Get your Students Listening and Interacting with Native Speakers

Listening in the EFL / ESL classroom can be a pretty dull business. Usually it consists of students all listening to the same thing at the same time and doing the same tasks. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you feel the urge to get away from the course book and get your students listening to and interacting with some real native speakers from the safety of their computer then why not check out some of the people on Vyou.com ?

I've already written about how you can set up your own Vyou Q&A video booth, but it's also well worth looking round some of the people who are already there and seeing if there are any your students would be interested in, as a lot of the people there a quite young and some are quite interesting and quirky and Vyou offers your students the opportunity not only to listen to them and hear a range of accents, but also to ask them questions, though the answers might take a while to come.

It's very simple to use. You just go to : and there you can either search through some of the featured people or you can click on channels at the top and look through the more topic related people.

Each person has their own video channel and you can either type in questions below the video or you can click on the questions on the right of the video to listen to the answers to questions that have already been asked.

Here are a few people your students might find interesting.

This one is a British guy called Jonny and he claims he will write a song about any subject that readers suggest. There a quite a few there already: http://vyou.com/Spontaneoussongs
This one is Loren Rochelle for North America. She works in 'Social Video seeding' (Yes that seems to a job these days). She answers questions about a wide range of things from the personal to the trivial: http://vyou.com/lorenrochelle

It's also worth checking out the channels.

If you and your students are more interested in literature then there is an ask the author channel where writers answer questions about literature and their books: http://vyou.com/channels/simonandschuster
If your students are more interested in music, EMI also has a channel where you can submit questions to some of their recording artists: http://vyou.com/channels/emi

So how can you exploit this with EFL / ESL students?

• Show students some of the people and get them to think of questions they would like to ask. Then get them to submit the questions (try to get them to submit questions to a few different people) then in the next lesson they can see if they have any answers and share the information they got from the answers (Also good for lessons on reported speech).
• Ask students to choose one person each and give them 5 - 10 minutes to discover as much information as possible about that person. They can then discuss and share the information in class.
• Collect some of the questions that have been asked and get students to think of possible answers, then watch and compare to their own answers and see how much they have in common with each person. Then get students to find the person they are most like.
• Get students to watch two different people and then compare and contrast their character and interests.
• Get students to think of one or two good questions and submit them to a range of people. Then in the next lesson students can check the answers and decide who they think gave the best answer.

What I like about this Vyou

• These are real people that students can interact with.
• The use of the looped introduction videos gives a real sense of presence and this can be much more motivating and engaging for students.
• There's a real wealth of listening materials with various accents on a range of topics.
• The answers are quite short so they aren't too demanding on students concentration despite being 'ungraded' and authentic.
• Students can listen multiple times.
• I've looked at quite a few channels and there doesn't seem to be anything inappropriate or offensive.

What I'm not so sure about

• Some of the channels allow for anonymous submission of questions, so students might be tempted to ask something inappropriate (though they are unlikely to get an answer.)
• It is possible that your students might stumble across something they might find offensive or some bad language, but I haven't found anything like this yet.

Well I hope you try Vyou.com and that your students find it engaging, entertaining and useful.

Related links:

• Create a Video Q&A Booth
• So Ask Me a Question
• Create a Video Dictation Activity
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Teach Yourself to Teach with Tech

Best

Nik Peachey

So Ask Me a Question

I recently spotted this very interesting site called Vyou.com which exploits video to create asynchronous conversations. I find it interesting because of the simple way it creates presence. As you can see below, it looks like the person (me in this case) is waiting ready for your question.

All visitors need to do is type a question into the text line below the video and the creator will get a message with the question and post a reply. You can try it if you wish by posting a question to me. I'm not sure yet how long it will take for me to answer though.



This is very quick and easy to set up. You just go to the site and register for free, then once your registration is validated you record two short video clips. One is the one you can see above and another for unanswered questions. As questions are answered they appear below the 'waiting' video.

It's also a bit like Twitter in that you can 'follow' people and build up a group of followers. These people all receive notification of any video responses posted.

I'm trying this out because I think it's a great way of getting students to speak to each other and ask you or each other questions. All you need is a webcam and a microphone.

How to use this with students

• You could set up your own grammar or vocabulary answers site and students could send you questions.
• You could get students to ask each other questions about a story.
• You could play animal, mineral or vegetable and each students has to ask question to see what you are thinking about.
• You could just get students asking and answering questions about their likes and dislikes etc.
• I think this would work particularly well for class exchanges with students from other classes or countries.

