Webquests are a phenomenon that I’m becoming interested in recently in order to merge the exciting world of learning and researching through the internet and learning or using English for a meaningful purpose.

I can see some similarities between a webquest and task based learning – but it seems that mainly webquests are developed for native speakers. This page has a massive list of resources for EFL teachers wanting to get some ideas for webquests.

This page has a great introduction to webquests for ESL teaching with some good references and some sound justifications for using it to teach not only English but higher order thinking skills as described for example in Bloom’s taxonomy.

 

My first stab at creating a simple webquest for Japanese Junior High School students can be seen below. You can download the PDF here.

It comprises a country outline and several things to find out, for example language, famous place etc. Students then have to search using google or wikipedia to find the answers and also draw the flag.

When I tried this in my classroom recently I was surprised how engaged students were – not one hopped over to youtube! There was  a fair amount of excitement as well at being able to be in charge of their own learning and trying to work out all the English that was coming up.

 

I am very interested by the potential of webquests and will be developing some more which also incorporate a tblt approach and which support beginner and young learners as much as possible.