- They are an easy way for teachers to begin to incorporate the Internet into the language classroom, on both a short-term and long-term basis - no specialist technical knowledge is needed either to produce or use them.
- More often than not, they are group activities and as a result tend to lend themselves to communication and the sharing of knowledge - two principal goals of language teaching itself.
- They can be used simply as a linguistic tool, but can also be interdisciplinary, allowing for crossover into other departments and subject areas.
- They encourage critical thinking skills, including: comparing, classifying, inducing, deducing, analysing errors, constructing support, abstraction, analysing perspectives, etc. Learners are not able to simply regurgitate information they find, but are guided towards a transformation of that information in order to achieve a given task.
- They can be both motivating and authentic tasks and encourage learners to view the activities they are doing as something 'real' or 'useful'. This inevitably leads to more effort, greater concentration and a real interest in task achievement.
In Webquests in the Language Classroom it is possible to outline four main components of a well-built Webquest:
The first is an introductory phase, which like the lead-in to any good lesson, will engage learners in the overall theme of the project, deal with any key vocabulary or concepts necessary to deal successfully with the upcoming tasks, and set the overall context.
Next will come a series of tasks which will be explained clearly so that learners will know exactly what is expected of them as they proceed through the project.
Following the clear task guidelines, “the process stage of a Webquest guides the learners through a set of activities and research tasks, using a set of pre-defined resources, usually presented in the form of a web link...the process stage will usually have one or more products which the learners are expected to present at the end.”
From the eventual ‘products’, an evaluation stage, which involves both self-evaluation as well as teacher evaluation, will round out the project and allow for feedback on both language performance and language learning based outcomes. Typically, a well designed WebQuest will include an opportunity for learners to undertake self-evaluation as well, which may be guided by thought-provoking questions geared towards both what the student feels they have learned in the realm of language, as well as asking them to look at the type of experience they have just undertaken and how that relates to their progress as a whole. They might also be asked what they see as the advantages or otherwise using the Internet compared to a more traditional, classroom and printed materials approach.Some reminders when deciding to give it a try with your own class:
- go through the whole thing yourself to be sure that everything is what it appears to be. Often times, on WebQuests that were made some time ago, links can go dead, so be sure to check them all and be ready with an alternative one if necessary.
- Check your computer equipment at your school to be sure your hook-up is fast enough to download the necessary web sites. Nothing can be more frustrating than waiting for a very long time in front of a computer screen. In reality, many computer facilities at schools will be a bit slower than your high-powered laptop at home, so it may be worth alerting students to that fact and staging your project accordingly. (Or have them bring in their own laptops instead!).
There are hundreds of ready made webquests online, made by teachers all over the world, for almost every subject and ready for use by teachers everywhere. The hard work of designing an activity and finding suitable weblinks has already been done and they can even be edited to suit your particular needs.
There are some webquest sites teacher can use:
WebQuests are motivating, fun, reflect real-world roles and tasks, invite collaboration, promote and exercise ‘higher-level’ thinking process and practice skills inherent to any language learning project. Students are involved in creating and producing something of their own, with peer and teacher support and not only receive valuable feedback from their teacher, but are involved in reflecting on their work and engage in self-evaluation as well.
