Group items tagged

Google voice is a resource that can potentially be used in listening and speaking classes. Essentially, it allows the user to associate a phone number with one's Google account. From there, the user can record messages that the caller will hear when he/she dials the phone number. In a Listening and Speaking context, access to recorders for classroom use may be limited at times. However, many learners have cell phones. To complete a listening and speaking task, during class or for homework, learners can call the phone number, listen to the task, and record their responses. Many concerns with Google Voice arise, however. Most notably, the quality of the recording may be muddy. That is, learners may have a difficult time comprehending the recorded message they hear when initially calling. Additionally, the messages recorded by the learners can be difficult for the instructor to understand. Also, whereas recorders allow learners to confirm that their speech has been recorded, on Google Voice, the learners simply hang up and receive no such confirmation--unless the task is done in a classroom setting whereupon the instructor has the list of messages available. Moreover, the learners are not able to listen to their messages or the messages of other students in the class if they are not logged into the instructor's account. As far as the positive attributes, Google Voice attempts to transcribe messages, and while the transcriptions are not always accurate, even when transcribing messages from native speakers of English, the transcriptions are interesting to read nonetheless. Possibly giving learners an incentive such as extra credit for a perfect transcription due to their pronunciation is an option. Additionally, Google Voice does allow the instructor to download the messages if desired, so saving the files is possible. As far as identifying the callers, each voice message is accompanied by the phone number, so collecting students' phone numbers is probably

Live Mocha is an online multi-language community that can be used in a number of ways: Members can write and/or video chat to speakers of their target language, complete practice exercises in all skill areas, and record themselves speaking so other members can review submissions and offer suggestions (if they do not want to do a live video chat). As a teacher, I believe this website is a great resource, especially to supplement in-class materials. Students can sign up (membership is free) and communicate regularly with native speakers of their target language. For a reading and writing class, this website would be a fairly easy one to use in order to set up pen pals. For a listening and speaking class, the role plays and video dialogues could be useful.

Livemocha is a site I personally use to improve my L2. You can learn for free through an exchange program of helping others and in return they help you. On the other hand you can sign up for a personal tutor for a fee.

ESL Video is a website that pairs authentic videos with comprehension questions. The user selects a video at a particular level and about a particular topic, views the video, and answers questions about what was said in the video. While such a resource could be used in a listening and speaking class, some, or at least one, of the videos could be used in a class focused on reading. To explain, the video only had music for the soundtrack while simple text appeared on the screen for the viewer to read. Of note is that many of the videos feature popular culture, so conceivably these videos would contribute both to language learning and to learning about the culture of English speaking countries. One interesting video features Jimmy Fallon, the Roots, and Carly Rae Jepson playing "Call Me Maybe," and the related quiz asks learners to fill in the blanks in lines of lyrics. Also, teachers are able to create their own quizzes for the website.

This website allows you to create a free audio dropbox on any webpage where students can record and save audio files for their teacher to retrieve. Could be very useful for speaking homework assignments, rather than relying on a third party website such as voxopop.

Even though I presented on Flickr, I thought I'd share it here, too. I had never thought of using Flickr for second language teaching purposes, but it has a lot of potential as a teaching tool. I particularly like the mapping option which allows you to search for pictures of a particular item or concept in a particular city/region/country. This would be great for writing or speaking classes that have a compare/contrast component.

My blurb: Teacher training videos, for your ongoing professional development. These videos seems to be geared towards K-12 education and are on a variety of subjects. However, there are 391 videos about teaching English, some of those are TESL specific (I noted at least 3 on teaching Listening and Speaking skills). They also have 108 videos on teaching Modern Languages (mostly French and Spanish). Also, they have ideas for using technology in the classroom, under the "ICT" subject. For instance, they have a "Using web-based software to enhance speaking skills" video, and a "Flip Video Cameras" video. Their blurb: Education video resources, lesson plans, inspiration and ideas to use in classroom. Professional development, CPD and training for everyone working in schools.

