Learning Kids Games: speaking skills

Showing posts with label speaking skills. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Comparing and conditionals - The facts about countries.

Last week I saw IfItWereMyHome and instantly thought that it would be a useful resource to get students making meaningful 2nd Conditional sentences based on real information, but a closer look shows that the site has much more potential than just that.

By clicking on 'Country Comparison' the site detects your home country. You can then click on any of the country names below to get statistical comparisons between your own country and the one you have selected.

The comparisons are actually colour rated according to whether they are viewed as negative, positive or neutral aspects.

If you click at the end of each comparison you can also get more information about the facts being presented.

At the bottom of the page there is voting button where you can choose which of the two countries you would prefer to live in.

Once you click to choose the country you would prefer you can leave a comment to say why and also read other comments.

Here are some ways I think you could use this site with students.

Get them to find a country they would prefer to live in and ask them to find 5 reasons to justify.
Get students to find a country they would NOT prefer to live in and ask them to justify.
Select two countries and ask students to choose one to live in and justify their choice.
Ask students to look at the colour rating of the facts and see if the agree with the positive / negative rating of the facts.
Ask them to compare a number of different countries and find out which is the most environmentally sound / destructive.
Ask students to compare a number of countries and find out which has the best quality of life (They will need to decide what the criteria are for this).
Ask students to decide which of the facts displayed would influence their choice of country most.
Ask students to look at the facts that are compared and decide which important facts they feel are missing.
Ask students to look at some of the comments about the countries and decide - which they agree with / disagree with, which they think are ridiculous.
Ask students to compare their country to a number of others then post a comment or ask a questions about each country.
Get students to find the comments about their own country and respond to one of them ( in a polite way)
Ask students to look at the site and try to decide who constructed it and why.
Ask students to look at the facts about their country and decide if they think they are accurate.

I hope you find IfItWereMyHome and these activities useful. If you think of any other activities you could use the site for ,please post them in the comments.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Friday, November 26, 2010

AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom

For a while now I've been using Posterous in class and in training sessions to help show teachers and students just how easy it can be to create a blog.

(Basically, all they have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com with the title of the posting in the subject line and the text they want in the email along with and media as attachments and within minutes they'll get a link back to their published posting.)

No, though with the combination of Posterous and AudioBoo, the process of publishing audio directly to the web within minutes has just got easier too.

AudioBoo is a great free platform for publishing audio online. You can either go to their website and start recording straight away, or you can download a free app either to your Apple device or Android smart phone.

The site really does enable almost single click publishing once you have registered and set up your profile, but better than this it can be synced with a Twitter account, Facebook profile or blogging account so that any materials you record go directly to your network.

Publish directly from the classroom
I've found this really useful, particularly as I have the app installed on my iPad. This means that I can wander round class recording my students and then click a button and have their recordings published directly to my blog with seconds.

Then I can go to the blog later and build review tasks around the materials or students can go to the blog pages and comment on each others' recordings.

Here you can see and hear what the result is when you publish direct to Posterous: My first AudioBoo to Posterous recording from iPad

With students
Having this ability to instantly record and publish students' speaking can be very powerful, particularly when using a task based approach, as students are often reluctant to review and repeat speaking tasks that they have already done once. However, knowing that their speaking will be recorded and published gives them the extra motivation to repeat tasks, focus on what they have learned and concentrate on achieving a level of accuracy.

Setting all this up is very simple. Once you have your Posterous blog account, register on the AudioBoo website, create your profile then go to settings and click on 'Post to other sites'. There you can decide which services you want to synchronise your AudioBoo account with. Then you just start recording and publishing.

AudioBoo and Posterous together can help you to build a powerful and versatile publishing platform for your students work and they are both free, so why not give them a try.

I hope you find them useful. Here you can find speaking activities to use EFL / ESL with students.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Image Based Speaking Activity for IWB

This is a quick image based speaking activity that any teacher with an IWB or just a data projector in their classroom can do.

It's based around a photographic portfolio site by photographer Scott Stulberg. Scott's site opens directly to a slide show of some of his fantastic images.

