Welcome to my blog! I'm an ESOL teacher and teacher trainer in the UK, and you'll find some of the websites I know about in this blog, and some suggestions on how to use them. Hope it's helpful.
I've just discovered this site and I think it's brilliant! It has lots of ideas for teaching grammar with snippets of all sorts of films and worksheets to go with them - definitely a great resource.
Here's the profile of the man who has all the ideas....
It's been a while since I've put a new entry on here - a combination of being away all summer and struggling to get back in the swing of things since we got back! This site is a real winner, though, so I hope you find it useful. It does the same kind of thing as Present Me, but with audio instead of video, but it is sooooo much easier to use - I really like it.
Essentially, it's a tool to record presentations, but you can also use it to narrate over a document or over pictures. You have to register on the site, but it doesn't take long and it's free. Once you've done this, you can upload a Powerpoint presentation or a document, or pics and then record your presentation over it. I've used it for Powerpoint and the nice thing about it is that you create the presentation for one slide at a time, so (for learners) if you make a mistake, you don't have to re-record your whole presentation, just the last slide, and you have the option to listen to each slide again before you save it. When it's saved, you can embed it into a blog (see below!) or send the url link to a friend, or your teacher. This is brilliant for Business and Academic English, but your general English learners might like it, too. The other way you can use it is as authentic listening practice. There are loads of interesting presentations on the site that are freely available. You could assign one for the learners to listen to (maybe with some comprehension questions) or ask them to find one they like and tell another learner about it when they come back into class.
Quizlet is a great site for giving your learners practice in vocabulary that you want them to learn (or they can make their own!) You can make vocabulary lists with definitions and send them the link and they can use the flashcards to learn the vocab, or play different games with it, or test themselves as many times as they like. You can also print out the flashcards if you want a set to use in class. Another great thing about this site is that it gives you an automatic sound fgile for each word (ie it says it for you) - great for pronunciation. The only thing I would say is that it doesn't always seem to work :( but hey ho, you can't have everything! You have to register witht he site, but it's free. You can also look at other people's quizzes, which is nice - perhaps you won't have to make your own...
Here's an example of some flashcards I made for my celta trainees to help them learn the names of tenses....
This site is a really nice idea if you want to start your learners blogging but a blog is a bit intimidating! With this tool you can really easily create a page with pictures, text, music, videos etc. It's quick and easy,lots of fun and free!
Here's my example - I had to put it in as a pic, but there is music, too, if you follow this link you can get the full experience!!
You just go to the site, register (it's very quick) and you're ready to go! Nice to find other Glogs that you like, too... Tweet
Present Me is a really nice tool for encouraging your learners to get speaking/ presentation practice outside class. Learners can register and then upload a Powerpoint presentation and record themselves talking through the slides. If you have Business English learners, or people studying for IELTS/ academic English, this is brilliant, but even some of the ESOL exams (eg the City and Guilds Level 1 and 2 Speaking and Listening that I'm currently doing with a class) involve learners giving a presentation, so this is a good way for them to practice, send it to you and get feedback before they do the real thing in class.
It's relatively easy to use, but here are Russell's detailed instructions, which are very helpful. There are various levels of it, but the most basic is free, and frankly would be fine for most learners. This allows you to upload up to 50MB of material and speak for 15 minutes. Tweet
Vki is a really cute tool that will make your learners smile! It's a website on which you can make your own 'voki' avatar and record messages for it to say, taking messages via e-mail or you can embed them on your website (like this!). In all honesty, the fun is in making the avatar, and the messaging is a bit secondary, so it's not all that applicable for language learning, but it's a bit of fun!
I haven't been blogging very much over the past few weeks as I've been madly busy with other things, not least trying to get my website off the ground! It is now airbourne and I'm quite pleased with it!
This is what it looks like and I will be running on-line grammar courses and FREE monthly teacher training webinars from it. Have a look - any feedback gratefully received.
Scoop it is brilliant tool that I just discovered through Nik Peachy (another winner!). I've already loaded up three different pages and it's a quick and easy way to put all of your internet 'goodies' in an easily accessible basket for people (learners/ trainees/ fellow teachers etc) to view. In some ways this is like an on-line noticeboard. You can add links to sites that you like and readers can follow the page (and get new links as they are posted) and/ or comment on the ones that are there.
