Do we? It's important to stay with the changing times, social media could be incorporated in some ways (e.g. classroom private Facebook page), but there is a big difference between academic writing and the kind of writing that people do on social media, which is often casual and superficial. That being said, social media can be good as a supplement. A Taiwanese student beginner ELL student asked me a few years ago what "lit" meant. I gave the traditional definition. The student was still confused and then showed me a picture he had posted on Instagram and a comment posted by an American friend he met at a basketball camp saying it was "lit." I realized it meant "cool" in this context and explained this to my student. It was a good way for him to interact with an English speaking friend and learn new vocabulary.

This is very true and something that should be brought up more often. It reminds me of the cartoon in which an elephant, penguin, seal, monkey, dog, bird and goldfish are lined up in front of a tree and the caption reads, “For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam: please climb that tree.” The monkey smiles. The rest look concerned. Sir Ken Robinson gave a great Ted talk "Changing Education Paradigms" (11 min) where he discusses how the education system, in general, tries to fit kids into boxes they don't fit into and it often kills creativity and stunts growth. It's an important conversation.

The Direct Method promotes using realia to teach vocabulary. Realia is a great way to engage the visual and kinesthetic learners, especially if the items get passed around for students to actually touch and see close up. It shows that the teacher was really preparing the lesson outside of class and makes it personal when the teacher brings things from their own home. This is a good technique all ESL teachers can add to their "Principled Eclecticism" bag of tricks.

Anecdotally, while working at an English language school for adults, I noticed that students who built friendships with students from other countries and attended a lot of parties and other social events with these friends improved their English MUCH more quickly than those who kept to themselves or only hung out with those from the same country. This frustrated some students who worked hard to study on their own, but saw their classmates who didn't do their homework and clearly spent a lot of time partying had improved a lot more. The school hosted social events (e.g. carving pumpkins for Halloween, trips to museums, Chicago architecture boat tour, etc) and I always encouraged students to take advantage of these opportunities to meet other students and practice speaking English outside the classroom. As for creating a house party environment in the classroom where everyone feels relaxed, I would often turn on music in the background to set the mood during partner or group speaking activities and this seemed to relax students. Again, anecdotally speaking, students always seemed to enjoy role play exercises where they pretended to be at a party and would have to mingle around and "meet" the other students and collect information by asking questions based on their roles. This focus on function (e.g. getting to know someone at a party) over form follows the Communicative Language Teaching emphasis on communication for real life purposes.