Edmodo is an education-focused social media platform that is easy for ESOL learners to access on mobile devices. It has features similar to Facebook but is more secure and teacher-controlled. Using Edmodo with ESOL learners may help reduce barriers to learning, build on learner autonomy, and allow practice with spoken-like written English that could help develop speaking skills, as learners have time to reflect before responding and tend to provide more detailed responses only in English.

1. Using Edmodo with ESOL learners
Why Edmodo?
 easy to access
 user friendly interface / very similar to Facebook
 mobile app
 secure / teacher has overall control of posts
 range of activities +apps to use
https://support.edmodo.com/home#teacher
Possible benefits:
 Reduces the barriers between ‘learning and living’ (Little, 1991) – building on
existing learner autonomy
 Learners are using social media every day
 Similarity of this type of writing to spoken language could help learners
develop speaking skills - ‘written-as-if-spoken’ language - (Walker and White,
2013:42)
 Allows less confident learners time to reflect before making their contributions
– seems to result in more detailed / fuller responses
 Learners seem to have fully engaged with only using English on Edmodo – in
contrast to their use of Facebook etc
More info: dianatremayne@calderdale.ac.uk; laural@calderdale.ac.uk