The slides change at the rate of about 1 every 4 seconds and the sequence seems to be pretty much the same each time you go to the site. Here you can see Scott's images

So what's the activity?

It's very simple tell your students to watch the image slide show. After about 10 - 15 images, close the site and put your students in pairs and try to get them to brainstorm as many of the images as they can remember. This should get them talking and describing the images to each other.
Once they have had some time to talk and remind each other, get some feedback from the class and try to get them to describe as many of the images as they can remember to you. Help them with any vocabulary they may be struggling with.
Next, ask them if they can remember the order of the images. Which one was first etc? Put them in pairs once again to discuss again and try to remember the order.
Next, play the slide show again and get the students to check the order. When the slide show is finished. Get the students to once again tell you the order of the slides.
In the next lesson, ask the students again to try to recall and describe in pairs as many of the images as they can remember from the previous lesson. You could use some vocabulary words, especially the new words that came out of the lesson as prompts.

If you want to follow this up by getting some more static images to get students to describe in more detail, then be sure to check the index, as there are lots more images there.

I've always found images to be a very powerful tool for helping students to remember vocabulary and descriptive words. I hope you find this activity useful.

Find more: image based activities for EFL / ESL students

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Ask & Answer Video Questions

Much as I don't like appearing on video I do like web based video tools and Plank.ly is one that caught my eye recently. Plank.ly is an asynchronous Q&A site which allows users to ask and answer each other's questions either by text or video.

It's very easy to use, you just need a webcam and to set up your account. Once you have done that you can integrate it with Twitter or Facebook (though I would advise that you wait to see how useful it is first) and you can start inviting friends or students to follow you and invite them to leave questions for you. It's a good idea to get started by getting Plank.ly to ask you a few random questions, so that when visitors come there is something for them to see. This is very simple to do. Once you have created your account, go to the 'Inbox' and click on 'Ask yourself a random question'.

Once the questions appears, you can answer it either using text or video, just by clicking the icon on the right.

Clicking the video icon will launch the video recorder window. You'll need to click on 'Allow' so that the Flash plug in can access your camera and microphone.

Then you just click on 'Record' and start recording your answer to the question. You can try again if you don't get it right first time so don't worry too much. If you like your recording, just click on 'Use' .

All of your video answers are collected in your 'Activity stream'so you can go back and edit or delete them later.

The next thing to do is either start inviting friends through Twitter or Facebook, or if you prefer just send the URL of your stream to people who you want to ask you questions. The they can either submit a questions by text or record a video questions for you. You can see my stream and try it at: http://plank.ly/NikPeachey

The activity stream is a little like Twitter in that you can start to follow people or they can follow you, so you can start asking and answering each other's questions and see what questions other people have been asked.

How to use this with students

I think this is a great 'ice-breaker' especially for an online class where students don't really get to meet each other and are often working in different time zones.
It's also a great way for lower levels to get some online speaking practice for homework and the fact that they record their answers will be interesting when they come to look back on their progress. Also great for you to help assess their progress too.
It's also a nice way for new classes to get to know you as their teacher. This can be really difficult in bigger classes with lots of students, so this can add a nice element of 1 - 1 contact.
Questions and answers are the fundamental building blocks of language, so this is a great tool for checking out students' grammar and their ability to formulate questions and answers in any particular tense, so great online controlled speaking practice too.

Potential problems

This is an open site, so students can be 'found' by other people, so think about what age groups you use the site with. If you are following the students, however, you will be able to see who they are interacting with and as all accounts are registered you will be able to track back any bullying or abuse that may happen.

I hope you enjoy using this with students and by all means do leave me a question if you want to and I'll do my best to answer it. http://plank.ly/NikPeachey

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Friday, October 9, 2009

Using Movie Soundtracks in the EFL ESL Classroom

Using films and movies in class is a great way to encourage students to learn more language, so if you use them a lot then this site will be handy for you.

It's called MoMupl and it searches a database of movie sound tracks to help you find all the songs and music from films. You just type in the title of the movie and then click on the results to get a full list of the music tracks from that movie

You can then just play any of the tracks you want to hear in the browser.

This is a great tool that you can combine with the work you do on movies. Music is a very strong aid to memory, so you can use the music to prompt students to remember or it can just enhance the atmosphere of your lesson.