Here's a peek at one of my pages that has lots of ideas for lesson plans and materials to use in class.
One of the best things about the tool is that it makes it so easy to share informatin in an attractie way. All you need to do is add the url to the site you like and all of the text/ pics etc come up automatically, so it takes no time at all to do. I particularly like the idea of having one for each class you teach with sites customised to their needs on it. It searches the net for sites that might be useful to you, too, if you put in some key words. The only problem with this is that there is a bit of information overload, so you need to be able to scan through and sift!
To get started, you have to send an e-mail to get registered. You are then given an access url and you can put up as many different pages as you like. Simple!
One of the great things about getting out and about on the net is the number of REALLY innovative, interesting, motivated educators that you come into contact with. I thought I was quite a motivated sort of person, but it awes me how much get-up-and-go some people have! My latest example of this is Shelly Terrell, who is a powerhouse! Her blog, Teacher Reboot Camp can be found here and through this links to her project '30 Goals'. This is her challenge to you (yes, you!) to achieve 30 short term IT based goals in 30 days (or in as long as you think is more realistic for you). She's produced a book (below) giving ideas and there are more on her blog and the idea is that you don't do this in splendid isolation, but you tweet about what you achieve so that you can get support from other like-minded people. How great is that??!!
The only thing I'd say is that most of us mere mortals don't have her energy, but I'm going to try to do some of them - maybe on a slightly longer time-scale.
People are often put off looking into iTunes because they don't have an iPod, iPhone, etc, I know I was, but in the oft-quoted words of Mr Stannard:
'You don't have to have an iPod to use iTunes'!
This is a phenomenal resource which can open up a world of listening resources, most of them free, and you can listen on any computer. All that you need to do is to download the iTunes software onto your desktop, and it's all yours! Probably the most useful part of all this is the podcasts that are available for authentic listening practice and for specific lessons in English (or in a wealth of other languages...). If you're still thinking, 'What's she on about?!', a podcast is like a short (usually) radio programme that is produced on a regular basis and the majority are made non-commercially by people like you and me. Ther are also video-podcasts (or vodcasts) on the site, but we'll stick to the audio for now!
Here is a small selection of the podcasts for learning English that were on the first page I looked at -but there are literally hundreds of others.
As you can see, there is a 'subscribe' button next to each - teh best idea is to listen to a couple of episodes and you'll soon decide whether or not this person's approach accords with your own! If they do, you can click 'subscribe' and every time a new episode is published, your computer will pick it up and download it automatically for you - what could be easier? They'll show up on your iTunes page (see below) and are then accessible to listen to on yor computer, or download to your iPod etc and listen to on the move.
Here's a link to Russell Stannard's step-by step video on how to get the best out of iTunes, not just podcasts, but also apps for language learning. This will tell you everything you need to know!
Podcasts are great for langauge learning for all sorts of reasons. They are, of course, a great source of authentic material, both for teachers to use in class and for learners to use outside class. There is such a huge variety of material on every subject, it would be impossible not to find something that would interest any individual. You could challenge your learners as homework to find a podcast that they really like (maybe by telling them that they have to listen to a minimum of 4 or 5) and then post the links on a class blog, or a Wallwisher (see other posts about these) so that they can all try out each others. Hopefully, if they find something useful/ interesting, they'll stick with it and this is an ideal way of motivating learners to continue to learn, week after week, on the long haul that is learning a language. The only difficulty is the sheer amount of material that is available, some of which is brilliant, and some of which (of course) isn't so great. If you search for a certain type of podcast, eg put TEFL or ESL into the search box, you'll get a list that will also show you how popular each one is, and this can help to be some kind of guide as to the quality. At least once you've found something that you like, it's not a one off - it'll keep on coming!
This is another real winner from Nik Peachy - I think the man should have a knighthood, personally. Where does he find all this brilliant stuff??!!
