Dear friends,
According to the paper "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" written by Jarek Krajka, the internet and the technology have created opportunities for teacher in the development of authentic material which purpose is to offer new, interesting and didactic ways of learning. The three basic elements are web pages, e-mail connection and creating class websites. The key point is to use these resources available for us with a proper plan... In other words we just can not take on-line activities randomly, it is necessary to have a main goal for the class and the leaning process and have to be related with the syllabus.. The searching process is also crucial.. to chose among thousands of sites, takes time and accuracy to select the best sites which are proper for students.
One of the benefits of on-line instruction is that students have the opportunity to experience or learn from updated, interesting issues. There is also the variety of sources available from which the students and teacher can choose. The activities in on-line instructions can also be done in different places and different time not only in a classroom and also can go further..... blogs, virtual classes, conferences, etc.
There are several ideas for writing from which we can choose: a letters to friends, formal letters, writing a biography, description of a person, an essay, notices and advertisements, descriptions of festivals or ceremonies, reviews of films, books or plays, newspaper reports, among others. I personally liked the argumentative essay because my students are university students so it is sometimes for the to do essays even in Spanish. So I recommend the following link which has ideas of how to write an essay.
http://www.ohio.edu/linguistics/esl/writing/index.html
