Web tools for vocabulary building and help with pronunciation

There's now a whole series of online resources to help students to build up their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation. There's no end of the ways you can use them. I'll suggest a few but I'm sure you can come up with more. Why not add them as comments or in a new post?

So here goes:
lingro - thanks to Andrew M for finding this one. If you paste the URL (address) of a website into it, it will load the page and make all the words clickable. When you click on a word, it offers you the definition of it or a translation into the language you select. Many words also come with a sound file so that you can hear the way they are pronounced.

If you register (which is immediate) you can save your own word lists and play games with them to help you remember them. I've got my students, who are currently working on projects, to learn 10 new words related to their project topic per week using lingro as part of their homework.

Seeing is believing - so check it out!

wordnik - type in a word and it not only gives you  a series of definitions but shows you how it has been used in context - offering you links to the sources plus examples of how it is currently being used on twitter! You can also click on"Pronunciations" to see how the word breaks down phonetically and to hear it being said.

forvo - type in a word to hear it pronounced by different people from all over the world. If you register with the site you can also request for people to upload the pronunciation of the word you want.

wordia - this is a site where people upload videos to illustrate a word (have a look at "filch"  for a good example).

wordreference - a good place to quickly translate a word into a range of languages.

INSETT: Integrating ICT into project work

Some useful web tools:
Voki – great fun for creating animated characters that speak: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

VoiceThread – for creating online presentations: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

Animoto – for creating slick videos from photos, videos and text: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post in combination with Podomatic.

Podomatic – for creating podcasts: video tutorial

Glogster – for creating animated, online posters: 90 second video tutorial

A Primary 3 student's Glogster poster 
 


EnglishCentral a great resource to help students to improve their speaking skills and confidence in them. The site contains a huge range of videos you can choose from and uses voice recognition. Students record themselves imitating what they hear (in small chunks) and are given a score. You can set up an account as a teacher and even set your students homework and check how they've done.

Who to talk to for project tips:
Guy has used EnglishCentral in conjunction with a very interesting ongoing radio project he has with one of his classes - so for more ideas talk to him!

Rebbecca has some really good ideas for using PowerPoint with students - so if you're thinking of using this as the end product for your students' projects talk to her!

Sonia worked last year on a successful magazine project with students and also has come up with a really cool idea for keeping students talking in English during class. She allocates each of her students a "persona" who lives in a different English-speaking countries and then gets them to flesh them out. Her students have even ended up creating relations between themselves and all she needs to do when they revert to Spanish is to say "Remember who you are!"

Andy worked on a Reality Show project with her Senior 4 class - see the girls' contribution on her class wiki. Sounds like a great project idea for either now or for Summer intensive course so get the details from her!

Linking with students from other countries
If you want to link up with other teachers and students across the world try elanguages. You can either join in on an existing project or start your own and get other schools to join in with yours. You have to register first.

More resources to download
Ideas and resources for web projects .pdf 
Web tools for teachers .pdf

More links from Jon Brown

• http://dictionary.reference.com/ compilation of word games to improve vocabulary and spelling. Good for higher level students B2+ and from 14+
• http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/storymaker.swf nice software for creating stories either individually or in a whole class session. Primary 3 – 5
• http://www.listenaminute.com/index.html some good listening material with useful quizzes that students can either do iindividually or in a whole class session. B1+ from 11+

Great way for students to improve their vocabulary

Get them to find an article, song or any piece of text that they're interested and go to WordSift.

Paste the text in the box provided and they will get incredible results - all they need to extend and make their use of vocabulary more accurate. Great fun too!

(Thanks to Jon Brown for the link)

My Cardiff IATEFL

There were nearly 2,000 delegates at the conference, a lot of people milling around with nowhere to sit. So here from the comfort of your swivel chair you can enjoy some of the interesting bits.



Barry Tomalin talking on the importance of cultural awareness in language teaching.

There's also a very good video interview with him on the teachingEnglish site plus his article on the same theme.



David Crystal on whether texting will affect the English language and why he maintains a blog (amongst other things).



Penny Urr on how to make bog standard vocabulary and grammar exercises more interesting.



Richard Gallen on his experience studying Spanish and how he wished his teacher would have corrected him more.



The Pecha Kucha evening (Pecha Kucha has been described as the antidote to death from PowerPoint) - a relaxed occasion when teachers showed that they can sometimes be both amusing and imaginative.

IATEFL conference Cardiff

The 3-day IATEFL conference in Cardiff was a real treat although the quality of the sessions varied greatly. My tip to conference-goers: Think very carefully before you go to a session which includes the words 'research findings' in the blurp.

The photo is from Ann Foreman's session - you can just make her out at the front. It's in the assembly room in Cardiff city hall, about 90 people came and the session went down really well, it made me want to try out Vokies in one of my class - just wonder whether it would work well with adult students.

There will be an Insett in May when participant at the recent Cardiff, Serville and Milan conferences will share new ideas and activities. Until then, here are a few interesting websites which came up in different presentations

1. Wordle Copy and paste texts or simply give a web address and it produces a word cloud based on the frequency of each word? Good fun but would be interested to hear ideas about how to make use of it with students?

2. One of the most inspiring talks was by Marc Prensky, who talks a lot about the problem of YL students being 'digital natives' whilst their teachers are mostly 'digital migrants'. He had ideas for making use of their mobile phones instead of always insisting that they 'power down'. One idea was to do SMS text polls e.g. for student - teacher feedback: ask the question, they text their response and you watch the results appear on the screen.

3. Found Magazine - a great authentic source of things, notes and letters which have been found by someone somewhere - plenty of opportunity for speculation as well as exposing students to really colloquial and informal English.

4. Lindsay Clanfield gave a talk at the Bilbao conference on last September. In Cardiff he gave a session on using lists. Click here for 6 ideas.

Thinking About The Diploma?

There are essentially 3 diplomas to choose from:
i) DELTA (Cambridge)
ii) Distance DELTA (British Council & IH)
iii) Diploma in TESOL (Trinity)

1. The Cambridge DELTA can’t be done part-time in Bilbao. But it would be a possibility for full-time study in the summer – I think it’s a 6-week course. (Martin, amongst others, did this course and you can ask him more about it).
2. The Distance DELTA is actually a British Council product (co-owned with IH). I don’t think there is anyone on the staff who did it but I believe Anne has worked as tutor / mentor for a teacher who did it in Bilbao a few years ago. Here’s a link to the Intranet: http://bcnet.britishcouncil.org:8000/ee/training/grants/delta_financial.htm
3. The most popular option in Bilbao in recent years has been the Trinity Diploma in TESOL. This link below is to a school called SGI in London, which is the school where the majority of our 'dip' teachers are studying. It gives a lot of flexibility in terms of start dates and when you do the practical element.
   http://www.tesoltraining.co.uk/diploma.html

If you have any experience with any of the above diplomas, then please leave a comment.