"Learn English online and prepare for IELTS with Languagelab. Practise with a qualified English speaking teacher, students from more than 70 countries, and learn English online." This is the selling pitch for Languagelab.com. It is a good resource for learners who aren't able to get to a classroom or have very limited availability because they have classes 24 hours. The courses are all online, but they do cost money, although not as much as a university class would cost.

This is another digital storytelling website where you can make your own movie. You get to pick the scene, the characters, and the music, and then once you have a scene, you can write dialogue for the characters. It's easy to be really silly or really funny with this, so it would be a fun activity for students to practice writing.

Is there a way to get the characters to speak aloud, or do they just mouth the words silently when their speech bubbles appear?

Not that I could find, so it's a better writing/reading activity than listening/speaking. It's kind of hilarious, though.

This website is a good source for teachers and a guide for learners. It has basic/travel/interview speaking lessons along with pronunciation lessons.

An extensive list of topics for impromptu speaking activities

This website is an interactive guide to the sounds of American English, German, and Spanish. It's American English guide is comprehensive, including a step by step guide on how to produce each sound. In addition, flash animation is used to demonstrate how to position one's mouth in order to produce the sounds of American English. This tool is useful for students who are curious about pronunciation or who are struggling with a particular sound that they would like to improve. Although the technical terms are defined, this tool can still be confusing for students and should not be taken as a guaranteed solution for improving pronunciation. It can, however, be used as supplementary material.

When you click the American English option, you can select consonants' manner, place, voice, or the vowels' monopthongs and diphthongs. Then, you can see an animation of the sound, or you can see a person using the sound in a word. The home page says it has libraries of the phonetic sounds of English, German, and Spanish.

English-Guide.org is an incredible website, albeit it looks like it is designed for children. That said, if you're teaching children English learners, great; you're all set to go. If you're teaching adults, this site could be used as a respite from the intensity of intensive English programs. While many of the resources on the site are language learning games that take the form of drill-and-kill exercises, not all of the material is so rudimentary. For instance, the Career/Business section under Listening links to many listening passages at elllo.org (another useful site for listening and speaking teachers). On elllo, learners can listen to business passages, such as one on personality traits and answer comprehension questions. It would be tempting to let a class full of learners loose on this site to see what resources they would gravitate toward. The major categories of resources Vocabulary, Listening, Grammar, and Others, and within these categories, like I mentioned, there are both games and more sophisticated exercises at the learners' fingertips.

My English Lab by Pearson is a supplemental site to the North Star Listening and Speaking and Reading and Writing textbooks. With an access code provided in textbooks, students can access a class website. Similar to BlackBoard Learn, My English Lab provides students with a calendar for assignments and enables teachers to upload content. More than that, My English Lab has many related and supplemental resources pertaining to each unit in the corresponding textbooks. For example, when covering unit one in NorthStar 3 about Advertising on the Air, My English Lab gives students access to all of the recordings from the unit that a teacher might use in class. It also gives students flash card decks with the vocabulary for the unit and sometimes has extra exercises for the students to complete. Depending on the exercises, My English Lab will score these exercises to give students grades. The disadvantages of the site primarily relate to logistics. When students by used copies of their textbooks, the books might be missing the access code. Also, students must have access to computers to make use of the site outside of class time.

This is a great website for finding games for your ESL students! Enjoy, Nour

Hello Guys, I do not know if you remember Dr. Stoller mentioning this website in class. This is a great tool for a project-based learning. Enjoy! Nour

This is similar to Skype, but less expensive to use. You can video chat with up to 12 people at the same time for FREE. Nour

This website is built by a Spanish teacher at NAU. Her idea is to have many authentic video clips that show how native speakers speak.

A language learning website that has various languages, and different native language ESLs (e.g. Korean ESL or French ESL). Because it doesn't have Mandarin ESL, I tried Cantonese ESL. It worked very well. It integrated listening, speaking, and grammar in a beginner level class, and used dialogues to introduce the key content for a particular class. It is worth to try.

Instagram is another photo sharing program that, like Flickr, lets students upload and describe their own pictures, and browse other users' photos. Although not targeted towards L2 learners, it lends itself to the creative side of learning by letting students find pictures they're interested in and describing or writing about them.