Has anyone used iNaturalist in teaching English (as a second or a foreign language)?
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@joemdo has! He might be quite busy this week with organizing Miami for the City Nature Challenge but hopefully he can share what he does as a high school Portuguese and Italian teacher.
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Not being an educator, I can see a couple of uses for iNat. In my part of the world (Canada) people comment on posts in English or French. Not being fluent in French, I’m picking up a couple of the ‘shorthands’ French Naturalists use. ‘I think.’ (or Je pense) is not really a complete sentence, but is commonly used. The correct phrase, in formal English would be ‘I do not know what this is, but I think it might be…’. This may be a more advanced ‘skill’ to master, but it might be useful for ESL students to at least have a sense of how English can be shortened.
Secondly, the Latin basis of the binomial naming might be used as a clue to Latin roots of some of the English language. ‘Lepidoptera’ contains the root ‘ptera’ (wing). It is also used in words likes ‘helicopter’ - helical wing. Again, these topics may be too advanced for what you are looking for, but I’m just throwing some stuff out!
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