One of the most motivating things when you are learning a language is to get involved on a personal level with native speakers of that language in my experience, but this can be a tall order. If you are in your home country, there won't be many English speakers around probably, and even those people who are living in an English speaking country (ironically) sometimes find that making friends and interacting outside of their own language community can be difficult. This site is a great way to practice your listening, but in a very personal way. If you click on the site, there are hundreds of people there with a brief description of who they are, categorised under 'hobbies, entertainment, professional sports etc etc. You can ask any of them a question and they will send you a video reply (presumably within a couple of days). You can also watch video responses to questions that other people have asked. Predictably, some of the responses are a bit lame, but some people are just great. One guy will write you a song about any idea that you send him!
If you'd like to be a participator as well as a listener, the sign up process is very easy and quick. And, of course, if you'd like to talk to me or ask me a question, here I am - go right ahead!!
The only potential problem with this is the obvious one that it's not filtered, so you might get some unsavoury content, but having had a quick surf through it, it seems OK. Tweet
Another great site from Nick Peachy's blog. It's free, it's quick to set up, you don't have to register and it's very interactive! It's the internet equivalent of a big notice board that anyone can add content to. This could be text, pics, video, links to websites, etc.
There are all sorts of possibilities with a class - you could have a discussion topic in class and ask them to post their views so that they can all be viewed or you could get individuals to make a wall each over a period of time (maybe a month). This could be on a particular theme, or could be an accumulation of ideas, language, texts that they like etc over that time. In this way, it acts just like a blog, but perhaps because it's so easy and intuitive to use, it might be seen as more of a do-able task to less 'techie' learners.
The only downside I can see is that it's potentially very public (but so is a blog...). You can set it so that only the designer of the wall has access to it, or so that other peole can see it but not add to it, and you also have the option of 'vetting' all posts before they go on the wall, so hopefully this will be enough to ensure that you don't get anything nasty on there!
Here's my 'wall' - feel free to stick a comment on it!
Using video in class is a great idea for all sorts of reasons - it brings novelty and interest to the class, learners get visual paralinguistic clues to help them with listening comprehension, and if they are learning in their own country, it may even help them to assimilate culturally to English speaking environments.
I remember the days (and it's not that I'm old - although I am!- it's not that long ago!) when using video in class meant booking out the TV and video, lugging it through to the class, and then finding that someone had gone off with the remote and you couldn't use it anyway! Mostly I didn't bother. The IWB has revolutionised this and now it is a matter of a few clicks to a wealth of resources on the net.
You Tube is, of course, a brilliant site, with such a wide range of material that most of us don't ever look any further, but this website has a list of other video material that is also good for a change.
One example is the How Stuff Works website. This has lots of great text as well as video clips, on a wide range of factual stuff. This example is about bullfighting in France (who knew?!). The French version doesn't kill the bulls and they are the star of the show, which is quite nice. It's a nice little video - only 2.5 minutes and with lots of opportunity for discussion of animal rights, risky sports, etc. There are loads of other videos about different countries and cultures - you're bound to find something that will appeal.
Another good video site is CNN Student News. It sells itself as: 'CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students produced by the journalists and educators at CNN. '
and it really is good. Although it is aimed at teenagers, it's also very good for adult language learners. Each show has a transcript, which is great, and a daily discussion and newsquiz, so all of your materials are there for you. What more could you want??!! As with any topics that might be upsetting, controversial or sensitive, you will, of course, have to make your own judgement about what will work with your class.
Finally,of course, don't forget the TED site (see other blog entry on this) - if that doesn't make you think, nothing will! Tweet
This lovely site that I found through Nik Peachy's 'Learning Technology Blog' is full of contributions of a photograph and a short essay to accompany it. These are between 300 and 1000 words and are as diverse as you could imagine. Here's one example:
They are a window into so many different lives and they are touching, funny, interesting and very personal. They could be used for readings in class - as short, self contained authentic readings, written in generally quite straightforward language, they are great - but you can also get learners to read some outside of class, choose a favourite (they're quite addictive - once you start, you keep reading them!) and present theirs to the class, or to explain it a partner. You could also print a few out and get them to match the pictures with the text.
You can't upload your own directly, they have to be submitted for consideration by the editor, and then they may be published on the site, but you could get learners to write their own 'Picture's worth' and display them in the classroom, put them on a blog or submit them to the site to see if they were accepted (or all of the above!).
Limitations? There's no embed code, so you can't include one from the site on your own blog, which is a shame, but that's a small point. They only other problem is that some of the stories might make you cry.....
