Listen and Write

Listen and Write is another website which is designed to help learners of English improve their listening skills. It is different from other listening practice web which the learners practise to listen to the news. The topic and content of the news might vary according to learners' level of English. When we go to the website, learners can choose their levels and also the news they would like to practise with. They can play the audio and listen all audio at once before they start typing in what they have listened. The next stage, the audio is parted into several tracks so that learners can listen to one track and then write down the transcript before moving on to the next track until the end of the audio.

Here is the link which I get from the website, to demonstrate and explain how to use the website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=KR&hl=ko&v=Av0XGEh-ZGQ

In my point of view, this tool is suitable for learners or beginners from the age of thirteen and above because news broadcasting is not an easy piece of listening materials. The news is authentic and the speaker use their own tone, voice and accent which might be difficult to understand. Other than that, the issue discussed in the news might be general and recent issues but younger learners might not aware of such content. Thus it is not giving such motivation to the younger learners.

Other than that, it promotes the use of multiple skills which are listening, writing and spelling at the same time which I think is quite hard for beginners to cope with. The news content also comes from various sources such as radio and bbc which might be easier for a more advance learners to understand. However the choice of topic is always updated and recent. This might motivate the learners to choose that particular topic to listen to the content while learning the language.

Because it is a free website, learners can do the practise at home and this will lead to autonomous learning which is an excellent way of learning English language. Another brilliant and interesting content of the website is learners can keep a record of their performance. This record can be used to evaluate their language performance and improvement from time to time. My advise, teachers should model to the learners of how to use the tools because it is not really user-friendly.

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Lyrics Training

Lyrics Training provides an easy and fun method to learn and improve language skills through the music videos and songs. It helps learners to learn language by practicing listening and writing (as well as spelling) skills. Learners can choose their favourite songs from a variety of music videos. While listening to the songs, the lyrics will appear at the bottom of the video with some words missing. To improve the listening skill and language, learners would have to fill in the blanks with the correct words.

This free website is suitable for all level of learners as early as eleven years old because learners can choose the difficulty at the very beginning of the practice to suit their level of English. For example, if beginner level is chosen, the missing words are ten percent of the song lyric while if the expert level is chosen, learners would have to type in all the lyrics.

The song will keep playing until it reach a blank and the song will pause to give time for the learner to fill in the blank. If the word is correct, the song will continue to play. While listening, learners can pause or replay the song for example to listen to the previous line. There is a 'help button' below the screen which can be useful for learners to complete the lyrics training.

When you managed to complete the lyrics, you will be given your score based on the count of right words you put in and the period of time that you consumed to complete the song. To make it more interesting, you can sign in to the website so that your score can be recorded and you can compete with other learners to be the high scorer. You can also post and share your score to facebook and twitter for your friends to see and join the competition.

The advantage of Lyrics Training is it is suitable for all level of English learners to practise and improve listening and spelling skills. This website can become a very useful tool of encouraging learners to learn the language on their own. They can do the practice at home or whenever they have free time. The use of songs in learning language is a very good approach. Learners especially the younger one can be motivated to learn from the new vocabulary to the sentence structure. The variety of songs selection gives the opportunity and freedom to the learners to choose their favourite songs for entertainment as well as enjoying the learning process.

However, this can also become a discouraging factor because learners might prefer to choose their favourite songs which they are familiar with. In that case, they can easily fill in the lyrics which they have memorized. There is a possibility that learners will not choose a song that they do not know because it might be out of their interest. Thus in my opinion, there is no point of practising the song we already know all the lyrics. To overcome this situation, teachers can carefully choose some songs which they think can entertain and draw learners' interest and introduce the songs for the learners to try.

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Dvolver Movie Maker

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a very useful website which can help English teachers to conduct a lesson in a different and interesting way. It enhances the learners knowledge of vocabulary as they try to use as much vocabulary items to construct the dialogues. The website allows teachers and the learners to create a short movie by giving them the opportunity to choose from a number of cartoon characters and create their own dialogues to put them into a movie. English learners from the age of thirteen can be taught to use the website as it requires simple technique of using the ICT.

How to use Dvolver?

When you go into the website, you will first choose the background and atmosphere that you prefer your movie should be. The next stage, you will have to select the plot of the movie and two characters involved in the interaction. Then you will be able to start filling in the dialogue boxes with your own creativity based on the plot you already have in mind. As a final touch up, you can select a background music to give a mood to your movie and that's it, you have become a movie director! To learn more about Dvolver movie maker, you can go to the website and try it. Dvolver makes directing a movie is like A,B,C ! Here is the link to the web. http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html

What I personally like about Dvolver?

• A new approach to teaching and learning
• Learners get to learn English language and the use of ICT at the same time
• The activity is fun and interesting to be done whether in the classroom or as a homework
• It allows creativity which learners can express their idea into the form of movie
• Step-by-step and easy to use web for beginners which they just have to click and choose from the available selection of how to create the movie
• Users can embed and share the link of the completed movie into their social network such as blogs, facebook, twitter and etc.
• It's a free web!!

However in my opinion there are some limitations to the use of the website:

• Some contents or characters in the web might not suitable for younger learners.
• The content is dictated by the tools thus it limits the learners' opportunity to choose their own content.
• Some learners might take the advantage of freedom to use their own words by using such inappropriate language in the dialogue.
• It might be time-consuming for learners to create dialogues to suit the plot in a very limited lesson period.

Dvolver is one of the various tool for learning language rather than learning the grammar or writing an essay. Learners can forget about the language grammar for a while and enjoy the exploration of the language in a different way. With a close monitoring from the teachers, I personally encourage them to integrate this tool into their language learning course so that learning English can be fun too!

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