TED Ideas worth spreading

What is this?

• TED(Techonology, Entertainment and Design) is a collection of hundreds of award-winning talks videos, the open translation projects and conversations. It can be widely used in language learning context as authentic learning materials and extend training.
• Why is the content good for language learning?
• Learners can access these videos for free.
• TED provides learners abundant authentic English listening and speaking materials, which allows learners to get in touch with English speakers from all over the world regardless of the time and space limitation.
• The videoes are categorised by themes. Learners can search videoes based on the topic they are interested in.
• Most of the videoes are tagged.
•  
• 
• The content of the talks might associate with learners' main subject or major, which will motivate them to enchance not only English proficiency, but also facilite specific professional knowledge learning.
• Learners can regulate the time bar of a video based on their understanding, which enables them to keep their own learning process.
• Some newest releases videoes will be posted on the homepage. Learners can asscess the updated materials.
•  
• 
•    
• The topics of the talks per se are good resources for speaking and writing.
• Through observing the speekers' spoken language, behaviour, anddressing, learners will strengthen their presentation skills.
• Language beginners can choose to add subtitle of their L1. In this way, they may feel comfortable and understand easily when they watch it.

How might you use it in a language teaching context? 

• Teacher firstly select an interesting video that can resonate with students interest and concerned topic.
• Then play the video as a pre-task activity.
• Teacher asks students to discuss about the main meaning of the speech.
• If the students can hardly understand the main meaning of the speech, teacher may add L1 subtitle in the video and play it again to help them to understand.
• Teacher can express his/her own opinion towards the topic of the video, and demonstrate how to talk about a topic in an appropriate way.
• Then divide students into different group and ask them to discuss or write a short passage.

Limitation

• Chinese students may hardly understand western jokes in the talks, therefore, they may feel embarrassed when the audience in the video laugh.
• Some topics of the speeches are too technical and professional.
• Not very suitable for young learners.

Listen and Write

http://www.listen-and-write.com/

What is this?
This is a website that can be used to practice listening and writing ability. It contains a lot of video and audio files based on various topics, news, stories, passages, etc. that enables language learners to play and do the following dictation. Three modes(Full mode; Quick mode;blank modes) allow learners to choose flexibly according to their abilities and levels.

Why is the content good for language learning?

• The website provides a range of authentic materials, such as the lastest news, the hottest topics, popular speeches, sharing stories,etc. Students can choose to listen and watch, and do exercice flexibly as much as they want.
• The website collects and gathers various resources from a number of other different websites, which provides students 'one-stop service' and saves them a lot of time and energy.
• 
• The website enable learners with different levels to find the most suitable materials to use. Learners can firstly choose the levels of difficulty of each item, then choose the mode they like.
•  

• 
• The website allows students to make their own learning plan and schedule, which will foster students' motivation and autonomy. During the 'listen and write' process, students can control 'autocomplete' or 'autorepeat' as well as the progress bar.
•  
• 
• The website provides students a relaxed environment to learn. No time limited, no any monitors. Anxiety and others' disturbance will not affect students' learning process.
• Students can keep their own learning record and process as long as they login.
•  
• 
• Dictionary lookup are available for students to check their spelling error and get an improvement in vocabulary accuracy.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

• Teacher pre-select a video or audio and choose a certain mode for students.
• Before listening the materials, teacher asks students to have a free discussion about the relevant topic or news.
• Then play the video on class, and asks them to complete the following dictation in pairs.

OR

• Teacher is only responsible for setting the level of difficulties and asks students to complete three dictations in different modes every week.
• The choice of topic and title is random.
• On the last class of the week, teacher asks several students to introduce or retell what they have heared or watched to their classmates.

 

Limitation

 

• The speed in the audio files can not be regulated.
• Every computer should be equiped with earphone.
• It is difficult for students to learn and practice collaboratively.
• High requirement of Internet speed.
• Too many advertisements on the homepage.

