Group items tagged

"Abstract Despite its obvious importance, it appears that in many foreign language programs, oral practice is not given as much time and attention as it deserves. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that foreign language professionals recognize the need for more oral practice, but do not have at their disposal a convenient means to provide it. An online oral practice/assessment platform, Speak Everywhere, has been developed to fill this void. It allows instructors without special computer knowledge to quickly create video-based speaking exercises and quizzes for their students to work on outside the classroom. The instructor can access the oral productions that the students submit to the system, and grade them or give individual feedback on them either in text or audio or both. Using its flexible and easy-to-use authoring sub-system, it is possible to create exercises of various formats (e.g. Q&A, repeat after the model, structure drills, role-play, and oral reading)."

"Abstract Currently, language educators experience difficulties in facilitating oral practice effectively in the foreign language classroom. Regularly, they face introverted and passive learners who fail to embrace speaking opportunities (Poza, 2011), or simply do not find the time to promote speaking practice in the classroom (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009). In this light, many asynchronous computer mediated communication (ACMC) technologies have emerged to confront this situation. However, central research studies do not seem to acknowledge ACMC as viable in accommodating oral development but, rather, frequently attribute this merit to synchronous CMC (Levy & Stockwell, 2006; Kervin & Derewianka, 2011). By employing a mixed-methods approach, this small-scale case study examines, firstly, the extent to which ACMC speaking practices are suitable for language learners' speaking development. Secondly, and by extension, it investigates the salient characteristics of the ACMC tool myBrainshark, that makes it appropriate for fostering linguistic growth. The data is obtained from post-beginner Spanish language learners by means of an online questionnaire and an online structured stimulated recall. The findings show, on the one hand, that ACMC oral practices can be beneficial in developing speaking aspects in lower-proficiency language learners and, on the other hand, that myBrainshark has characteristics that can potentially promote linguistic development. Finally, this paper calls for experimental research on the improvement of oral competency in post-beginner and higher-proficiency learners."

This article talks about many aspects of communication especially the benefits of synchronous distance language learning

is an online oral practice/instruction/assessment platform for foreign language teaching. It dramatically increases your students' oral practice opportunities by making it possible to give speaking homework. developed at Purdue

This looks great and it is reasonably priced! Have any of the group memebers used it and can give us an insight about it? Is it possible to purchase more storage?

There are many ideas in this article that would help a language teacher thinking about having online students do oral presentations.

 Focuses on creating a free and open source on-line platform that gathers Information and Communication Technology-based applications and pedagogies to practice oral skills on-line.

Telling and listening to stories is an ancient tradition that can benefit foreign language learners of all ages, languages, and levels of proficiency. Stories contain linguistic, paralinguistic, discourse, and cultural features that provide the comprehensible input and output that students need to develop their conversational skills. Instructors and students can select and tell stories that they enjoy and that interest their listeners. Some interactive story telling activities are presented, categorized as: Change the Story, Group Picture Story, Jigsaw Story, My Story, Oral Reading, Picture Stories, Psycho Story, Rumor, Shuffled Comics, Story Hour, Strip Story, and Tell Us a Story. Contains 33 references. (Author/LB)

From the website: Use BlueHarvest to help students with pronunciation and oral examinations by recording audio straight from your desktop. Upload your standards, so that students know what vocab, grammar and cultural standards you want them to focus on. Provide feedback by standard.

I am always looking for ways to provide useful feedbacks to students, and this seems like a great tool to do exactly that. Thank you for sharing.

I can't wait to try this out!

I have always looked at and wondered about using VoiceThread but have never actually done it until I took this class. I'm happy that I finally used it and I'm thrilled to see all of the suggestions for World Language activities that people have shared.

Same as Anne! I only new about VoiceThread when I started Carla17 online course. Thanks for sharing this information. We can continue learning about all the advantages of it: free, facilitates learning through authentic materials, different modalities of response: oral, written, video, doodle.

I agree with you that Voice Thread is simple and can be used very effectively in class.

This does not surprise me in the least! Nancy

How to use Voxopop

Seems like an interesting tool for getting students to practice oral skills outside of the classroom as well. I might like to use this idea at the beginning of the school year to have students introduce themselves to one another.

Here are some audio editing tools if you need any.  I have used Audacity.  I didn't know there were so many others!

Amy, I knew about Nero, and just "met" audacity :) The same as you and Krista, never imagined how many more are there.

Thanks Amy, I also have used Audacity, but just to have students record their answers to an oral test. Now I've learned about other uses and other tools. Great!

"Teachers can use digital storytelling as a teaching tool in the classroom. This page addresses how to best utilize software such as Photo Story 3 in ESL or foreign language classrooms."

Many of us were discussing how to record hangout privately. This clip would demonstrate how you can do it. A great tool to assess student' oral profiecncey.

Examples on how to use Whatsapp in the language classroom

The use of Whatsapp in the language classroom to promote conversation in the target language

This one worked! and I can see your highlights! =)

Overview of Flipgrid and all the ways it can be used in the classroom for interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes.

Yes, agreed. It takes time for many students to feel comfortable with communication in the traditional setting, so we've found great tools to encourage their growth emphatetically and creatively.