WhatsApp

A hilarious, but sadly accurate sample of a Whatsapp conversation.

The most common app in the Kingdom is WhatsApp, a phone app that lets you send free text messages to anyone else with the app.  You can send private messages, or you can establish group chats.  Since my students were more or less constantly using this app in class anyway, I decided to harness the power of this social media for language learning.

I sent around a paper and told the girls I would create a Whatsapp group, and if they wanted to join, they could put their numbers down on the paper.  I told them it was optional, but that I would post the homework assignment each day, so if they were absent or forgot to write it down, they could find it, and that there would be an optional discussion question related to the topics we were discussing in class.  I explained that if they did the optional discussion question, they would get bonus points.  There was only one student who didn't add her whatsapp number to the list.

The group was pretty popular.  I nearly regretted starting when the first night there were over 50 messages.  The first 10 or so were legitimate answers to the discussion question, which asked which area they felt the weakest in in English, speaking, listening, reading, or writing (most said speaking). However it quickly devolved into chatting in Arabic.  Everyday was a battle, I'd remind them that they could chat privately in Arabic, but that this was a place to practice English.  They would speak in English for a while, and then, especially if I wasn't online (the app is sort of creepy in that it shows you when people are online, and when they are reading your messages), they would revert back to Arabic.  I thought about threatening to kick those who used Arabic out of the group, but since I posted the homework there, I didn't want to them to loose access to that information, since it would be just another excuse for them not to do it.  And anyway, there were still some discussions in English happening, so that was good, and any English is better than no English.

A student's version of old and new

A studen't picturing of old and young

The nice thing about the app was that a lot of the students who didn't talk in class were very active and responsive on the app.  They were very curious and liked to ask me questions, some of which I answered, and others which I declined to answer because of the sensitive nature of the topic (remember; dating, politics, religion, music, movies, really anything of interest at all is still technically forbidden).  The most successful questions were those where I asked students to find pictures that illustrated new vocab words, or involved pictures in some way.  I asked them to find pictures of opposites, and some of them were very creative in their choices.  Another time I asked them to find mistakes in Grammar on printed English signs around town.  Most just did an internet search and pulled up mis-spelled road signs, but a few actually found some signs in town and took photos of them.  The daily discussion was going so well on a volunteer basis, that I decided I could make it an actual assignment.

Mistakes in English: Sometimes they seem too good to be true.

When I discovered that there was a voice recording feature on Whatsapp, I figured it was a perfect way to get in some speaking and listening practice.  I told the girls that every Thursday, the daily discussion would be an oral question that I would tell them in class, and also post as a recording to Whatsapp.  They would have until Sunday to respond with an audio recording of their own, which would count as a homework grade.  There was a colossal uproar.  It was haram to record their voices.  I knew it was haram to take pictures of them or video tape them (even though they constantly run around taking selfies), but I figured just audio would be ok.  I had intended for all of them to listen and respond to each others answers, but I could see that would never work.  So I offered two alternatives.  I would still post my audio question and tell them in class what the question was, and they could either send me a private whatsapp audio recording with there answer, which I wold listen to, mark in the grade book and then immediately delete, or they could simply come to me before or after class, or during my office hours, and tell me their answer in person.  This seem to calm everyone's fears.

I thought there would be a rush of girls at the end of class to give me their answers in person, but actually, about 60% of the girls did send me private whatsapp audio messages over the weekend - which was about on par with the general homework completion rate.  No girls ever found me to answer the question in person, and I wasn't about to chase them down, so they just didn't get points for the assignment.

In the group whatsapp, there continued to be some participation in the daily discussion, and the daily battle to stem the tide of constant Arabic chatter in the group.  I had asked one of the other teachers to translate the conversations for me, just because I was curious to know if perhaps they were helping each other understand grammar or something helpful like that.  She told me that most of it was typical teenage girls stuff.  They commented on each others hair, and told silly jokes, and in general said nothing at all of importance.  It was so annoying to be constantly getting notifications of posts in the app, only to find a long discussion in Arabic about nail polish colors (or about something to do with colors, I know the color words now...).  

I suggested they start their own separate group without me in it where they could talk together as a class, but no one volunteered to start the group, so the battle for English in the English class Whatsapp group continues.