You can use this with students in a number of ways.

Find the sound track for a movie your students have been studying and play different tracks, then ask if they can remember what was happening in the part of the movie when this music was playing.
Use sounds tracks before the students watch the movie. Play them various clips and see what they can predict about the movie from the music. Get the students to create their own movie scenario from the different tracks.
Get students to find a sound clip from their favourite movie and tell others about it in class.
Use sound tracks from movies as the back ground for story telling.
Give students some exerts from movie scripts (download scripts from Drew's Script-O-Rama). Get them to read 4 or 5 short dialogues then play them a short exert from a sound track and see if they can match the sound track to the movie script.

I like MoMupl because it combines couple of my passions (music and film) and even if you don't use it with your students, it's still useful for finding out who it was that wrote the music you liked in the film that you watched.

I hope you find it useful.

Here you can find activities for EFL ESL students that use music.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Record Online WebCam Interviews with Wetoku

I've just been trying out a great new tool called Wetoku. Wetoku is a video conferencing tool which enables one to one live communication which can easily be recorded and then saved for comment or embedded into blogs or websites.

Here's an example of what the finished product looks like. This was a quick interview I tried with Graham Stanley of the British Council in Barcelona. (The width of the player is 514 pix so it doesn't fit so well in my 400 pix content column)

You can see the compete video here on the Wetoku site

Creating an interview is really easy. You just log in to the Wetoku site (still in beta at time of writing) Click on 'Start Your Interview' add the information about who is being interviewed etc. Then click 'Next'.

You should then go to the interview interface and get a link to send to your interviewee (by email).

Once the click the link they'll appear next to you and you just need to click on the record button and start your interview.

When you are finished, stop the recording and watch it. you can then either record it again or click 'Done'. When you click 'Done' you'll see the interview and be able to share it using the URL or embed code. Visitors to the site can also leave comments on the interview.

All your video interviews are stored in your profile and it is possible to go back and edit the information on them, but not the video itself.

How can we use this with students?
This is a fantastic tool for setting homework or distance learning assignments for our students.

They can interview each other in pairs then post the videos and you can leave feedback for them in the comments section.
You can record short video tutorials with them and they can watch afterwards and review.
You can create interviews for them to watch and comment on them.
They can create their own interviews for their blogs

This ability to record and watch the interviews again / comment on them makes this a really useful teaching tool. The sound quality is pretty good so students can really hear them selves quite clearly. This is an ideal tool for getting them to reflect on and try to improve their performance.

I hope you enjoy this tool and please feel free to leave any suggestions or links to interviews you create below.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

What are you Wanted for?

I just came across this collection of fun photo adapting tools and thought this one that enables you to create a 'Wanted' poster from your own image could be a useful one to use with students or on teacher training courses.

It's really easy to use, you just upload an image and then write in your own caption. You can then download and print the images or add them to blogs or web pages.

There are a number of ways you could use this with your students:

As a writing prompt - Get them to create their own 'Wanted' poster with their own captions and then exchange the posters and get someone else in the class to write the story of how they became 'Wanted'.

As a speaking prompt - Get students to create and print their wanted poster and then create their own fictional story of how they became 'Wanted'. See which students can create the best story.

For self-evaluation and reflection - Get students to think about their weaknesses and select one weakness they would like to work on improving . They should add this as the caption, then get them to think of how improving that weakness will help them and add this as the reward (they will need to be concise). They can then print their 'Wanted' posters and hang them up in class around the walls as reminders of what they need to focus on. The students could then look at each other's posters and offer each other tips and advice on how they can improve. This can work well with teacher training sessions too.

I hope you make some useful wanted posters and be sure to check out some of the other ways in which you can adapt your images here. Do leave a comment if you came up with some good ideas for how to use them and let me know which ones are your favourites.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Friday, April 17, 2009

My Talking Faces

PhotoFace is a novel way to get your students talking, recording themselves and creating fun speaking images for class or homework assignments.

It's very simple to use. You can either upload your own image or use an image provided by the site.

You need to drag the position of the crosses so that they are over the features of the face.

