Learning Pronunciation

What is it?
This video is presented by an English native speaker to show how the sound /i/ is exactly pronounced. It is presented in a friendly way.

Why is it good for language learning?
It represents an authentic material produced by a native speaker.
The lesson is presented in a friendly and comfortable way which encourages learners to watch and listen more.
There is a use of paralinguistic language presented by the movement of the presenter's mouth and tongue. This helps the learners see what exact movement they have to do to produce this sound.
Students can use it at home as a kind of drills or practices.
It is very useful for beginners to develop their pronunciation of English words.
Since it can be used at home, it serves to increase the level of autonomy and self- study among learners.



How it is used?
The teacher can give the students sheets having words with the sound /i/ as in meet, eat and tea. Then he asks them to  pronounce these words in groups. After that, he asks each group to say a word from the list. After this activity, he can introduce this video and then tells the students to listen carefully. In order to support students' acquisition of this sound, the teacher, after watching the video, may write three or four sentences containing words with the sound /i/ on the board. Then, he pronunces the sentences and tells his students to practise them in groups.

Its limitation
The only limitations that can I think of is that the lesson is based on a teacher-centred learning and  there is no  students' engagiment.  Learners just receive  the knowledge and there is no  interaction  between  the teacher and learners and between learners themselves.

Real English

What is it?
It is an example of a video from you   tube which can be used in English language teaching. In this video a presenter interviews English native speakers and ask them some questions. It shows what tenses English native speakers use and when they use them.

Why it is good for language classrooms?
It is an authentic material produced by native speakers.
it fosters students' grammatical knowledge.
It is not just explaining grammatical rules, but it put them into use to show students how to use them in real communication.
It is produced in an interesting and enjoyable way which lowers students' Affective filter'.
It motivates students to learn more about tenses and aspects.
Students can use it at home.

How can it be used in language classrooms?

This video can be implemented in the class in this way.
After explaining tenses and aspects, a teacher can introduce this video to the students as a revision and to referesh their understanding and memorisation of these rules. Then he can divide them into groups and ask them to discuss what tenses were used and why. After a discussion in groups, students can discuss these questions in the whole class with their teacher.

What are its limitations?
It needs an access to internet that may not be offered in classes or at home.
I think it can not be used with lower level students because the interviewees use mostly all tenses that those students have not taken yet.

Using Cartoons to Learn Present Progressive

Quizzes and tests

http://a4esl.org/

What is it?
It is an amazing website that provides a variety of vocabulary and grammar quizzes and exercises. The quizzes range from easy, medium and difficult.

Why is it good for language classrooms?
It is a good source for language teachers and it can offer them various exercises to choose from.
Teachers do not need to be good in technology to use it. They just choose a quiz that they want to use in the class and then print it.
Students with different levels can use this website to check their grammaticl and vocabulary knowledge.
Bilingual quizzes are available. Students can choose a quiz in English and their mother tongue. This will help learning and make learning process less stressful.

How can it be used in the classroom?
It can be used before starting the lesson, in order to check students' backgrounds about what they know on some grammatical rules or words.
It can also be used after the lesson to check students' understanding.
It can be used at home as homework.

Its limitation
The quizzes are not interactive and they are based on drilling.
The answers are provided at the bottom of each question which makes the tasks less challengeable and inappropriate to evaluate students'levels.
The layout is designed in an old-fashioned way which makes the students bored and demotivated.
There is no feedback on the wrong answers.
Lack of clarity because there may be more than one answer.

English for Kids

LearnEnglishkids is a website provided by British Council. This site helps children to learn English. It has a range of different materials for children.

Why is it good for language learners?
It is user friendliness
It is presented in  a nice and motivating way. There are nice categories such as games, make and explore which can attract children to play and learn.
It provides a good materials for  language skills. It helps to improve children's language skills
It has versions in other languages such as Arabic, French and Chinese.

How can it be used in the class?
LearnEnglishkids can be used in classes and at homes. It could be used in many ways in the class. For example, Children can listen to a short story and then every one try to retell the story to the child next to him or her. After that, the children try to draw pictures for the story and put them on the wall.

Limitations
Think it would be difficult for young children to use it. The children need their parents or their teachers help.
It requires children to log in which might be difficult for some.

Online Visual Dictionary

http://www.visuwords.com/

 What is it?

