Messengers: Emoticons

We tried to use Yahoo Messenger in the teaching of speaking and grammar last time, and we also had 'written conversation' about YM. While chatting, we often used emoticons, such as and . Here is a snapshot of our chat last time.


Do you know that YM has hidden emoticons? Hidden emoticons are emoticons that you cannot find in your YM software but can be used by writing the appropriate codes.

Click here to see the emoticons.
Click here to see the hidden emoticons.

I hope the emoticons can make learning using YM more motivating for your students.

Messengers: The Birth of Gendolos Group

On 30 March we discussed how to use messengers in the teaching and learning of English. Basically, a messenger is a software that we can use to chat online. Some examples are:

Yahoo Messenger http://messenger.yahoo.com/
Windows Live Messenger http://download.live.com/Messenger
Gmail Chat http://gmail.com/
ICQ http://www.icq.com/

Despite very limited facilities in the classroom, we managed to try to use Yahoo Messenger (YM) in the teaching and learning of grammar, especially the past tense. Many of you have had a Yahoo account so I could add you as a friend in my list. Then one of you asked whether we should make a group for our class, and we came up with an idea of making one and calling our group GENDOLOS.


So that’s it… Gendolos group was formed on March 30, 2010.