Using Reddit in a university EFL classroom

Hello all!

This is basically a guide for my students, but let me give you a brief introduction to what it is I am teaching here.

What is reddit?

Some of you may be familiar with the website: www.reddit.com and the plethora of comics that appear in the f7u12 or classicrage subreddits...? Maybe not. A lot of these comics are completely inane and pointless, but there is of course the odd gem that makes me laugh. The r/classicrage comics usually strike a chord with me somewhere in my own experiences making me chuckle.

Here is one particularly relevant to students:

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to get my students to create their own comics and share them on reddit. I even created my own subreddit for students to present their work(s of art)!

The good thing about presenting student work on a subreddit is due to the way that reddit as a site works. Posts are voted up or down by users. If you like a post you "upvote" it, if you dislike a post you "downvote" it. With this mechanic in place, students can effectively vote on the comics they think are the best. They also have the ability to post comments, which gives them the opportunity to interact socially with each other in English outside of the classroom (that's the theory at least!)

So, on with the main part of this post: explaining how to register on reddit.

Registering with reddit

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The first thing you need to do is press the "register" (登録) button.

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Insert a username. Make it your student number. Also, make your password something that you will remember. If you need to, have your password the same as your username.

You don't need to put your mail address in, but if you forget your password, you won't be able to use this website again :(

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Search for tduenglish.

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Press on the tduenglish link (or press this).

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Click the +frontpage button to register to the tduenglish news feed.

 

You are now registered to use reddit.

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If you want to leave a comment (for the caption competition), press the comment (コメント) button and then put in your comment.

That's it!

If you have any problems, email me.

My next post will look at how to make rage comics as well as introducing some of the famous(?) characters.