Teaching Grammar Through Songs

I have to admit that I find teaching grammar a bit on the boring side and finding good examples of grammatical structures in interesting authentic text can be quite time consuming, so when I saw this lyrics search tool Lyreach I was instantly impressed.

All you need to do is type in an example of your grammar structure and you can then find it in a whole range of different song lyrics.


This links to the lyrics start to show beneath the search box as you type, and then you just click on the sentence to link to the correct verse from the song. You'll see the part of the song highlighted and there's a link to a clip from Amazon.



Unfortunately the clip is only the start of the song and may not have your grammar example in, but it is easy from hear to find the clip on YouTube or find the clip and the rest of the lyrics together using a tool like Tubeoke that matches clips to lyrics.

So now using these two easy tools you can find lots of authentic examples of your grammar points in song lyrics and create quick activities based around them. You could even paste the lyrics from the verse into Wordle and use it as a prompt to get the students to drill, memorize or review the verse after they listen.

So, who says technology doesn't save time??

I hope you find Lyreach useful.

Related links:

• Using Word Clouds in EFL
• 6 Activities you can do online with songs and music
• Can Music Aid Memory of Text?
• Karaoke with a Social

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Translate Shakespeare 2 Text Lingo 4 Twitter??

If like me you struggle with text and SMS or even Twitter lingo then transL8it will surely be a handy tool for you.

Simply type the text you want to translate into the field and then click on translate it. Your text will then appear translated in the filed next to it.

Or should I say?

Simply typ d txt U wnt 2 transl8 in2 d feLd & thN clik on transl8 it. yor txt wiL thN apEr transL8d n d filed NXT 2 it.


The translation works both ways so you can also feed in text messages and then translate them back to 'standard' English.

I couldn't resist trying this out with some Shakespeare so I took a short snippet of text from Tamming of the Shrew and translated it to text lingo

• Here's what I put in:
  
  See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,
  Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow
  Never to woo her no more, but do forswear her,
  As one unworthy all the former favours
  That I have fondly flatter'd her withal.

• And this is what I got:
  
  c, how dey :-* & court! Signior Lucentio,
  hEr iz my h&, & hEr I firmly vow
  nevr 2 woo her n mo, bt do forswear her,
  az 1 unworthy aL d formR favRz
  dat I hav fondly flatterd her withal.

I think this is a great tool to use with students to make short texts or dialogue a bit more interesting.

• You could have them try to figure out the code and rules of translation being applied, then translate some of their own statements.
• You could prepare some of your own lingo texts for students to translate back.
• You could translate headlines from the news.
• You could Tweet them text using Twitter and get them to translate and Tweet you back

This is a fun tool that you can use so easily in so many ways to make dealing with text a bit more entertaining and engaging for students.

I hope you enjoy it.

• Find more text related activities for EFL ESL students
  

Related links:

• Revising Short Texts and Syntax on IWB
• Prompting reading speeds
• Comparing Texts to Aid Noticing
• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Comparing Texts to Aid Noticing

QuickDiff is an interesting tool that analyses differences in two very similar texts. It was actually developed for examining programming code, but could be a really useful tool to use with students to get them to look more closely at the texts they write and notice the mistakes and corrections and differences in the text.


You simply copy and paste your text into the two fields. Then make any changes in the left hand field.


Then you click on the compare button and the differences will be highlighted below.

• You could use this as a simple marking tool to show students where their errors are, just by printing up the results, or you could try to get students spotting their own errors.
• When your students submit their texts to you for correction you can make another copy of their work without any errors and then ask them to compare and find where you have made changes. Ask them to highlight any differences they find between the texts. Then ask them to paste their original text and your corrected text into the text fields in QuickDiff and see if they found all the differences.
• You could also cut and paste a text from a news site or wikipedia and add some errors for students to find, then give them the source of the article and they can cut and paste into QuickDiff to see if they have found them all.
  

Remember though that the corrected text has to go in the left-hand field and the original in the right and you need to select 'Inline' before you click 'Compare'.