It is an online graphical dictionary. You can find the meaning of the word you search for and all other words and concepts that are associated with. This is presented in a form of diagrams reminiscent of a neural net

 Why is it good for language learning?

•   It is produced in an interesting and fun way.
• It is free and it does not require a membership.
• Students can move the neural net up and down and they can zoom it in or out.
• It works as a dictionary and thesaurus. It gives word meanings, synonyms, antonyms, word classes with examples.       

                   

How can it be used in the class?

The teacher may group the class into pairs and give them a text to read. Then he can ask them to go to this website to look for the meanings of words they do not know. The teacher can encourage students to use it at home by  giving  them homework on writing lists of words with their meanings.       

Its limitations

• It is full of interconnected colours which may not be comfortable for some students.
• It needs internet access that may not be offered at schools.  

           

             

                                                                           

Using A Word Cloud to Learn Vocabulary

http://news.yahoo.com/
What is it ?
The WORDLE site is a very enjoyable and interesting website. It can be used to show a word cloud of a text or a webpage. It can easily be implemented in classrooms.

Why is it good for classrooms?

It helps to improve and develop students' vocabulary stocks and to keep their vocabulary active,
Students can resort to this technological tool to remember and recall what they read from a text,
I think the most important factor for using this website is that it is interesting and enjoyable activity which makes learners eager and motivated to learn the language,
Students can do it at home easily.So it can be used to encourage self- study,
Since students can choose the color and the layout that they want, wordle site can make the students responsible for their learning,
It broadens learners' knowledge about what words that match each context.

How it can be used in classes?

Students might read and discuss a text with the help of their teacher. Then the teacher copies and paste the text in the wordle site which creates a word cloud for the text. After that, he show to the students this word cloud or he can print it out and give the students copies of it. Students can read it and see how much of the text they can remember by looking at the cloud. Then they can write a summary of the text using the words that they remember from the word cloud.

Limitation

The only limitation that I can see is with having a soft copy from this site,but teachers can save or print out the word clouds.

Good Presentations in Different Contexts

What is it about?

It is a great website that offers a variety of videos about different topics such as technology, education, environment. These videos presented in English with subtitles by people from different countries.

Why is the content good for language learning?
It provides examples of how students can make good presentations.
Students can learn a range of different words in different contents.
The materials in this website are provided in a high quality that inspires and motivates students.
Using paralinguistic language which represented in involving audio and visual aids that enhance students' understanding of the context and the language used.
Providing subtitles that help students to understand the meaning.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

I will take the above video which presented by BIRKEBEAHR on our food system as an example.
If the lesson is about healthy diet and genetic motivated food, the teacher can group students into pairs and ask them to discuss what they know about this topic. Then he can ask the whole class to discuss about what is the GMF and what its positives and negatives are. What they think about healthy diet. After that students watch the videos and write comments. Then they discuss in groups what they learned from the video and evaluate their diet,whether it is healthy or not.

Limitations

Teachers have to spend a long time to look for which video can serve the aim of the lesson.
It can just work with advanced learners and I think it will be hard for lower level learners.

Using CNN learning website

http://edition.cnn.com/studentnews/

  

What is it about?
CNN students news is an amazing website that has various entries such as politics, weather, entertainments, economics and sport. Each entry provides news from different parts of the world,e.g. politics covers the world political news. It can be displayed in English and other different language. It can be used in different purposes not just as a tool for language learning.

Why is it good for language learning?
It offers a different range of authentic materials
It is very interesting and learners can choose to watch or read what they want.
Language is used as a tool. Learners can know information on different topics by using language.
Language is used in an interactive and communicative way.
It enhances language skills; learners can listen, read and write comments.
Learners can use it at home.

How it can be used in classrooms?
The teacher, for example; can group students into pairs and tell them to search in the entertainment entry about the latest Jennifer Aniston's news. Then he asks each group to report the information that they collected to the whole class. After that he can ask each group to write a newsletter on Jennifer Aniston as a homework and then to post this letter on the class wall to be available to the other students to read.

Limitation
It is for high proficiency students. Students with lower levels find it difficult to understand the speech and the articles.

Using Literature in language learning

literature for your ears and eyes

What is this?

Loudlit is a website that offers a famous collection of literary materials such as stories and poetry. the user of

this website can listen and read any of these materials at the same time.

Why is the content good for language learning?

