Vacaroo

A platform for students to talk about anything they like. They can record their voices and send it to teachers for feedbacks.This tool could develop students speaking skills and build confidence in speaking.

What is special about Vacaroo?

• Free and easily accessible.
• The recording procedure is simple and easy.
• The recorded voice is clear.
• Record voices, send them to teachers for assessment or feedbacks
• Used to practise speaking skills

Limitations of it?

• Dependant on internet connection. No internet, no Vacaroo.
• Limited for 5 minutes recording. Any recording more than 5 minutes should be done many times.

How it can be used in class?

I would suggest that teachers ask students to Vacaroo everyday and listen to their own recordings and their friend's recordings too to build their confidence in speaking.
Teachers could set a topic for the students to speak on or ask the students to make daily recorded journal.

Say Hi to The Zimmer Twins!

Zimmer Twins is a website that encourages students to create and share their animated videos.

Students an create their own movies, choose characters, action, and expressions. It is a fun moviemaker designed for educational purpose such as language learning. Students can use to create impressive cartoon animation.

How it can be used in class?

I would suggest that the Zimmer Twins can be used in the Production stage after they are given sufficient practice on language function in the Presentation and Practice stages. Students are required to create a dialogue of seeking and giving advice using their own language. They are given freedom to create their own storyline and dialogue. The rationale of this activity is to get the students apply the language learnt on their own. In short is to practise language for purpose.

Another activity could be creating ending for a story. Teacher provides an introduction of a story for students to continue and create their own ending. Students can use their own creativity to complete the story and plan the resolution of the story.

Pluses

• It's free for both craetinga nd watching prepared animated movies.
• Enhances students creativity- Three characters to choose, a range of settings, actions and expression. 
• Practice for writing dialogue or story telling - Bubbles for students to write on their dialogues on their own.
• Storyline can be more than 10 slides.
• Sound effects are available. 
• Automactically teaches students about different kind of expressions, settings and verbs.

Minuses

• Too complicated for beginner- too many things to choose.
• No voices for dialogues

 

clicknlearn

Interactive learning! That is the best phrase to describe this tool. It is interactive because it gives the students chances to learn language in a fun way and at the same time communicatively and productively. It offers the students countless topics or world issues to select on according to their interests such as culture, gender discrimination and global warming, which should suit with their levels:easy, intermediate and difficult.

How to do it?

Just http://clicknlearn.net/

Enter site and Click English!

Choose any topic of your interest!

What is good about this tool?

1. It is free. Thus,it can be accessed anytime.

2.Attractive animations and illustration may interest the students to explore the web and try all the interesting tasks,

3. Most of the exercises provide rules and relevant examples prior to the real tasks so that students are clear of what is expected from them in completing the tasks.

4. Some exercises involve drilling and repetition which may help students in enriching their vocabulary and getting the right pronunciation.

5. Clear instructions. This could avoid confusion and encourage the students to follow the task until the end without being sidetracked.

What is not good about it?

1. Some exercises may not be reliable and up-to-date. For example, issues such as child labor and war may not be able to provide the latest news of worldly issues.

2. Some exercises involve too many drilling that sometimes make the learning of language unnatural.

3.Some exercises employ lengthy texts that may discourage students from doing the exercise engagingly.

Breaking News English

Listening is one of the core skills in learning English language. If the activities are designed properly, listening somehow can be connected to some other fundamental skills of language such as reading, speaking and writing. Thus, designing interesting yet meaningful listening activities is significant in order to encourage the students to take interest and get engaged in the listening activities. Thus, Breaking News English can be one of the practical yet interesting tools in teaching listening. 

Breaking News English is a tool that gives practices to students to learning English through listening. Students can listen to current events and affairs topic around the world such as sports, business, entertainment, technology and science.  By using this tool, teacher can choose the level of exercise to suits the students’ level as it consists of easy to hard level of lessons. 

How it can be used in classroom?

Pre listening

Teacher activates students’ background knowledge about the topic such as “Earthquake”.Teacher let the students listen to the tape recording about the news once.

While listening

Teacher asks students to work in pairs to work on the exercise which requires students to fill in the blanks with appropriate answers. There are some other ways to do while listening activities:

Post listening

Teacher replays the recording and let the students listen once again. Students then can add up their undiscovered words.

Pros 

1. This lesson is free!

2. While learning English, students can also increase their general knowledge of world current issues. 

3. Improve listening skill. Listening to the tape prior to actual task requires students’ full concentration so that they could answer the questions in the following tasks.

4. Not only the students can enhance their listening skills, they can also increase their vocabulary banks and improve grammar aspects. 

5. It gives students training on how to get the gist of a text which through looking at keywords .It contains “Sentence jumble” where students are exposed to a wide range of vocabulary and different kind of word order. It gives students practices in the future when they encounter new text.

Cons

1. Lessons using Breaking News English are somehow website-dependant and undoubtedly, they need internet connection to make them happen. Without computer and internet access, the lessons will not come true!

2. Cheating. Students may directly answer the questions while listening to the recording.

3.If the task requires students to work in pairs, there may be some possibility for the students to speak in their mother tongue. Working in pairs and a lack of teacher’s monitoring could resort the students to use mother tongue.

In conclusion, intervention in the middle of the lesson is essential in order to check language usage in terms of grammar, spelling and pronunciation.