What I like about it

• It's free and very quick and simple to set up.
• There's a real feeling of presence and that someone is there waiting for your question.
• I can generate some real spoken interaction.
• It's a very simple idea made very effective.
• You can embed the video chat into your blog or site.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Of course something like this is very much open to abuse, especially as it allows anonymous questions to be posted.
• The widget which I've embedded into my post is a bit big and it would be nice to have smaller sizes.
• A lot of the example conversations that have been created on the site are a bit adult in nature and certainly inappropriate for younger learners, so if you use it, be sure to use it with adults and embed it into a blog or site so that your students don't wander round the site.
• WebCams aren't generally very flattering, especially in a bad light, but you can always wear a big hat or dark glasses.

If you do give this a try, please do follow me and I'll reciprocate, as I'd like to find out a bit more about how this will work in practice. You can visit my profile on the site at: http://vyou.com/nikpeachey . There you will be able to see a better view of the full size widget.

I hope you find this interesting.

Related links:

• Quick Twitter Video Activity
  
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Animated Music Videos for EFL
• Creating multimedia stories
• Tutorial: Using Videos from YouTube
• Great Video Commenting Tool

Best

Nik Peachey

Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL

Yesterday on my Quick Shout blog, I wrote about a new tool called Xtranormal for creating text to speech animated movies. Since then I've had a little time to put together a tutorial video and think about how to use it in the classroom. First I thought I'd show you what extra normal produces.

There is quite a range of characters and backgrounds so the possibilities for creating situational dialogues is terrific and you can also build these scenes into a series, so this would be great for longer projects too. Here's a quick look at how a movie is created.

• You can watch or download a higher quality version .mov here: Xtranormal tutorial
• Or download to i-tune / iPod: Xtranormal tutorial

So how can we use this with our students?

• We can use it as a novel way to present language in context by creating small scenes for our students to watch.
• We can get our students to create dialogues for specific contexts. You could even give students specific tasks (Convince your partner that taxis are better than buses - Try to convince your partner to buy shares in Mircosoft and not Apple) get the students to work in pairs, taking it in turns to create each side of the dialogue, then they can show the class their work.
• You can get students to create news reports and then create a movie of their own news bulletin.
• You or your students could create monologues of characters telling jokes or stories or reading poems and develop this into an animated talent show.
• Their is both a rating feature and a comments feature, so once students have finished their work they can look at and rate each others' videos
• There is also a 'Remix' button on each movie which enables you to grab a copy of someone else movie and make it your own and remix / change it. You could create movies with errors in the script and ask the students to remix the movie and take out the errors.
• You could create a movie with only one half of the dialogue. Your students would then have to remix it and add the script for the missing person
• You could create the first scene from a story and get your students to create the next scene.
• You could show your students scenes from real films or a TV series and then see how much of the scene they can recreate.
• You could get students to create their own soap opera, adding a new scene each week.

What I like about it

• Well it's free (at the moment) and it's quick and easy to use?
• It's a way of giving students a 'finished product' to showcase the language they are learning.
• It's entertaining and creative.
• It's a very flexible and adaptable tool and could be used by students (over 13 years old) or by you to create materials for your students. You could use it to create materials for young learners through to business courses.
  
• It's a way of getting students to listen and to write.

What I'm not so sure about

• Well I'm not sure how long it will be free. There are signs that the owners intend to start charging, though no signs of how much or whether there would still b a free option.
• Some of the voices that create the speech from the text don't always sound 100% real, though in cartoon type animation I think this is reasonably acceptable.
• Not everyone using the site is doing so for educational purposes, s some of the animations that are already there could be inappropriate for younger learners or offensive to older ones.

Well I hope you find the time to try Xtranormal with your students and by all means share any ideas, tips or materials you create (just add a link in the comments).

Related links:

• 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
• Create an English Cartoon

Best
Nik Peachey

Exploiting a Video Viral

For a long time now I've been fascinated with viral marketing campaigns and the way advertisers use these to promote their products. What's really interesting about them is the advertisers ability to come up with really novel and original ideas to capture our attention and make us want to share with others. My Fame Star is a great example of this and one that we can use to create lesson materials.
What it does, is enable you to upload a photograph and then create a story around it.


It then converts this story into a small video report. Here's an example I created called 'How my past caught up with me.' (You'll have to watch a short advertisement first)

Example: Click here if the video doesn't play

How to use it with students

• Create a video about yourself or a fictional character and ask your students to watch it and make notes about your life story.

• Get your students to create their own stories then put them in pairs to listen to each others' story and make notes of the variations / differences.