• It helps foster listening and reading skills.
• It can be used to enrich students' vocabulary knowledge.
• It can be downloaded as MP3 file, so students can use it anywhere.
• It is free and out of charge.

• The sounds are very clear.

How can it be used in classrooms?

It can be used in the class to practise either reading or listening. Students may read a story or a novel silently and then play the recored . Students may also repeat after the recorder.

Limitation

• There are no enough pictures and no colors just white and black which may not attract students.
• The language used needs students with high levels which could demotivate learners with low levels.

Free Website for Learning English Using Songs

http://www.lyricstraining.com/

What is this?

Lyrics training is a nice website that uses up-to-date songs to assisst language learners.A learner can listen to a song that he chooses and writes missing words at the same time. It does not only helps learners to learn English, but it can also be used in learning  other languages such as Spanish and French. 

Why is the content good for language learning?

• It is a very enjoyable  tool for learning a language
• Teachers can make use of it in their classes and they can encourage their students to use it at home
• It serves to foster most of language skills. It can improve learners' listening and writing skills and it helps them to acquire new words with their pronunciations.
• It represents an authentic material.
• Impleming this material in classes increases learners' motivation which can encourage them to learn more. Since it can be used at home learners can be autonoumus and responsible for their learning.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

At the beginning of the lesson  the teacher can explain to the students how this website works. If the the number of students is small,  he can divide the class into pairs. After that each pair can listen to a song that they chose, discuss together what the missing words are and then write them. However, if there are a big number of students, the teacher can use just one computer or a white board and play a song and then discuss with the whole class what the missing words are. He also can print out the  lyrics, copy it, give the copies to the students, play the song and then ask the students to listen and fill in the gaps.






What are the limitations?

• I t requires access to the internet
• It does not work in some countries 

interactive learning

http://www.todaysmeet.com/








Description:
Todays Meet is a creative website that helps to improve  learners' writing skills by creating a chat room that enable them to communicate and interact by writing.Teachers can  use it in the class  interactions.


Why is this particular tool or technology relevant to language learning? 

• It is easy to use and does not require high experience in technology
• It enhances creative writing,
• It develops students' writing skills,
• It can make the lesson very interesting which make students motivated and eager to learn English,
• It engages students in the language in an interactive and communicative way which according to SLA research is considered  as a vital factor for language learning to occur.

How might you use it in the classroom?

It is a very flexible tool that teachers can use it in many ways.One way is to use it as an exercise  before
and after a reading text. Before starting, students will be grouped  into pairs and then their teacher asks
them to use this website to write what they know about  the topic of the text. This activity is a  kind of 
discussion, interaction  and giving ideas and opinions that the whole class can share. After reading and
discussing the text, the teacher asks the students again to write in pairs a summary of that text and to
highlight the main ideas.

 What limitations can you see with the use of this technology?

• It can  only be available for a certain period of time. Students can not go back to the websit whenever they want to see what they and their pairs wrote because the chat room closes after a limited time.

• It does not guarantee that all students will participate in the activity.
• In big classes teachers wiill not be able to see and correct all the students mistakes.

a nice and useful website for learning word groups

  http://www.learningchocolate.com/



What is this?
Learning chocolate  is an amazing  English language learning website and it can be used in the classroom or at home.It provides various materials for learning vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation.It can be utilized to enhance learners' listening skill.
          
Why  is the content good for language learning?

•  it represents  an authentic material,
• it  is  a good tool for learning  words with their spellings and pronunciations,
• it is made to provide learners with wide a  variety of word groups,
• it is an interesting  and attractive website since it is colorful and it is equipped with pictures, different types of  exercises and a good quality sound system. this makes learners motivated to learn more, 
• it help learners to be autonomous. they can access the materials at home,
• it reduce  the affective filter which according to Krashen (1985) hinders the process of acquiring a language,
• it is suitable for students with different levels and different age groups,
• it fosters  students' listening skills.

How it might be used in the class?  
 A teacher can divide the class into groups of two or three students and then asks them to think and write together different  types of fruit  or name parts of human body. After that, she asks every group to quickly shares what they wrote with the whole class. After this activity, the class can watch the web and practise the pronunciation and spelling of  this group of words.

Limitation

• it requires access to the internet which my not be available in the class,
• there are odd words that even native speakers do not use or know as in the activity about parts of bull's body.