Once you have done this you can alter the emotion of your image and click on the face and drag parts of it if you want to distort it.

Once the face image is ready you have a choice of ways to add audio. This can be done by adding a pre-recorded file, using text to speech or recording from your microphone or telephone.

If you use your microphone make sure you allow the site access it, then just click on record. You can record, listen and re-record as many time as you choose until, you get it right. I was actually very impressed with the sound quality. Once you have finished recording you simply need to email the link to the image to yourself or get your students to email the links to you.

Here's the one I created using my own voice: Introduction to PhotoFace
I also created a speaking sea shell using the text to speech: Sea Shell. So you don't have to stick with just images of people.

This is a great way to get your students to submit short speaking assignments to you by email. You can ask them to talk on a specific topic or give their opinions on on discussion tasks or contentious issues. It's quick easy and free, just a shame there is no embed code to enable you to put the talking heads into web pages or blogs.

I hope you enjoy playing with this and that your students get a lot of speaking practice with it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Photo Fun with Your Students

Some time back in March 08 I wrote a posting on ideas for creating personalised Personalised flashcards for EFL ESL activities. That posting used a site called FaceinHole which had some nice images that you could upload you or your student's picture to.

I've just spotted another site called PhotoFunia that also has a nice collection that you could use with many of the same ideas.

Here's a few examples that you or your students could use as prompts to create stories around. You could also get them to create a completely fake biography. Here's mine. See if you can decide which parts are true!!!

Did you know I used to be an astronaut?

Before I became a teacher I was in fashion.

I also recorded a CD, but I only sold one copy. Wonder who bought it!

Of course I've made some pretty influential friends too.

And like every celebrity I had my own chat show

And er! Well I can dream, can't I?

Well I hope you and your students enjoy this site. It is of course free, but has some advertising on so watch out for that.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Drama Scripts for EFL ESL Students

Finding simple free drama scripts that we can use with EFL / ESL students can be something of a challenge, but I've just found a virtual (forgive the pun) gold mine of them on the Education World website.

They not only provide free downloadable versions of the scripts, but there is also a basic lesson plan with each one and some suggestions for vocabulary words students will need and follow up questions to ask the students.

The scripts are probably best suited for young learners or teens, but you might find something for adults too, as I haven't had time to look through them all.

Education World has been around for years and it's easy sometimes to overlook sites like this because we are so focused on what's new, but the site really is worth checking out and has a real wealth of free materials.

Check out the scripts here

Hope you enjoy it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Friday, July 4, 2008

Send Free Video Messages

SnapYap.com looks like a nice free tool for sending video messages. It doesn't involve downloading any software as it uses the Adobe Flash plugin. You just have to allow access to your webcam and microphone.

You can either exchange messages with other registered users, email links to your messages to people or send them a link to your messages page.

This video from Snapyap.com explains it all.

I haven't tried this yet, but I think it could be quite an interesting communication tool and a nice way of developing materials for students and it's free!

Let me know if you have any luck using it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Friday, April 18, 2008

Learn English and get fit

I just spotted this rather remarkable example of an English video lesson for Japanese students. It shows some rather remarkable use of music and includes a revolutionary drilling method.

Watch, learn and enjoy!

Try this at home and you might also get fit too.

As someone who has always believed in the benefits of drilling new language, it's great to see that the ancient art still finds a place in our modern world!

But on a more serious note you might find this useful if you're involved in teacher training and want to get some discussion going around the theme of drills.

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Nik Read More..

Friday, February 22, 2008

Tackling Race Issues

This week the Big Think is running a feature to coincide with Black History Month. It includes videos from Black American leaders from a wide range of fields and backgrounds giving their thoughts and reflections on race and identity issues.

This is great material for basing lessons around and should promote a lot of discussion within your classroom.

As ever with sensitive issues, you'll have to handle this carefully, but watching the videos is a good way of raising awareness, without having to tackle the issues head-on.

Here's an example of one of the videos.

You can check out some of the other videos at:

For a more complete review of Big Think have a look at my Learning Technology Teacher Development Blog at:
http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/01/video-debating-website.html

Hope you find this material useful.

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Nik Read More..