• Use it as a prompt for students to write a newspaper story. You could get the students to watch the video clip and then convert the story into a newspaper clipping. You could add some realism to this by asking your students to use the Newspaper clip generator from one of my previous postings (Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts)

• Ask students if they can think of any real celebrities whose story is similar to this. Get them to tell the class or write the story of a similar celebrity.

• Discuss the use of 'viral marketing' sites like these as advertising.

• Do they think it's useful?
• Do they know of other viral marketing examples?
• Does it have an influence on their impressions of the company / product?

Have a look at an article I wrote here to find a out a bit more about viral marketing

What I like about it

• It can really personalise the lesson and materials
• It's fun and free (despite the advertising)
• It's easy to use
• Great stimulation for the imagination
• It has an embed code so you can embed the video into a blog or wiki
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Shame about the advertising, but I guess everyone has to make a living
• If you email it to someone the default is to accept promotions of the company's products (I deselected it)
• Sometimes the embed code doesn't work so well but can be improved with a bit of code editing.
  

Well I hope you and your students enjoy this and by all means post links or comment about any other ideas or materials you create with this tool.

Related links:

• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Create an English Cartoon
• Animating vocabulary
• Make you own animated movies
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey

Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials

Text to Speech (TTS) technology has come a long way in recent years and this is nowhere more evident than on the Read The Words website.

I've just been having a look at the site and trying to decide whether it has real potential for helping EFL ESL students with their listening, reading and pronunciation.


As an experiment I decided to select quite a challenging text and see what the site could do. I also decide to select a British English accent, as in the past I know that TTS systems had struggled more with UK accents than US ones, due to the wider range of sounds in UK English.

Anyway, here are the results. The text is from Wikipedia.org at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_to_speech and is about the challenges of text normalisation in TTS.

• Click here to watch Elizabeth read the text to you.
  Or
  

• Listen using this media player

This is the actual text you should be hearing:

"Text normalization challenges

The process of normalizing text is rarely straightforward. Texts are full of heteronyms, numbers, and abbreviations that all require expansion into a phonetic representation. There are many spellings in English which are pronounced differently based on context. For example, "My latest project is to learn how to better project my voice" contains two pronunciations of "project".

Most text-to-speech (TTS) systems do not generate semantic representations of their input texts, as processes for doing so are not reliable, well understood, or computationally effective. As a result, various heuristic techniques are used to guess the proper way to disambiguate homographs, like examining neighboring words and using statistics about frequency of occurrence.

Deciding how to convert numbers is another problem that TTS systems have to address. It is a simple programming challenge to convert a number into words, like "1325" becoming "one thousand three hundred twenty-five." However, numbers occur in many different contexts; when a year or perhaps a part of an address, "1325" should likely be read as "thirteen twenty-five", or, when part of a social security number, as "one three two five". A TTS system can often infer how to expand a number based on surrounding words, numbers, and punctuation, and sometimes the system provides a way to specify the context if it is ambiguous.

Similarly, abbreviations can be ambiguous. For example, the abbreviation "in" for "inches" must be differentiated from the word "in", and the address "12 St John St." uses the same abbreviation for both "Saint" and "Street". TTS systems with intelligent front ends can make educated guesses about ambiguous abbreviations, while others provide the same result in all cases, resulting in nonsensical (and sometimes comical) outputs. "

What I like about the site

• The site is free though you do have to register.
• The site creates a number of options once it has converted the text to speech. This includes creating an Mp3 file to download, creating an embed code to embed the audio into a blog or website, or download to i-pod.
• They have quite a selection of avatars and voices
• The site can convert text from a number of sources including Word, PDF, a website (just type in the URL) or even an RSS feed!
• You can make the texts private or public
• There doesn't seem to be a limit on many you can create
  

What I wasn't so sure about

• I found it hard to get a link to the avatar reading the text. It would have been nice to be able to embed her into my blog, but I just couldn't get that to work.
• Processing the text can take a while.
  

I haven't added any teaching suggestions yet for this posting, as I'm interested to see what other teachers think about this before I do that.

So, if you've listened to the text, please do send in a comment and let me know what you think about the useability of a tool like this with EFL ESL students.

Related lnks:

• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Artificial Intelligence Chat bots and EFL ESL

Activities for students:

• Listen and Write the News
• Listen to and Download Texts

Best

Nik Peachey

Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students

It's amazing how you can spend ages looking for something you want and then when you find it a whole bunch of other things come along with it. That seems to be the way things have happened for me with video conferencing. I found and posted about tokbox last week and then came Bubble Comment this week which I wrote about on my Quick Shout blog, and now Bubble Joy!

Bubble Joy is a way of sending short (60 seconds) fun video messages to people.