 

 

 

An interesting website of vocabulary learning

What is this?

This is a pictorial vocabulary learning website which contains vivid pictures, word spelling, pronunciation, parts of speech, translation and small quiz, etc. Besides, the vocabularies are classified into different groups based on daily use topics which covers almost every aspect of our life.  All these interesting form and content are accessable with one click.

Why is the content good for language learning? 

• Fairly detailed and overall classification provides students a large range of vocabularies to learn.

• Involving vivid pictures and sound files is good for students to combine an object with its English spelling and pronunciation.
• Interesting pictures and various colors will stimulate students' (especially young learners) visual sence and increase their desire to learn.

• Words can be saved to account, which enables students to make a word list to review and strengthen memory.

• Additional quizz model enables students to test themself and enhance their autonomy.

  

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

1. Teacher firstly sets a topic for students, for example 'The face'.Then asks students to work in pairs.
2. Students will be firstly asked to move the cursor on the part that they've already known how to speak it in English (eg. eyes, nose, mouth, ears) and check whether their spelling and pronuciation is correct by moving the cursor on those pictures.
3. Then move to the parts that they are not familiar (eg. nostril, ear lobe, temple)and listen to its pronuciation and speak it. Though students can understand the meaning of those words with the help of pictures, if necessary, teacher will explain their usage in a precise way.(eg. expressions)
4. Some interesting relevant classroom activities, like, students work in pair and one of them point a part of his/her face, the other one speaks its name in English.  Or one of them speak a word, the other one need to move that part on his/her face, that's maybe much funny.

Limitation

• Might be only suitable for young learners or beginners.
• Involved in some vocabularies that rarely be used in real-life.
• Not many relevant activities, such as sysmatically listening, speaking, reading or writing task be followed.
• Only some nouns vocabularies which describe one object are avaliable.
• Web design and structure is simple and a little bit not attractive.

BLOG

What is this?

This is a sample blog which belongs to Mr Nik. As we can see that the title of this blog, Nik's daily English activities, obviously indicates that Nik provides and updates  a great deal of authentic teaching and learning materials and activities as well as useful online tools and technologies. The resources in this blog are very rich and interesting, such as lyrics training and memorize a song. Meanwhile, the forms of content in this blog are various, including written text, pictures, video and relevant links.

Why is this particular tool or technology relevant to language learning? What approaches to language learning or research underpin the use for this technology?

•  Blogs contain a mass of good resources related to language learning and teaching, such as some articles with specific examples written by the author,
• comments and shared opinions posted by the readers 
• and links to some English learning and teaching journals, websites, and online tools.
• All these resources can be used on English language class effectively. 
• Blog is accessed freely and easily, which facilities both teachers and students to use it on class and after class.  
• Language learners are able to grasp every updated blog and comments from blogger and readers. Therefore, they will learn some new knowledge and others’ perspective that they didn’t familiar before.

How might you use it to foster language learning?

• Teacher firstly introduce the advantages of blog and then show them a blog sample (or teacher's blog), including every function and feature in the blog, in order to make the students be familiar with the blog in terms of the content, the language and the design.
• Teacher presents how to create a blog and ask them to set up their own blogs and complete the profile. Or, ask them to work in pair or groups to set up one blog for a pair or a small group.
• Ask students to post their personal reflection of everyday’s class, or do some flexible and interesting online homework or put forward some questions and give some suggestions in their blogs.Meanwhile, ask them to share their blog address and to visit other's blogs and post comments. Teacher will give feedback and comments on their blogs.

What limitations can you see with the use of this technology?

• Sometimes, some technological problems, such as computer malfuntion and website error will frustrate learning process.
• Not suitalbe for some traditional classroom which will probably not apply computer at all, or some poor areas where have no enough computers or access to internet.
• Might not suitalbe for young learners and beginners, because the former are too young to handle all the blog thing, while the latter are probably not capable to write post or comments in English.