Group items tagged

"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."

"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)."

Speaking practice: asking questions and answering questions about one's education. Making small talk about where one has been educated.

Short and practical activities to practice speaking. Great!

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?

Wonderful resource for teachers for how to speak up when they are facing biased language or stereotypes.

How Flipgrid can be used in the classroom for Interpersonal speaking.

"Tips and Strategies for Learning to Speak Mandarin Chinese"

I love this site because it comes complete with lesson plans that focus on reading, writing, listening and speaking. AND...they are always focused on higher order thinking skills.

Always focuses on the 4 language modalities (reading, writing,listening and speaking)

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! =)

This website was created by Kara Parker and Megan Smith, world language consultants, curriculum writers and bloggers. I was impressed by this blog's long list of topics and its topic choices, such as authentic resources, listening and reading resources, interpretive reading/listening activities, interpersonal speaking activities, distance learning, and technology. The posts that I read I found meaningful and well-written and their suggestions creative, practical and innovative.

Here's a video version of many articles out there describing possible synchronous activities.  I enjoy how she shows you the different platforms.

Thank you for sharing this video with us, Have you used a conference call with your students? Elluminate seems to be a fun tool. Have you ever used it?

I like this Youtube video. "very viable" solution to the interpersonal mode in synchronous sessions. I need to chorus what Mexicans say: "si se puede"

I vividly recall sitting in my son's Spanish classroom during an Open House back in 2011, listening to the teacher explain how they reviewed vocabulary and grammar during class. She reminded us of the importance of finding opportunities for students to listen to, and even better, speak the language outside of class.

Interesting comment promoting the discussed topic applied to Spanish.

Abstract: This case study is based on an investigation into the use that a group of language learners made of Livemocha.com, a Social Networking Site through which language exchange is enabled via social media applications. The learners created profiles in the website and proceeded to interact with speakers of their target languages, reporting back on their experiences over a 10-week period. As communication between language partners can take place through several different channels, and can be asynchronous or synchronous, written or spoken, it was considered that the preferences of learners with different personality types (as indicated by responses to a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire) might be accommodated. Several studies have suggested that the anxiety that some language learners feel when communicating in L2, especially when speaking, is reduced in online environments. Under the premise that a reduction in anxiety may lead to an increased "willingness to communicate" (MacIntyre et al., 1998), the principal objective of this project was to examine the type and frequency of online interactions that the participants engaged in with other speakers of their target languages in the Livemocha language learning community.

Voki speaking avatars are great tools for the classroom. Teachers and students alike can create avatars and use them in a number of ways to make learning fun and more accessible.

This Web site by the Irish polyglot who gave a TED talk about speaking from day one is billed as foreign language and travel hacks. Any brief perusal of social media sites like Pinterest or Tumblr will show that hacks are a popular topic -- life hacks, cleaning hacks, Disney hacks, etc.

Very interesting. thanks for sharing. :)

Although this article is about British language education and it's two years old, my interest was piqued when I read it: ""Languages cannot be taught, they can only be learnt. The best way is to tell students right away that they are responsible for their own learning process, and the teacher is just a guide who has to motivate them."" Made me think about relevancy and how Tech is only one part of that.

Really interesting. I wonder if we changed the setting to the U.S. if the same difficulties would apply. I never really thought about grammar being discarded simply because students don't know it well enough. While I've found that most students we teach don't understand their mother tongue, I still think that the shift to task-based work had as much to do with the lack of real communication skills. Just teaching them grammar and relying on them to go abroad to learn to speak wasn't doing it. That being said, I think the mixture of methods is best, and by mixture I mean the integration of many methods into accomplishing a task. And I agree that the meta-learning is key.

I remember getting a comment from a student once, many years ago, that she had learned more about English grammar in my Spanish class than anywhere else... (sigh)