This is an interesting little site for learners particularly at higher levels, who are interested in collocations, etc. It's very simple. You need to have two possibilities of words/ collocations/ sentences that you want to test, you type them in and the site will tell you how many hits there are for each (ie which one is in more common useage) and also show you the contexts that they appear in.
Here's an example I tried with the rather loaded word 'spinster' vs 'single woman'
You can see which is more common!
This can also be used to good effect for comparative grammar. I put in 'I went to China' and 'I have been to China' and it was interesting to see that the simple past is 4 times more common than the present perfect, but also to have lots of authentic examples of the (problematic) latter tense. It's concordance for the common man!
I think that this will appeal to a certain type of learner, who is very interested in the language itself, but you could give them pairs of possibles to try out for a homework task. It's also nice to ask them to put in phrases you have taught to give them a wider context for using that language.
This blog is absolutely brilliant! Nik Peachey has so many great ideas for using the internet, and this is a list of dozens of websites for learners to use outside the class. It's also a great one for you as a teacher as many of these ideas can be adapted to use in class.
Here's an example - A city love story using a short film (9 minutes) from You Tube about Beirut. I used this is class - opening with a discussion of places you have been that have surprised you (because they've been better or worse than expected) and then discussed people's impressions of Beirut.
I then showed them the first minute (showing what a beautiful city it is) and asked for impressions.
They then watched the next 6 minutes and noted the things that the girl and the boy like. It's not in English, but there is really nice language in the subtitles (he likes the elasticity of cheese, for example!). We did watch the end of the film, but my main focus was then on the learners writing what they like about their cities or towns. It was really inspiring! Tweet
This is such a fantastic site - it is amazing what is available out there! If you want to give your students motivation to write something, this is your site! It makes it possible to produce really lovely looking, professional e-picture books that you can then tweet, facebook or embed, using professional illustrations from a really wide range of artists. How can this be free? I don't know, but it is!
You can also go onto the site to read books that other people have written. The nice thing about this is that they are short, and illustrated with beautiful pictures, so you can use them even at low levels. Some are aimed at children, but others are definitely written for a more mature audience. Here's an example:
Fight off the doubts!bylaurigonStorybirdYou could just send one of these a week to your learners to give them some extensive reading practice, or you could use one in class on a IWB for language work based on the content or (most obviously) narrative tenses. They're really inspiring! The only limitaton I can imagine is that they will appeal to younger learners and to a lot of adults, but teenagers may feel they're a bit patronising. You could get them to write books (maybe even bi-lingual ones) for younger kids in the school or siblings, perhaps? Tweet
This is a really nice site for creating videos of pictures or video content that you can upload from your own computer or from the internet (or from samples on the site). You get to choose a soundtrack for it and different backgrounds and the result looks something like this:
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com. When you've made your video, you can save it, facebook, tweet or embed it, and it's very easy to use. You do have to register to use it, and the free version only allows you to make 30 second long videos - if you want to make longer ones, you have to sign up and pay. Still, 30 seconds is still enough to make something worthwhile for a language class.
There are lots of potential applications for this. The video I made depicts a trip to Egypt; you could ask your learners to watch the first time to see where I went, and then a second time, ticking off vocabulary on a list of things they saw (eg sail, pyramid, camel, seagull - including some likely things that weren't there -hotel, shops, bus). Then ask them to describe the trip as if they went, or to prepare a tour operator's persuasive sales pitch for the trip. The possibilities for this to be a catalyst for lots of language work are limited only by your imagination. You could also include pictures of your learners or of places that are familiar to them.
My only criticism of the site is that, although it's free, they do keep asking you if you want to upgrade and this can be a lttle annoying......
This is Russell Stannard's favourite, and it really is a fantastic tool. Like some of the other great ideas on the net, it's very simple, but has loads of useful applications. It's a screen capture tool, so you can use it to very easily take pictures and make videos of what is on your computer screen. Whilst you are showing the screen, you can also tape your voice explaining what's going on, or (if you have the Pro version) also use a webcam to make a video of yourself. The basic version is free, or you can download the Pro version very cheaply ($15 a year - about £10), and this gives you a few more options. When you have made a video, you can save it on your computer, or upload it to the server and have a url or an embed code to retrieve it by. There's a little yellow sun that sits on the top of your screen, so it's always there, easily accessible and it's a very simple application to learn to use.