Click here to see the live video message (only good for the first 50 visitors)

They have a selection of message cards and you just record your video message to go in the middle using a webcam and microphone. The whole thing is very quick and easy to do.

So why use this with EFL / ESL students?

• It's good listening and speaking practice
• It's good fun and easy to do
• It's communicative
• It's creative
• It's free, easy to use, doesn't require registration
• Nice selection of cards

So how do we use this with our ESL / EFL students?

• Well a lot of the suggestions that I mentioned in my posting Video conferencing for EFL will also work with Bubble Joy, but be sure to remember that with Bubble Joy you only have 60 seconds, and the video card expires after it has been viewed 50 times.
• You could also try using it for specific occasions (there are cards specifically for Christmas, Easter, Valentines etc.)
• You could also get students to create messages that match the other themes (What would you say from inside a lion's mouth, inside a shark, on safari) and then build a story to go with the cards explaining why this happened.
• Students could also plan an imaginary holiday and then send a card to tell other as about it (on safari, riding in a hot air balloon etc.)
• Students could use one of the TV or stage designs to give a brief news report. They could each report on their day in class or what they did on holiday, at the weekend or on a class visit.
• They could use the stage or TV designs to record a joke each and then send them round and vote on the best one.
• The cocktail glass card could be used to create warnings against the dangers of alcohol.

See the full range of Bubble Joy designs here:

What I'm not so sure about

• Students need to email the cards, so to avoid them having to share their email addresses it might be better to have the students send the cards to you and then you grab the links and share them in class or on a web page etc.
• It would be nice to be able to upload your own frame to put the video in.
• 60 seconds can be a bit limiting
• Shame the cards expire after they have been viewed 50 times

Well I hope you enjoy Bubble Joy and that it helps you to spread some joy among your students.

Here are some related links:
Great Video Commenting Tool
Video conferencing for EFL
Send Free Video Messages

Best

Nik Peachey

Video conferencing for EFL

It's not often that you look at a product and think 'Ah! That's exactly what I've been looking for! And it's free!' But tokbox does seem to be that kind of product for me.

For some time now I've been looking round for a suitable video conferencing type application and while there have been a few that look okay, like SnapYap which I reviewed a week or two back, when I saw tokbox this morning I realised that here was a video conferencing tool that had exactly what I wanted and a bit more.

Here's a quick video demo of what it can do.

• To view the demo in a new window click here (3mins - 3.5Mb)
• Download the demo as Quicktime movie (5Mb)
• Download the movie for i-pod (7Mb)

So what do I like about it?

• It's free and doesn't require any downloads.
• I was registered and signed in without disclosing any personal information (apart from email address) within less than 3 mins of finding the site!
• It has a range of ways to communicate including group video conferencing, person to person live video calls, video email messages, and a video feed.
• You can embed videos or your call messages into blogs websites and a whole range of social media sites including Facebook and Blogger.
• You can report inappropriate use and users who are doing 'unsuitable' things with their accounts get deleted.
• Students can use it privately, with groups of friends or publicly.
• I like the inbox idea so you can check your video mail and get alerts sent to your own email inbox when someone wants to call you or has left you a message.
• It has a really nice clean easy intuitive interface.
  

Here's a quick message that I created to show you the kind of quality you can get.

So how could we use this with ELT or EFL students?

• Chinese - video - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.
• Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learnt that day and you could then respond. Your videos would form a good learning record and students would be able to look back at them later and see how they had improved -quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.
• Class survey - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.
• Different perspectives - Show some of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to a video giving their account of what happened. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. The 'detective' students should then try to recreate the scene using the student videos to guide them. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip or picture together and see how well they did and what they missed.
• Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a webpage or blog as a class poetry collection.
• Live tutoring support - This looks like an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.
• Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
• Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to video cast your lessons to a group of distance learners.
• Video twitter - using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.
• Text and video message - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.
• Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.
• Tip of the day, word of the day - Send you students a tip or word of the day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended websites, or words and definitions.
• Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.

So why use video conferencing with your EFL / ELT students?

• It' a great real life IT skill as these kinds of tools are going to become a normal part of our day to day work and pleasure daily routine.
• IT adds an element of personalisation to your lessons and materials and can make it easier to build up rapport, especially with distance students.
• It can help you get some one-to-one time with your students.
• You can use it to create some really nice personalised materials.
• Students can use it (with caution) to find people with similar interests to talk to or to do learning / language exchanges.

