How to use Internet mem in study process
No matter how hard teachers try to be serious during lessons, everyone loves witty humor. Agree, and in the evenings not everyone reads exclusively "smart" books, and really creative teachers get ideas for implementation in lessons from a variety of sources! We can use different technologies to make study process easy and fascinating like thesis checker or, of course, Internet memes.
Functions and meanings of memes:
- representative: reproduction of what is seen, read or heard with an appropriate emphasis on certain information;
- communicative: reaction to the situation that generates the discussion, as well as the creation of a special language space, understandable to a particular group;
- creative: reproduction of reality events in a creative format using modern online tools.
On what principles the meme is created
1. Information component. The meme can be based on a certain phrase, controversial question, formula, aphorism, etc. A meme is a laconic meaningful phrase that has a humorous tone, understandable and close to a certain group of people.
2. Emotional component. The meaning of a meme is humor, the emotional closeness of a combination of an image and a textual component for a representative group of students (for example, a certain class or parallel).
3. Paradox, a new meaning of the well-known. Use a play on words, oxymorons, metaphors or figurative meanings of words, ie situations when a certain phrase acquires a new atypical meaning.
Task ideas using memes
Visualization is widely used to present educational material. We have previously written about such techniques as scribing, word clouds, intelligence maps, book trailers, chroliners, etc. Internet memes are also becoming popular not only as a tool for online communication, but also in education.
Memes can be involved in lessons in any subject:
Create your own, for example, a linguistic meme, in which classical literature or rules of speech will be presented in a somewhat unusual modern format. This will allow students to use a creative approach to mastering the material.
Invite students to a selection of captions and a set of photos, and ask them to create memes by composing blanks and providing arguments for their own vision.
Meme arsenal - a free online generator of memes and comics.
Benefits:
- the ability to create a meme not only on a single image, but also to generate a comic;
- convenient search of template images (by keyword, tag, among popular or new, from photos, drawings or comics);
- adjust the size of the letters, centering and position of the text in the downloaded and template file when creating a meme.
English by memes! Is it relevant?
A comprehensive approach to learning a foreign language is needed in any case. Without exercises and language development, no memes will help you master English. But as an additional tool, they are just wonderful. And here's why:
- Memes are memorable on their own
- Interest and humor are the main advantages of memes. They are easy to remember and effortless to learn.
- Memes always evoke emotions: laughter, sadness, surprise, curiosity, nostalgia. To watch memes, additional motivation is not needed, because they are perceived by the brain as entertainment, not as a textbook.
- Even if memes contain unknown words or phrases, they are perceived as a whole. But even if the context does not allow you to learn a particular word or expression, you only need to look at its meaning in the dictionary once - and it is remembered instantly.
- The reason is simple - memes create the most stable chains of associations in memory. This is especially true of short memes.
Invite your students to create thematic memes during the lesson! This format of learning can be an interesting addition to the educational process: it promotes observation, creative rethinking of any information, develops a sense of humor and teaches students to succinctly emphasize key points. In addition, creating memes is a great way to add humor during lessons, which in turn has a positive effect on building relationships with your students!
