Tackling cyberbullying to improve oral production: The case of Troll Stinks!

Abstract

This final paper consists of a didactic proposal aimed at improving oral production in English and raising awareness about cyberbullying through literature in the 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education class. To achieve these aims, the selected material is a picturebook, a genre that is becoming popular in English Language Teaching as it is considered to be a very dynamic and enriching literature form and potentially more suitable to current students’ needs than classical texts books. The selected picturebook Troll Stinks! by Jeanne Willis, explores the increasing and alarming problem of cyberbullying. This is a task-based proposal including communicative language teaching activities on the picturebook. Thanks to this didactic proposal, students will be able to understand some basic aspects of cyberbullying, develop their pedagogical and ethical information and communications technology (ICT) practices, prosocial skills, visual and critical literacies and practice their oral production.