This is an interesting tool to get students looking more closely at their work and finding their own errors rather than just looking at their marks and moving on, and will help train them to 'notice' more about written text.

I hope you find it useful.

Here you can find more writing activities for EFL and ESL students

Related links:

• Translate Shakespeare 2 Text Lingo 4 Twitter??
• Revising Short Texts and Syntax on IWB
• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials
• Extending a Sentence
• 60 Second Writing Activity

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Writing Upside Down

Have you ever wanted to write upside down on a web site? Well now you can, just go to Upside Down Letters, type in your text and watch as it appears upside down in the field below.

Then just cut and past your text into your page. Here's what it looks like.

˙ǝʞıן sʞooן ʇı ʇɐɥʍ s,ǝɹǝɥ ˙ǝƃɐd ɹnoʎ oʇuı ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ ʇsɐd puɐ ʇnɔ ʇsnɾ uǝɥʇ
˙ʍoןǝq pןǝıɟ ǝɥʇ uı uʍop ǝpıspdn sɹɐǝddɐ ʇı sɐ ɥɔʇɐʍ puɐ ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ uı ǝdʎʇ 'sɹǝʇʇǝן uʍop ǝpısdn oʇ oƃ ʇsnɾ 'uɐɔ noʎ ʍou ןןǝʍ ¿ǝʇıs qǝʍ ɐ uo uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ pǝʇuɐʍ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ ǝʌɐɥ

As you can see, it's not perfect and there are no upper case letters, but it does the job.

So why have upside down text? Well could be handy as a reading challenge or also to add answers to online tasks and stop students from going straight to them.

Hope you find Upside Down Letters useful.

Related links:

• Cloze Test Creation Tool
• Listening Dictation Puzzles for EFL ESL
• Creating an interactive cloze text
• MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’
• Create EFL / ESL Lesson Plans in Mins
• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
• Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL
• Prompting reading speeds

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Analysing Vocabulary in Texts

WordSift is a very useful tool for analysing vocabulary in texts and it has some really nice features. On first glance it looks a little like Wordle, but it actually goes much further.
When you paste in your text it generates a tag cloud with the 50 most common words from the text.

If you then click on any of the words you get images from Google and definitions with related words from the visual thesaurus.

This isn't all. If you scroll further down the page you will also see example sentences from the text which use that word.

All of this makes WordSift a very useful tool for students. They can really dig more deeply into text they have studied and pull out vocabulary with words, definitions and images which they could collect together in a digital vocabulary book.

They could also use this tool before reading to prepare new vocabulary and predict what the text would be about and what the genre or structure of the text would be.

Great tool. I hope you find a place for it in your bag of teaching tricks.

Related links:

• Online Vocabulary Building Activities
• A Tool for Comparing Words
• Flickr and Wiktionary Based Image Dictionary
• Creating Word Lists
• List Your Favourite Words
• Learn Some Cliches
• Interactive multiple choice activities
• Video Dictionary 2.0
• Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL
• Picture phrases

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Cloze Test Creation Tool

I've just spotted this very handy Cloze test creator that allows you to create your own cloze text exercises in either paper based or interactive form. You simply type or past in your text then select either the types of words or the number of spaces between words that you want taken out of the text.

You can also add clues, so that you can provide all the missing words and students just decide which ones go where.

Once you have decided on the number of or type of words you want taken out of the text, you select either text only, for a printable classroom version or interactive to create an interactive online version of the exercise.
This is a great little tool for reviewing texts and building learner autonomy, especially the online version. You can ask your students to take texts they have studied in class and create and test themselves on various aspects text just by copying it in and clicking.

Great free tool. Just a shame you can't save the interactive versions you create.

Hope you find it useful. You can find more tools by the same creator here. You can also find an activity for students here: How Words are Used Together

Related links:

• Listening Dictation Puzzles for EFL ESL
• Creating an interactive cloze text
• MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’
• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Subtitling your video clips
• Transcribed Videos for EFL ESL
  
• Soundscapes from SoundTransit

Best
Nik Peachey Read More..