Dear all,It has been another interesting week, this time with aural/oral focus. The Dennie Hoopinggarner's paper, Best Practices in Technology and Language Teaching, was my first stop. I learned about how many researchers have been investigating the cause of using the computer in teaching listening and speaking. Many have shown empirical evidence that CALL is a powerful means to improve the target skills.
I have been exploring websites offering new approaches to teaching/practising speaking. The one I find most useful is Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab. It provides tens of common contexts the learner could find him/herself in anytime. You can use the activities as listening, speaking, or listening-speaking exercises, with minimal adaptation required on your part. The content of this CALL application can be transformed, also, into paper material for additional/later use. Moreover, it will beautifully enrich the learning envoriment and open the door for students to practise in and out the classroom.
The idea of Levy and Stockwell mentioned in Hoopinggarner's paper caught my interest. It indicates that "speech recognition software and signal analysis software that evaluates learners’ pronunciation have been shown to be an effective way to improve pronunciation and discourse intonation (Levy and Stockwell 2006)." What I would like to study about more is the integration of speech recognition software in teaching/assessing oral skills. I have got some questions that I am going to try find answers to:
How does speech recognition software analyse and grade the learner's verbal production?
How easy is it to be integrated in teaching and learning aural-oral skills?
What do the teacher and the leaner need to start using it?
Are there free web tools that offer this kind of software?
Best wishes,
Amjad
Links:
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
http://www.esl-lab.com/
Bahrain
2 comments:
Dear Amjad,
I like the way you keep record of what happened on the course this week. Everyone one of us will put down different things, or similar things in a different way. These blogs are in way like written assignments we give our students - it is so interesting to see how we, teachers, respond to it.
I find the questions, your to-do list, at the end of the blog a useful way to keep track of things you would like to explore. Like post-it notes. A good strategy!
I am sure that all our blogs will form a part of our 'collective memory' of this course. Every one of them in its own way.
Best regards from Croatia,
Andreja
Dear Andreja,
Thanks for your kind comment. It me who is finding your way of keeping record of the week's event so neatly organised. As a matter of fact, I enjoy reading your reflection every week as well, from which I am learning new things all the time.
Best wishes,
Amjad
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