If you're a teacher of English as a second language (ESL), then you understand how essential collaboration is to students' success in English. Although students may feel comfortable speaking and writing for you, it is how well they can communicate with other peers and leaders that signifies their success or failure. As a result of this inherent need to work with others, the Apple iPad -- a "touchscreen," tablet device which can communicate wirelessly with other devices -- has the potential to fit into your ESL lesson plans and classroom activities perfectly.

Use the iPad to facilitate a vocabulary race. Divide your students into teams and give each team an iPad. Instruct team captains to open the "Notes" application and list, alongside their teams, all the adjectives, verbs or nouns they can think of that relate to a certain topic within a certain period of time.

Practice writing academic and business email messages in real-time. If you have older students, learning how to write effective email messages in English is likely one of the top skills they want to acquire. Distribute iPads evenly and have students -- or, if you class is large, pairs or groups of students -- open the iPad's "Mail" application, write you a sample email to critique and send it to you. Open the email on the computer connected to the classroom's project and display it for the class to see. Critique the email and repeat this procedure for as many students as your class period will allow.

Distribute instructions for class activities or after-class handouts in PDF format. Create your documents before class begins and if the iPads belong to you, load them with the files. Otherwise, email them to your students in advance and inform them to bring the files with them. This will not only save on paper, but on the time you spend preparing endless copies of things.

Hold class outside or in public by bringing mobile network-enabled iPads with you. As this will mean that Internet works almost everywhere you go, you can allow your students to interact with English speakers in the real world without having to carry around messy stacks of paper. Additionally, you might create an activity where the students use the iPad's "Voice Memos" application to record differences in different speakers' accents and inflection.

Allow students to access audio, video and other real-world English media using the iPad's Internet and video capabilities. Have them point the iPad's Web browser to respected news sites like "BBC," "The Wall Street Journal" and "The San Francisco Chronicle," where they can read all the days' news instantly, at their own pace and without having to use non-class time to do so.

Download ESL games and applications from the iPad's "AppStore." Tap the "AppStore" icon and search for the term "ESL" to browse which types of applications are available to suit your needs.