Possible problems

• As ever be sure your students are aware of how to protect their privacy and that they don't share any personal information or contact details with people they don't know.
• Try to keep any video messages you make quite short or they will become slow / bandwidth heavy to watch. This is almost certainly a tool that will be more useful to broadband users.
• Students are going to need a webcam and a microphone of course.
• Even though inappropriate use can be reported, someone has to see it to report it, so if that is going to be one of your students, make sure they know how to report anything that disturbs them.
• You have to be careful with any tool that enables mass communication, even if it's only email, but despite that I think that tokbox is a fantastic product and one which can really enhance your teaching and your students learning. I think they have come up with a fantastic product that could become a market leader in the field of web based video communications.
• Appearance is important, so watch out for bad hair days, hangovers ad make sure you wear something nice and try to find a room with some good natural light.
  

Fantastic! Hope you and your students enjoy it. Happy EFL video conferencing

Nik Peachey

Similar postings

• Make your own chat room

Karaoke with a Social Network

Well it had to happen! As every other kind of site these days has a social network attached to it, why not karaoke too?The site I've been looking at is called RedKaraoke and it has quite a few useful features. There isn't a huge range of songs there yet, but users can upload their own, it also has a web cam feature so for potential singers who want to be seen as well as heard you can have your web cam hooked up while you sing.

As with most karaoke, there are background tracks and you see the words of the lyrics highlighted as you are supposed to sing them. You can rate other singers too and have your own profile as well as take part in forums (mainly used for technical support by the looks of things) and there's also synchronous chat too.

Click image to enlarge

The high ranking singers get pushed to the top, and if you like someone you can leave encouraging messages of support.

So why use this with EFL students?
Anyone who has ever taught a EFL / ELT will know how powerful and motivating music and song can be to help students acquire language, so sites like this can be really useful.

• If your students are interested in music and singing, you can get them along to the site to record a few of their favourite songs (Onlye the more confident students though)
• You can get students to listen and rate other singers too and leave messages for them if they like them (though don't encourage messages to singers they don't like)
• The site has the words and music to quite few songs, so even if your students don't feel confident enough to record themsleves, they could still get some practice in the privacy of their own homes.
• If students do record themselves you can get them to rate each other and see if any of your students can get into the top ranking list.

What I like about it

• Well as ever for me the first attraction is that it's free.
• There are a range of songs and it's not all in English, so if you are teaching or learning other languages then there is potential material here.
• I like that you can have the web cam recording too.
• The interface is quite easy to get around simple to use.

What I wasn't so sure about

• I think this is going to be pretty bandwidth hungry, especially if you are using a web cam too, so only one for broadband users working alone from home.
• The quality of some of the sound files wasn't so great, but that's always going to be the case with Web 2.0 type content.
• Looks from the forum like a few people have had problems with getting their recording synchronised, though I'm guessing that switching off the wqebcam would help with this.
• As with any site where students are asked to register and add a profile, be sure your students know how to protect their pivacy and personal information.

In theory, if you have students who like karaoke, this could be a potentially very useful site. To be honest I'm not a great fan of the art and have to admit that I didn't make recording myslef, but thought I would share the site anyway, as I know some teachers and students really enjoy it.

Hers the ful URL of the site: http://www.redkaraoke.com/

Hope you find this useful

Best

Nik Peachey

Dictation goes Web 2.0

Yes and why not? Seems hard to see how this would be accomplished but it certainly does seem to be the case at the Listen and Write - Dictation website. What's more it seems to have been done in a pretty impressive way too.

This site features quite a number of audio files all of which can be accessed through quite a cleverly designed dictation activity. The users get to listen to parts of a sentence and they then have to type in the words of the sentence to a text field which only allows the words if they are correct. They are able to listen over and also get some help by setting the activity to auto complete the words as they type them in (cuts down on the frustration for EFL students of not being able to spell what you can hear).

The other nice aspect of it is that you get a score as you go and so you can work against yourself to try to improve the score.

But where's the Web 2.0 bit?
Well anyone who registers can link to an audio file for use in the activities. As a registered user you can also take on the task of adding the transcript etc. This can be a great way of sharing what must be quite a lot of work. Anyway, watch this video to see it in action.



How to use this with students

• Just your EFL students registered and sit them with some headphones to work through a few dictations
• Get your students to add some audio files that they would like turned into dictation activities
• Add some of your own audio and transcripts that you want students to work on

What I like about it

• This is really good free listening practice for students
• Great for use in a media centre or to set listening homework for students to do on their own (they can tell you their scores in class)
• Nicely designed activity with well thought out prompts
• Great that it plans to include other languages
• Great that the work load is being shared out and that users can add links to audios they want someone to transcribe
• The texts have been leveled according to difficulty

What I'm not so sure about

• I didn't manage to find a privacy policy on the site, so I wonder what they do with my info once they have it!
• Most of the texts are quite high level and grabbed from Voice of America news, so are also on some quite heavy news topics.
  
