EDUTAINMENT IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGE TO GENERATION Z STUDENTS

Abstract

The article deals with some new challenges that foreign language (FL) teachers face in the classroom while teaching the students of Generation Z. It also deals with edutainment as one of the methods in coping with those challenges. Nowadays Generation Z is the only generation of “digital natives” who have used digital technology since a very young age and are comfortable with the Internet and social media. These students like to experiment in learning, prefer visual learning, are good team players, they tend to have short attention spans, and prefer edutainment. Generation Z students appreciate learning if they consider it interactive with games and fun activities incorporated into the FL and curriculum. FL teachers need to use more technology in their teaching strategies. Teachers need to update their teaching strategies. They need to adopt more technology-based tasks, including visual content and to give students opportunities to feedback. It’s a good idea to start a class blog and think of reasons how students can use the class blog. Generation Z are multi-taskers so FL teacher can incorporate pictures, sounds, video into all the teaching activities. Students can also have listening, writing and speaking activities at the same time. FL teacher can also use such applications and resources as Kahoot!, Socrative, Pole Everywhere, Quizlet, YouTube, Instagram etc.