Hello hello ellloenglish !!!

http://www.elllo.org/

Look at the red arrow:

This tool is divided into 5 sections: VIEWS, MIXER, GAMES, VIDEOS and NEWS

When you click on Mixer there're 2 more sections you can get: SONGS and POINTS.

There're one more feature which is SCENES as shown below:

You can see 3 tabs:

1) Transcript

2) Audio Slide Show - you can turn on the text to get the subtitles

3) Audio Notes where you can click on the highlighted word to hear the pronunciation of the word and how it's used in a sentence.

You may download the audio and do the quizzes as well.

How I would use this tool?

Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I would simply use this for listening activities.

This tool can suit my secondary school students at all level depends on how I'm going to use it.

There're a lot of topics you can choose but I will make some adjustment for the activities or maybe adding more activities for students.

The website will be my favorable source for any listening sources.

How is this tool underpinned by current understanding of language learning?

1) Can hear variety of accents spoken by people all over the world.

2) Authentic materials: Using the real English that we hear on the street.

4) Personalising the learning to students' interest. Important to motivate students.

5) Develop listening skills - Loads of listening activities (audio + transcript).

Most importantly, it not only provide the audio for listening but create the reason for listening as well that will create the reason for students to communicate and talk about the topic.

6) Variety of topics - world & cross cultural knowledge

As in the picture above: The topic is about Korean Family. Students can listen to the audio and do the exercise while learning about other culture as well.

Kill two birds with one stone!

7) Promote autonomous learning - a good autonomous learner will look at other way to learn English and this tool will be one of the best choice.

8) Language learning is skill-based. This tool has variety of skills: writing, reading, vocabulary and listening.

9) Extract language from the context. Learning language while learning other stuff as well. (Content and language integrated learning; CLIL)

10) Let students to gauge their level. Good learners will always reflect themselves.

Limitations:

1) The organisation of the main page is quite messy and confusing.

2) The website can be easily corrupted. Especially when lot of people using this webpage simultaneously.

3) The video provided not really helpful and interesting.

Learning by Clicking

http://clicknlearn.net

You may wonder how this website work.

Well, you can try it out. Just click on the link above.

This tool is actually designed for Spanish students learning English. That's why the levels of the activity is classified based on Spanish education system.

Basically, this website is aimed to let students have fun while they learn.

I would recommend this on account of:

1) This tool is actually interesting and quite helpful.

2) It is a good practice for beginner and intermediate students.

3) It is free!

4) Printable version is provided. Teachers can print it out.

5) Combination of visual + audio + written explanation.

However, there're several things I dislike about this tool.

Taking example of one of the activity:

(1 BAT: grammar: Futures)

1) The topic is depressing. The effect of airplane crushed in the air is terrific.

2) Confusing. The pictures in this activity don't really represent the name. For example: sleeping bag in this picture don't look like sleeping bag.

3) Inflexible. You will stuck in one activity forever if you don't get the right answer.

For example in the activity above. You have to get the answer right before you can proceed to the next activity.

4) If you click on the 'back arrow' and click 'next arrow again', all the answers you've filled in are gone. You need to do it again.

That's all!

But I still believe this tool would be useful to the some extent.

Try it and see what'll you think of this tool....

Be crazy with Zimmer Twins

Anyone fancy creating a movie?

You should try this!

Introducing Zimmer Twins.

You may act like a director and create your own movie. This tool allows you to create your own endings to one of the story starters. You may also create your stories from scratch.

So put on your director's hat and reveal your creativity.

How to use it in the classroom?

We can organise a small movie-making competition in the classroom. Ask students to work in pairs and let them compete. You may reward the best pair.

This is a great tool to practice communicative activity in the classroom.

Good things about ZimmerTwins:

1) It encourages students to talk and discuss with their partner

2) Encourage creativity.

3) The activity is fun and very engaging for young learners.

4) The combination of three main learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (VAK)

5) Learn the sentence structure.

BUT

It's not-so-good because:

1) It has word limit for the conversation they can create

2) The movie cannot be shared with other people. Seems like we can only view our own movie.

3) The final product cannot be embedded. (That's why I cannnot share the movie I've made)

4) The 'post new comment' part seem to be useless if other people cannot view the movie and post the comments.

To sum up, I think this tool is an absolutely brilliant but the fact that it cannot be shared disappoint me.... =(

Connected classroom

Connected classroom builds lasting relationships between teacher and students in or outside the classroom. Most teachers in second language classroom find it hard to ensure that students are actually practicing the language even outside the classroom. The tendency of them to speak in their mother tongue is inevitable.

Thus, we need tools to make students practice the language beyond the classroom. And I would love to introduce this charmingly tool for language learning.

http://www.brainshark.com/

Check it out!

This would be a great help for teachers and also students.

They can practice the language by record their voice for their own presentation. The presentation can be made in many ways such as power point presentation, document, video or photo album. They can even produce a podcast.

This tool enable students to practice and speak the language while enhancing their grammar and vocabulary skills. And of course their presentation skills!

In English classroom, this tool might be suitable for all level of secondary school students. You can ask them create a simple presentation and record themselves. It is a very interactive homework for your students and at the same time get them do the speaking activity outside the classroom.

The activity can be as simple as it can be. For example, you can ask them to talk about themselves.

Something like this:

Try it out!

You may find it fascinating.