• Some more exercise types would be great, though they may be coming
• I wonder who is going to be willing to put the time into transcribing the audio files (bit cynical I know but teachers are seldom sitting around with a lot of time on their hands)

On the whole I think this is a really simple, but really great idea. This site has huge potential for language development and I hope the the people at Listen and Write can keep this going and that your students find it really useful.

Best

Nik Peachey

Using Product Reviews

Product review sites are becoming ever more popular on the internet, and why not after all? If you are going to spend money buying something, it's always a good idea to see what other people who bought that same product think of it.

ExpoTV is just that kind of site. It has a collection of, mostly home made, video clips made by ordinary people, mostly from North America, talking about the products they have bought. There is a huge collection of material here on a whole range of products from computer accessories to clothing, make up, cars, video games, children's toys and even trucks!

Here's an example product review. This one is of one of my favourite products, Apple's i-pod touch




What I liked about the site

• The clips are reasonably short and download quite quickly.
• It's free and you don't have to register unless you want to add comments or upload your own video.
• The site is rich with the kinds of language and vocabulary that students find quite useful in their 'real lives' especially if they do have to buy things from websites or while traveling in an English speaking country.
• The videos are made by real people so the material is very authentic with a wide variety of voices and accents.
• The site is well designed with a good search facility, so it's easy to find the kinds of products you are looking for.
• There is a brief guideline on how to make a good product review here which students can use as a guide. Also some how to video clips that are handy.
  
• There is a great potential here for real tasks as registered users can submit their own video reviews and even make money from them!! (I would be very careful about advising students to do this)
• There's an embed code for each video so if you don't want students wandering around the site, or if you want to use only specific clips you can grab the embed code ( as I have above) and just add the clip to a blog, web page or word processing document.
  

How should we use this with students?

• Get students to watch videos of a type of product and decide which one they would buy and why / which ones they wouldn't want to buy.
• Get students to create their own product video and include all the relevant information (this could be done very easily using anything they have with them in class from shoes to stationary, phones bags etc.) If your students don't have access to a video camera, you could still get them to do this for each other in class as a kind of short presentation. You could even make it competitive and see who can best convince the class to buy their shoes or phone etc.
• Get the students to watch 3 or 4 clips and make notes of key information about each product. They could then share this information in small groups and decide on the best product.
• Give pairs or small groups of students a budget and a shopping list and ask them to select the best collection of products within their budget. They should then use the product information to justify their choices.
• Ask the students to make notes of key word or phrases / sentence structures used when describing products
• Get some pictures of products and get students to watch / listen to one clip and decide which product was being described.
• Prepare a list of product features from a selection of videos, then get the students to watch the videos and match the features to the product.
• Give students a selection of clips to watch and ask them to decide which was the best made clip. Ask them to decide why. (This is a good activity to start with if you intend to get students to make their own clips or presentations)
• Have a class discussion about product review websites. Here's some possible discussion questions.
  
• Have you ever used a site like this before?
• Do you think the sites are useful?
• Do you know of any good sites like this (in English or other languages)?
• Are the reviews unbiased?
• How much confidence do they have in such sites?
• Why do people add videos to sites like these?
• How do the sites make their money?
• Why do they pay people to make video clips?
• Would you make a review of a bad product? Why / Why not?
  

What I wasn't so sure about

• Students can submit their own videos and get paid for them, but I would be very wary of encouraging this especially for younger students. Be sure to protect your students privacy and personal information and check on any terms of use before letting them register on this or any other website.
• The site carries a lot of advertising so be wary of letting students click round all over the place. It may well be better to create your own page that only uses the clips you have selected embedded into the page (especially for younger students).
• Students should be aware of the fact that not all the information given in the video is necessarily correct. These are just amateur video makers giving their opinion.
  

On the whole I think that sites like this are a really useful source of authentic materials, real language use and authentic real life tasks that can be useful to students beyond the classroom.

there are some things to be wary of when using them, but on the whole I think making students aware of the possible dangers, traps and pitfalls, is a valuable part of their education in itself, so I don't see this a reason not to use these sites.

Well I hope you find these tips useful, and please do add a comment if you have any other ideas for using product review websites, or if you have used them with your students.

Here's the URL of the site in case you missed it: http://www.expotv.com

Best

Nik Peachey

Pronunciation goes 2.0

I've been looking this week at Forvo, which is a kind of web 2.0 pronunciation site. The site allows users to request, and add audio clips of the pronunciation of different words from a huge range of languages, so if you want to know how a word is pronounced you can either do a quick easy search for the word and then listen to it, or if the word isn't already within the database, you can add it and request a pronunciation.

