Using Fake Text Messages to Create Learning Activities

iFake Text Message is a great tool for creating authentic looking materials to engage students and shift materials design into a genre that’s both relevant and familiar. The tool enables you to create a screen image of a text conversation.

Creating a fake text is easy just go to: https://ifaketextmessage.com/

Type your message into the field on the left and you will see it appear on the screen on the right.

Then just add more text and build your conversation.

You can customise most of the features of the screen to make it look more authentic.

When you have finished just click on the ‘Create Image’ button. You can then download it and add it to your materials.

Here are a few ways you can use this with students

Gapped dialogues - Create gapped dialogues and see if your students can work out what goes in the gaps.

Conversation starters - Create the beginning of a conversation and get your students to work in pairs to continue it (They can create the next screen using https://ifaketextmessage.com/).

Dialogue rebuild - Create a longer conversation that takes 4 to 5 screens, then give your students the screen images and ask them to put them in order.

Reported speech - Use a screen image to practise reported speech. Students have to report what they read in the conversation.

Famous conversations - Get your students to think of two famous people and then create a dialogue between them.

Finding errors - Recycle some of your students’ common errors by putting them into text conversations. Then get the students to try to find and correct the errors.

Exploring cyber-bullying - Create a collection of screens that students can look at and decide whether they constitute harassment and discuss how they should respond.

Writing prompt - Create the beginning of a dialogue from a horror / romance or even sci-fi story. Get the students to continue the story.

Vocabulary record - Give the students 3 - 4 new words they have been learning and ask them to create a dialogue that includes the words.

Shakespeare as SMS - Use https://transl8it.com/ to translate a few lines from a Shakespeare play into texting language and see if your students can decode them.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and think of others to use with your students. 

 

 

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Nik Peachey - Pedagogical Director - PeacheyPublications Ltd

 

 

Creating Texting Dialogues for Students

As mobile phone use becomes ubiquitous around the world and texting becomes a new genre of communication, it seems increasingly important that we as language teachers engage with these devices and help students to deal with the impact they are having on the English language.

Some time ago I wrote about a texting language translater called Transl8it which enabled users to trans late short texts from standard English to something approaching sms texting language.  Since then I've used the site quite a lot to:

• Translate text for using in chat rooms such as TodaysMeet
• Translate poems and short dialogues into texting language for students to read
• Translate news headlines.
• I've also tried getting students to record example sentences of vocabulary into texting language, just to add an extra element to creating vocabulary records.

Recently, I have also found a handy tool called ifaketext and this enables you to create a picture of a smartphone screen with your dialogue on. Here's an example:

This is a great way to create materials to use with students, especially if we combine it with the Transl8it. Then I can make dialogues that look like this:

All we need to do to create the dialogues is go to: ifaketext.com and type in a dialogue. Be sure to put a name at the top and format the dialogue with the name of each speaker followed by a colon (:) then the dialogue. Then just click on 'Create Your Screenshot'.

Once the screen shot is created you get a number of options for adding it to materials. You can either get a code to embed it or a direct link to the image and you can save it from there and add it to you documents.

Here are a few ways you could use this with students:

• Convert dialogues from their coursebook into texting language.
• Create mysterious interactions and get them to predict the context.
• Create dialogues and get students to guess the relationship between the people.
• Create the beginnings of dialogues and get the students to continue them.
• Create dialogues with missing lines / words and get the students to complete them.
• Create dialogues with the responses in the wrong order and get students to arrange them correctly.

This is one small way that we can start to adapt materials and incorporate this kind of language into a our classroom. I hope you and your students enjoy using ifaketext and transl8it and you create some interesting and motivating materials for them.

Related links:

• 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations 
• Questioning the Role of Technology in Education
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom
• Survey Results: Mobile learning for ELT

Best

Nik Peachey

Translate Shakespeare 2 Text Lingo 4 Twitter??

If like me you struggle with text and SMS or even Twitter lingo then transL8it will surely be a handy tool for you.

Simply type the text you want to translate into the field and then click on translate it. Your text will then appear translated in the filed next to it.

Or should I say?

Simply typ d txt U wnt 2 transl8 in2 d feLd & thN clik on transl8 it. yor txt wiL thN apEr transL8d n d filed NXT 2 it.


The translation works both ways so you can also feed in text messages and then translate them back to 'standard' English.

I couldn't resist trying this out with some Shakespeare so I took a short snippet of text from Tamming of the Shrew and translated it to text lingo

• Here's what I put in:
  
  See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,
  Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow
  Never to woo her no more, but do forswear her,
  As one unworthy all the former favours
  That I have fondly flatter'd her withal.

• And this is what I got:
  
  c, how dey :-* & court! Signior Lucentio,
  hEr iz my h&, & hEr I firmly vow
  nevr 2 woo her n mo, bt do forswear her,
  az 1 unworthy aL d formR favRz
  dat I hav fondly flatterd her withal.

I think this is a great tool to use with students to make short texts or dialogue a bit more interesting.

• You could have them try to figure out the code and rules of translation being applied, then translate some of their own statements.
• You could prepare some of your own lingo texts for students to translate back.
• You could translate headlines from the news.
• You could Tweet them text using Twitter and get them to translate and Tweet you back

This is a fun tool that you can use so easily in so many ways to make dealing with text a bit more entertaining and engaging for students.

I hope you enjoy it.

• Find more text related activities for EFL ESL students

Related links:

• Revising Short Texts and Syntax on IWB
• Prompting reading speeds
• Comparing Texts to Aid Noticing
• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools

Best

Nik Peachey

Interview with David Crystal

Whilst in Cardiff at the IATEFL 2009 Conference I was lucky enough to meet once again and interview one of the UK's most esteemed linguists and genuinely very interesting man David Crystal.

One of the things that for me makes David's work so interesting, is not only his knowledge of the English language, but his open minded curiosity about the way the language is evolving in new media and electronic genre. In the interview he talks about, among other things, the use of language within SMS and his own blog at: DC Blog

I hope you enjoy the interview and check out some of the many other 40 + videos from the conference at: Cardiff Online

Here's the interview.


You can read more about SMS texting in an article by David written for the Guardian website at: 2b or not 2b?
Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Interview with Marc Prensky
• Teachers' Stories
• Rod Bolitho on TeachingEnglish
• ELT classroom videos
• Would you recommend this?
• English Online
• Conference presentation videos

Best

Nik Peachey

Create your own sms groups

With the vast increase in the number of people with phones capable of receiving sms, having your own group for your students seems like a pretty good idea.

GupShup provides you with the ability to make this happen for free. You 'simply' register for free on their site and then start creating groups. The site has quite a few groups there already and some with more than 2,000 members. The groups are split into categories and there's a couple of pages of educational ones, which include quite a few word of the day type services.

Once you register you can either send out messages to the group through the website or by using your phone.

I guess the downside of this is that your students are going to be paying every time they send a message, and I've no idea what the rates are likely to be. I tried to register using my own phone here in Morocco, but never get the confirmation message with my registration code, so that's about as far as I got.

• Anyone else tried this?
• Do you know of other similar services that are free?

Would be very interested in hearing comments from anyone else doing anything like this.

To try GupShup go to: http://www.smsgupshup.com

Best

Nik Peachey