EllloEnglish !

This week website is another useful tool for improving listening skill. Elllo offers loads of listening materials ranging from audio clips, video clips, songs, news and etc. It is like an online library for listening materials!

The website is organized according to the theme for each listening materials types. There are a few types or sections – View, Mixer, Game, News, Videos, Scenes and etc. Each section provides lists of listening materials. You can click on a topic and it will link you to a Listening Lesson. The listening lesson comprises the multimedia, free mp3 files, transcription, vocabulary tasks, language notes and many more. Learners are not only having the access to the listening materials but also the tasks. They can do the listening activity online. Even more, they can easily download the listening materials together with the listening activity if they were to do the practice some other time on their computer without having to use the internet.

Learners between 13 to 17 years old might benefit from this website and they might find Elllo interesting and easy to carry out because of the well organization and layout as well as the variety of topics offered.

Here I am showing one example of the listening activity. The topic I chose is 'Boys Camp'. It has an audio clip for the listening, the transcription, audio slide show, vocabulary focus and the comprehension questions.

Why I should recommend Elllo to learners?

1. Elllo offers numerous listening materials which are recorded by the people from the different parts of the world. Hence the English used by the speakers in the audio or video clips are differing in accents. Learners can learn the differences between native speakers and non-native speakers’ uses of English.
2. The advantage of using authentic materials in learning language is learners can adapt how the language is used in the real world situation.
3. The variety of topics including culture surrounding which learners can choose to complement their personal interests in additional to their knowledge. This is also a good example of integrating content in language learning.
4. Encourage autonomous learning as learners can do all the activities outside the classroom without the help from the teacher.
5. Learners are exposed to different types of text which require them to engage with different language skills (listening, writing, reading, vocabulary). It offers learners the opportunity to learn and practice the skills.
6. Enriched with vocabulary - vocabulary enhancement in terms of pronunciation and information on how to use the words correctly.
7. Provide learners with the reason for listening so that they can complete the tasks afterwards.
8. It is free to download all the contents and it is legal to copy and distribute the materials for educational purposes.

Some limitations to this tool:

1. The videos cannot be downloaded. You can only download the mp3 files of the listening materials.
2. The website sometimes corrupts and when it happens, it changes the layout, loses all the images and might result in discouraging learners to continue using the tool.
3. The advertisements on the page are sometimes distracting. I get confused between the video for the listening material and the ads video.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend this website for learners to improve their English language uses and skills.

-Suze-

Bookr - Blog the Book!

Is your students (or if you are a student) love to photograph? Then this is a great opportunity for you to integrate that particular interest into the magical of ICT to learn English!

Bookr is a tool to create and share your photo book using Flickr image. You can choose your favourite themes or topics and start to search for your favourite photos to be published in your photo book. All the images come from Flickr therefore there are a lot of images to choose from. When the photo book is ready, you can publish it for other people to view.

This website can be used by teachers to design tasks that can be more fun and less threatening for the learners to learn English. English language learning can be integrated into this task by asking the learners to write a description for each and every photo they have included in the album. This is the opportunity for the learners to express their thoughts and practise their writing in the target language by describing the photos.

Another task that teachers can do with Bookr in the classroom is the speaking activity. When the learners have created and published their own photo books, teacher can ask them to present their photo books to the class. Teachers should provide learners with the idea of what they have to say in their presentation such as why they choose the topic, what photos they have chosen and are the photos related to their life. By using the guidelines, learners can brush up their speaking skills as well as enjoy learning the language through a slightly different approach.

This website is absolutely free and all the images come from Flickr hence there will be no copyright issues as all the photos will be directly link to the original post. It is also very easy to handle this tool. Learners only have to choose a topic, search photos by typing in the words related to the content, select their favourite photos, write a few brief descriptions, click the publish button and voila it’s done!

However, in my opinion this website is more suitable for the speaking activity as there is a limited space for them to write the description for each photo. They can choose to write longer but the description will cover up the whole page and you can no longer see the photo! Therefore I recommend teachers to use this tool for speaking activity which the photo book can be a good stimulus for them to speak. Other than that, the photos may take time to load so it may take a longer time for learners to create one photo book and later present it to class. Teacher might not be able to carry both activities in one period.

In my personal point of view, Bookr is a fun website to vary the activities used in the classroom but it is suitable for a more leisure activity rather than teaching language for academic purposes.

Below is a print screen of several comments on the used of Bookr taken from Wallwisher.

Footnote: Wallwisher is a website which can be used for people to post and share comments or notes with other people. The wall or room is usually created by a person and others can join the wall to post and view all the comments. It is an alternative way of expressing thoughts when a group of people are having online class or so called the connected classroom.

-Suze-

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.

-Suze-

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.

-Suze-