The site also categorises words into lexical areas such as brands, acronyms, sports etc which is very handy

You can also be helpful and add the pronunciation to words which have been requested in your language.

The site offer free registration, but you can find words, request words and pronounce words without registering. The benefit of registration is that you'll be notified when someone pronounces your word for you.

What I like about it

• It's a great idea and it's free
• Very easy to use interface
• Lots of different languages
• Sound clips load quickly and a reasonably good quality
• Registration isn't required
• Potentially a huge and growing resource

What I'm not so sure about

• Like most things on the web, especially Web 2.0, you can't be sure of the quality or authenticity of what you are getting, so if you are using this with students check out the words they are after and make sure the quality of the pronunciation is good (My litmus test was 'aluminium' and it feel somewhere between the UK and US versions)
• Watch out for students who want to pronounce the (four letter) words that they shouldn't be using (though probably better for them to pronounce them well than badly)
• It would be really nice to have regional variations of the pronunciation, but I guess that's broadening out the amount of work a bit far.
  

How to use this with students

• This is a nice self access resource for students to check their pronunciation
• You could give students a list of words and get them to find out how they are pronounced
• Get students to add some words that they want to be able to pronounce
• Use the site to dictate words while students listen, then get them to go to the site and check that they have got the right words
  

This is a really nice application of the Web 2.0 concept to pronunciation and it will be really interesting to see how this site grows and develops.

Hope you enjoy it and can get your students involved.

Best

Nik

Iconic teen video

Using video clips with teenagers can be enormously motivating for them, IF you get the right content. Getting the content right involves taking a look into the lives of our students and finding out what kind of things they are watching.

One of the most high profile examples of this is LonelyGirl15.
LonelyGirl15, which became a Youtube phenomenon, depicted a young teenage girl talking to her camera and discussing some of the intimate, bizarre and often incredibly trivial issues of her life. The ‘show’, a series of 2 -4 minute clips, was soon attracting audiences of millions and it soon emerged that it was a ‘fake’ and that the LonelyGirl15 was an actress working with a small film crew and script writer.
Since then the show has transformed into a sort of on going thriller. there is now both a UK version, KateModern as well as the original LonelyGirl15 series.
For more information on the plot and background see: LG Pedia

These two shows provide a huge potential source authentic language as teenagers in the UK and North America speak it. It’s also wrapped up in a context and genre which teenagers / 20-somethings can identify to. Though using this material isn’t without its pitfalls and drawbacks.

What I like about it

• The clips are short, but self contained and will download quite quickly.
• They really show the way that English is being used by young adults.
• The clips are quite enigmatic and the story is inferred and implied rather than depicted, so the material can be useful for developing students thinking and deductive skills.
• Many of them deal with young people’s issues and attitudes
• The characters seem like very ordinary people
• The clips can be very engaging

Here’s a just a couple of examples, from a collection of hundreds of clips which I think could well be usable.

From LonelyGirl15: Boy problems



From LonelyGirl15: Parent problems



From KateModern: A proposal



From KateModern: The order




Some ideas for using this material with students

• Students to watch a single clip and make deductions about the story, what’s been happening to the character, what the relationships are to other people mentioned etc.
• Students to watch different clips then build up and exchange character information and try to decide what the relationships are between various characters
• Students view the clip without sound and make deductions about the topic and mood of the person
• Create gist or specific information questions
• Get your students to watch and then write questions that they would like to ask the character
• Get your students to create and video their own response to one of the characters in the videos
• Get your students to watch for cultural information and look for things that would be different with their own culture (clothes, household objects, way people interact, gestures etc.)
• Get students to watch and compare a clip from the UK and the North American series and identify differences in the use of language.
  
• Get students to watch and compare a clip from each series without sound and look for cultural and environmental differences between UK and North American culture
• Create discussion classes around some of the issues touched on in the clips
  
• Students create their own localised version of the series.

What I'm not so sure about

• Some of the clips contain violence and bad language and show young people drinking. This is something you might actually ant to deal with in class, or avoid altogether, so be careful which clips you choose.
• You might have to be prepared to defend your use of this kind of material if your students go home and start watching it in front of their parents
• Much as I find this view into the world of 'young people today' (Did I really write that?) quite intriguing I also find it slightly disturbing

Anyway, whether we like this kind of content or not, it does seem to be the kind of thing that is becoming increasingly popular as internet entertainment, and if we really want to engage with our students and engage them in our classes, I don't think we can afford to ignore it.