There are loads of ways to use this tool. For me, it's an excellent way to get a 'connected classroom' going. You can really easily and quickly make videos that you can e-mail to your learners and motivate them to continue to study throughout the week. Some ideas -mainly from Russell - thanks :)
- Send them a short video of yourself talking, explaining what the homework is this week
- Put their homework on your screen and then talk them through the mistakes rather than using a correction code
- Put the vocabulary from the lesson on a word document, and show it, talking them through the meanings.
- Rather then just sending the url for a website that's useful, send a captured picture of it, with notes attached.
- Get learners to download the free version and ask them to make their own videos - you could ask them to find an image they like on the internet (perhaps one from the Google Art Project) and describe it. These videos can be embedded on their blogs or they can share the urls with you and with each other
- I think that with more and more distance and blended learning teacher training, this kind of feedback will really help to bridge the distance between tutor and trainee and reduce the feeling of isolation often experienced.
I recently sent out my first Jing feedback on some homework that a learner had sent to me, and she was really surprised and pleased. She wrote back:
Hey..
Wow this is kool
I didnt expect you talking to me
I did this in my email program, really quick I am sorry... I promise the next it´ll be better
cheers
Hopefully it'll be motivating!
I really like the idea of using this tool for giving feedback to learners. This is a link to an excellent article about this, and here's an example of a video I made on Jing showing how you can give feedback on written work.
Not many limitations with this - it takes a little while to upload a video after you've made it, and the maximum time you have is 5 minutes, but you can always make a series of more than one video if thats' a limitation. All in all, a real winner! Tweet
Quizzes - there are gazzillions of them (yes, that is a real number...) on the net. Just put 'English Quiz' into Google and you'll see that I'm right. They're quite good if you want to do a bit of form focused grammar practice, or if you want to learn vocab in lists. Does that sound a bit old-fashioned? A bit Skinner-esque? Get out the carrot and stick?
I guess it'll depend a lot on the kind of learners that you have whether or not these will be motivating or effective. I think that there is a place for this kind of material, if only because it raises awareness of language form and because using ICT you get instant feedback. You could use it to give practice in a specific area for homework or ask learners to find a couple of quizzes that they found helpful and swap them with each other as a warmer for the next class. It's probably worth using with an eye to how your learners enjoy it, though.
About.com has a wide range of quizzes at all different levels. This is the page showing you all of the options:
As you can see, there's loads of stuff! It can be useful if you want to give learners specific practice in a particular area, but the layout isn't all that motivating. Here's what they look like:
Another quiz site that has a huge amount of material is http://a4esl.org/ . As well as thousands of quizzes to practice vocabulary and grammr, there are also bi-lingual vocabulary quizzes in a really wide range of languages. This can be quite fun to do with languages you have never learnt - I got a surprisingly high score in Croatian based on some cognates and a bit of lucky guesswork!
This site also has some really nice links to VOA Special English (where you can read and listen to a special news programme) and to a variety of podcasts designed for esl learners.
This is a link to a blog called Language Garden, by David Warr, which has a whole collection of 'word plants' in it. They're hard to explain, so the easiest thing is to show you a one! Have a look at this one - how could it fail to brighten up your class?
There are lots of others, some very thought provoking, using lots of different kinds of texts. This one is one that stirs me.....
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemöller,
a German anti-Nazi theologian
I think that they are a really nice way to introduce a text for further work on vocabulary or structure, or for further productive work on the same topic. What's particularly nice for lower level adult or teenage learners is that a lot of the texts are quite profound or thought provoking, but quite accessible due to the repetitious nature of the texts. The visual aspect may also help to add motivation, and comprehension.
Limitations? I guess you might have to be a bit sensitive to your learners in terms of some of the content (the one above, for example, might be upsetting to some), but apart from that I think they're great for a five minute filler, or for basing a whole lesson around. Let the garden grow!
This is a brilliant site for young learners who want to practice English spelling. Basically, it's a fairly bog-standard spelling bee type programme. You hear a word (at a level that you chooose, ranging from 'Easy Peasy' to 'Uh Oh') and you spell it.
