Google Group collaboration with San
Antonio college and having students participate in two MOOCs led by
MIT faculty.

\section{References}

http://peeragogy.org/peeragogy-in-action/ Communicative
Language Teaching Today (Pedagogical Booklet) by Jack C. Richards
Copyright © 2006 Cambridge University Press
http://www.cambridge.org/other_files/downloads/esl/booklets/Richards-Communicative-Language.pdf

\section{Source Version}

The original version of this article appeared in NELTA forum
https://neltaeltforum.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/335/