I would also love to hear from anyone who has been using LonelyGirl15 or KateModern with your classes, so please post a comment and share your experience.

Best

Nik

Tackling political issues

Big Think is running some really nice clips from two speakers on a range of political issues at the moment. Here's a nice taster to view with an opinion on "Is it fair to ask developing countries to go green?"



The speakers are:

• Lawrence Tribe, an American constitutional scholar and University Professor at the Harvard Law School.
• He talks about such things as globalization of the law and who is responsible for fixing the environment
• Parag Khanna, Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation
• He talks about whether there is a clash of civilisations and whether the US should talk to Syria
  

The videos are all quite short snippets even though the language level is quite high, and if you get your students to register and log in, they can then vote on whether they agree with the speaker or not.

These videos could provide a good route into what can be a difficult and controversial topic to deal with in the classroom.

I think we should be dealing with these kinds of topics, but personally I feel as a teacher it's our role to help students articulate and understand each others' opinions. I generally try to avoid adding my own.

You could also have a look at my previous posting for more ideas on how to use Big Think

• Video debating website

Hope these are useful

Best

Nik

Soundscapes from Soundtransit

Sound Transit is a really wonderful formulation of an idea. It's not just a huge collection of Mp3 sound files from all over the world, but the sounds have been tagged by country and described and a visitor to the site can take a sound journey around the world.

You just choose your country of origin, your destination and how many stops you want to make. You then get offered a choice of itineraries with stops at various destinations and descriptions of what you will hear there. You choose the one you want and then the site edits together the individual sounds to create a unique sound journey for you. You can then download your mp3 sound journey, listen to it online or send it to a friend.

• To try this go to the Book a Transit part of the site. It's just like booking a flight on an airline website (except that it's free and a lot more user friendly!!)

Alternatively you can search the database of individual files by country, keyword or creator and just download the sounds you want. All the sounds are licensed under creative commons 2.0 so you can save and reuse them according to the limitations defined by that license.

• To access the database of sounds go to Search for sounds.

How to use this with students

• You can use the sounds for visualisations. Get the students to listen with closed eyes then write about what they heard. Or they can create a story from what they heard.
• You could collect four or five clips for students to listen to and then get them to create a chapter / episode of a story around each one.
• You could use them for grammar practice ( e.g. present continuous "Someone is speaking." etc.)
• You could get the students to use the site to plan a holiday with four or five destinations then use the descriptions in the itinerary to say what they 'will / are going to' do at each place. They can then choose the best holiday. For past tense practice they can tell other students what the did on their holiday while the students listen to the sounds.
• For vocabulary practice they could just listen and say the things they hear. This will probably involve a lot of guessing, so you could extend this for practice of modals of probability (e.g. It might be someone eating, It can't be in Argentina. That must be a car door etc.)
• You could use this site to give students inspiration to collect their own sounds and to tell the rest of the class about them. They could even upload them to the site and share them.
• They could create their own sound journeys ( e.g. Going to school, what they did at the weekend etc.)
• You could play 'Guess the sound' as a warmer with student and award points to each student or team.
• You could ask students to find their favourite sounds or talk about what the sounds remind them of. (e.g. This is one of my favourites. It's the call to prayer. This one was recorded in Delhi, but it reminds me of when I lived in Cairo. I went out to Giza one evening and listened as thousands of mosques from all over Cairo erupted in to a grand symphony of sound.)
  Listen here
• You can use the sounds to create atmosphere for story telling activities or student plays
• You can play the John Cage game and just get the students to sit silently and listen to the sounds around them in the school classroom ( for 4 mins and 33 seconds) then talk about what they heard. You could also tell them about the famous John Cage composition 4'33" afterwards and ask them what they think of it.
  
• You can play "Where am I?" by playing them one of the sounds and asking them to guess where you are. Try this one. I'm in a cafe in Moscow getting some coffee

What I liked about this site

• It's a wonderful free resource with a huge collection of sounds.
• It can really get students thinking about the sound environment they live in.
• I love the idea that the sounds are tagged to countries and that students can book a sound journey.
• The creative commons license

What I wasn't so sure about

• Some of the sound journeys are quite long if you add a lot of stops
• Some of the sounds are quite unusual and could require quite a high level of language to describe, but I think this just means that you have to choose the activity that you use carefully and be selective.

Anyway. This is a site that I really enjoyed and I'm now determined to go out and start recording some of my own sound adventures. As I'm based in Morocco I thought I would finish this posting with the sounds of the Marrakech market recorded by Reza Tahami.

To download any of the sounds you just need to right click and then click 'Save As..'

Best

Nik