What makes it oh-so-much-more engaging is that you are in competition with a real person in real time somewhere across the globe. You get to see their 'codename' eg Red Turtle 567 and where they are from (shown by a flag) and you have a limited time to spell the words that are said. This is my game with Pink Cow from Belgium!
If you register, the site will record your victories and you can win 'medals' for various combinations of wins. Clearly it's aimed at younger children and adults will probably feel patronised by it, but there is something incredibly motivating about knowing that you are competing against another real person somewhere out there. My kids really love it! You can practice maths on it, too.
Hot Potatoes is a quiz maker. You can download it for free from here, and it has a range of different types of quiz, ranging from a crossword, to multiple choice questions, matching activities and clozes. It's nice in that you can produce quizzes that are applicable to your learners and include colour, pictures, and useful feedback with the answers.
This picture shows you the screen you get for making a JQuiz:
It's a great tool if you have something specific that you want to test your learners on, and they can be saved to use with further classes or to share with colleagues or on the net. It's worth considering, though, that they take a lot of time to make and a very short time for the learners to consume. Also, although you can include feedback with the answers, on the whole, they are a testing, rather than a learning tool. They do take a lot of time to develop and there is already a huge amount of quiz type material on the net, so if you want to test your learners on standard grammatical items, it's probably best to do a quick Google search. If you want to develop more specific quizzes, though - this is your tool.
WebQuests are interactive journeys that learners can make to find specific information using the internet and then report back on it in various ways. They bring ICT to task based learning and can be very motivating for learners.
In this Webquest your objective is to find out about the culture and lifestyle in Australia. When you go there, what differences do you find? What do you like and dislike about it? What do you miss from your own country? What would you like to bring back from Australia?
and then there are five tasks to complete. These practise all four skills and also include a lot of helpful functional language. The first task, for example, asks learners to use certain sites to find out specific information, giving them lots of practice in reading.
But it's not all about using the net to find information - the learners are also required to do something with it!
So, after they have found out the information, there are speaking and writing exercises, including sentence stems to help with language activation (although there would probably need to be some teacher input on the 'I wonder (whether/ if)' structures, too).
There is a wide range of material here, covering grammatical areas such as comparatives and superlatives as well as the functional language. Plenty for several lessons. In fact, that might be my only real criticism - by the time you get to the end of it, you might well be heartily sick of the subject!
There are lots of WebQuests ready made and available on the net. The original idea was:
and their website has loads of resources, There is also a linked site - Quest Garden which has templates to make your own WebQuests. You can register for a free trial for 30 days, or sign up and pay for a member ship, but it's only $20 for a 2 year subscription, so it won't break the bank! Making your own might be very helful if you were, for example, teaching CLIL and had specific content that you needed to cover. Other than that and if you are teaching general English, making your own is a lot of work and there are many good WebQuests already out there so you could use 'off-the-peg' ones!
I'm not sure that this is really very valuable for language learning, but it's a bit of fun and very easy to do! You can go to the site and upload a few pictures to make a slideshow, as you can with other sites, but you can also put different effects on them
With these pictures, for example, I asked my learners to guess who the people were and to describe them. I then went on to a lesson about families. I think that the puzzle aspect makes it that bit more engaging, and you can press the 'View All Images' button to see the images without them changing every second! It's quite limited in scope but it's a nice little gadget to warm up a lesson! Tweet
This site is really interesting. It's a huge bank of slide shows on any subject you care to imagine. I searched for 'efl' and found this one. There's no sound, it doesn't give you a presentation, but it's a great way of getting information on all kinds of subjects.
This site is an amazing one for listening skills, learning vocabulary and practising pronunciation. It has a really wide range of video material at different levels, (indicated easy, medium and hard) that you can listen to and transcripts below them so that you can read along as you listen. That in itself would be helpful, but this site goes a whole lot further! As you watch each video, you can go back a line at a time and listen again (helpful), you can slow down the speed of the speaker (very helpful - I particularly love this feature) and you can click on the more difficult vocabulary in the transcript and it will give you a definition and a pronunciation guide (how much help do you need?!!). Fabulous! There is such a wide range of material it should appeal to adults with a wide range of interests and to young learners. You can register on the site and it will keep a track of your scores, but you can also use it without registering, and in either case it's free.
After you've watched the video, you can also use a microphone to record yourself reading each of the lines and the site gives you a score. Most of the videos have American accents, so you won't get 100% scores if you don't mirror that, but it's quite forgiving of other accents and even when I put on my most RP voice (ie quite different to an AmEng accent, but perfectly acceptable) it gave me a high score.
I think that this is something that you could set as a homework task, allow learners time to listen, understand the vocabulary, practice some of the pronunciation, and then come to class prepared to discuss a video that they have watched. It may be that you want to give them all the same one or they could each choose one and describe theirs to a small group as a jigsaw activity.
These two sites are both great for recording yourself or for your learners to record themselves. They're both great and both have their places. Vocaroo is really easy, straightforward to use and is a great tool for learners to use and e-mail their recordings to you, their teacher. AudioBoo is a bit more complicated although the layout is very nice, but you can do a lot more with the recordings you make.
With Vocaroo, the website interface couldn't be more simple.
Press where it says 'Click to Record', speak, and then click to finish. You then have the option to listen to what you've recorded, record again if you want to and then send it as an e-mail or post it on the net. I really like the idea of getting learners to record themselves speaking for homework and for them to send this to me.
Here's a bit of 'The Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll that I recorded:
The second audio site I tried was AudioBoo. This is much more sophisticated, and Russell can tell you better than I can how to use it: Here's a Boo that I made earlier, one of the downsides of it is that when you've made your boo it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to load to the computer, but once you've done it, it's saved and you can then tweet it, embed it, send it to facebook etc. You can also follow other people, so there is a lot of potential for authentic listening practice here.....
Which of these sites is more sutable for your learners will depend a lot on your learners. If you have young, digital natives who are comfortable with Twitter, etc, they'll probably get a lot out of AudioBoo, but if you have less tech-savvie learners, or want to do some recording very simply, then, I'd say Vocaroo is better.
This is a really quirky little site - I'm going to send it to my students now and see what they come up with! You can choose words from a list and make a video of celebrities saying your sentence.The list is pretty limited, it has to be said – doesn’t even include ‘you’ – but maybe that’s part of the fun.
It’s certainly a challenge and will make your students think….. if, of course, they don’t discover the ‘Lucky Dip’ button and get the site to create one for them! Here's mine:
Here's another lovely site if you want some visual stimulation for descriptive work. With this website, you can go on a virtual tour of lots of the most famous art galleries in the world - MoMA in New York, the National Gallery and the Tate in London, The Hermitage in St Petersburg - if you're into art, it's really fab, and even if you think your students are not so interested in high culture, how much nicer to describe beautiful pictures than mediocre ones.
The gallery tour looks like this and you can navigate your way around using your mouse.
You can also zoom in and have a better look at individual pictures, like this:
There are lots of ways you could use these pictures. You could use this picture, with low levels for example to practise prepositions (the bed is next to the wall, there are pictures on the wall, etc) and articles (there is a table under the window, on the table is a glass). At higher levels ask them for homework to choose a museum, choose a picture and write a description of it, or just a paragraph on why they like it.
Limitations? I guess it won't appeal to everyone, as quite a lot of people may feel that this is a bit 'high' culture - for teenagers, it may not be very 'cool' - and, to be honest, navigating your way around isn't all that easy (you can end up staring at the wall, or the ceiling or going through the wall into the street!), but it works well if you choose a museum and them go through the pictures that they have selected.
TED bills itself as 'Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world' and it is just that. This is one example of the kind of thing that's available, but there are talks on all kinds of things -it would be difficult to find something not to be interested in! This is one of my favourites: (thanks to Nik Peachy for drawing my attention to this one)
In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
"Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."
The talks are aimed at educated native speakers, and as such are high level, but the content is so nice, and they'd be perfect for listening practice for learners aiming at Higher Education in English speaking countries and wanting to do IELTS or similar exams. Tweet
This site is really interesting, especially if you have students who are quite politically aware (or you feel you'd like to make them more politically aware!). It has a wide range of world maps that are distorted according to various criteria. You can choose what you'd like to see -anything from numbers of people in tertiary education to internet use, and a whole raft of other things. Below is an example of one showing GDP, showing how the purchasing power of various currencies varies form country to country and therefore the discrepancies in power between nations. It's a bit of an eye-opener....
I think that this would work very well with educated teenagers or adults who are interested in world events. A simple print out would make a great warmer for a discussion on the topic and could be used for work on comparatives and superlatives, too. If you were teaching articles with geographical place names, it might make an interesting alternative to the 'take a trip round the world' activity, too.
I suppose that the only limitations are that the class would need to be fairly well educated and have a good sense of the actual geography of a world map (this wouldn't work so well with my ESOL class of middle aged South Asian women, I don't think) and that they need to have a background of expressing the kind of critical thought that this discussion would entail.
This is an example of a picture from Mapcrunch. It's a site that uses images from Google Street View from all over the world. You can also follow the roads along and see different views, and there are pictures from all over the world to choose from:
Some of them are really stunning., but it's worth noting that,since they are all street views, a lot are of suburban streets or motorways and so a bit universal in character. A nice activity might be to show some of these less iconic ones and see if the learners can guess where they are. It could be nice for teaching comparatives and superlatives or doing speaking exercises to descibe scenes. Here are a couple of examples - Which countries do you think they are from?
Give up? Well, it's New Zealand, and Switzerland - arguably two of the prettiest countries in the world!
This is a really great site. It has songs in a range of European languages - English, Itaian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portugese and German, and you can choose from easy, medium or hard songs and also make the task easier or harder for yourself by choosing how much of the song you want blanked out. You then play the video, listen to the song and fill in the gaps. What is particularly nice about this site is that it's very easy to take at your own pace. If you miss a gap the song stops and you just press the backspace button to listen to that line again, or if you can't get it, press the tab key to get the answer. You can register for free with the site and then it will record all of your scores, but you can use the site without registering, too.
I think it's a great site for all ages and all abilities, really, as there is a wide range of songs and this kind of material is often very motivating for people, especially if they know and like the songs anyway. Probably more for homework, rather than in class. Tweet
Gif Up is a really great website for creating slideshows for use in the class. You can use pictures of your own, or from Flickr (which has thousands of images of all sorts of things) or from websites. to use it, just go to the website, click on 'Select from Flickr', and put in a word to search for (I used 'africa')
Then select up to 9 images and the site will make a slideshow for you. It's designed to make animations, so put the speed on 'super slow' if you want it to be more of a slideshow.
This is a nice tool for use as an introduction to a topic or a reading, for example. You could show them the slideshow and ask them in pairs to think of as many words as possible to describe them. You could then elicit more vocabulary and add to theirs. My class also wrote poetry from this:
Africa
Elephants roaming the savannah
Boabab trees sheltering herdsmen
Buffalo stampeding
Children playing in the rain
Africa.
Great name for a site - not so sure that I love it as much as the other kind... This site opens with the introduction:
Welcome to Learning Chocolate! This web site aims to help students to memorize vocabulary in an easy and efficient way, by using pictures, sounds and games. Try our games and enjoy learning, like eating chocolate.
.. and that's what it does - it's essentially a picture dictionary -
The great thing about this site is the range of activities that you can do with each picture – it gives you the pronunciation, the spelling and the meaning, and you can do different games to help you to remember.These include listening to the words and matching them to the picture, a dictation exercise, and other matching exercises. Here's a sample page:
This site will probably appeal to younger learners at lower levels, but here’s the rub – a lot of the vocabulary is REALLY obscure – I didn’t know a lot of the ‘cuts of meat’ words, and I’m an adult, educated native speaker of English!The options don’t seem to have much focus – so we have (at one end of the spectrum) feelings – sad, surprised, happy – elementary level words –and then, at the other end, we’ve got the life cycle of an insect with words like ‘pupate, emerge and cocoon.’There’s no indication of the frequency or usefulness of these words, (although I guess that some common sense in translation would tell most people that cuts of meat aren’t common conversation starters unless you’re a butcher!) The other problem is that the vocabulary is obviously decontextualised, although, as a lot of it is concrete nouns or action verbs, perhaps this isn't so important. It might be a nice site for younger learners to do -maybe learn one selected section as a homework task. It could be useful for spelling. Try it out.
