Help your learners practise English anywhere, anytime!

 Hello everyone! Today I am talking about mobile applications that can be used for English language teaching and learning. The 20st century learners are digital natives. They can easily access mobile devices and apps. Therefore, it is a good idea to think about how we can take advantage of these devices and apps to help our students enhance their English language learning. Mobile learning (learning using handheld devices) can take place in the classroom or outside the classroom, and it can promote learners' autonomy and collaboration. For example, in the classroom, learners can use mobile devices to work individually on a writing task, which can be later shared onto a common platform for classmates to give feedback. Outside the classroom, learners can continue a classroom task on their own pace individually or collaboratively. Besides, learners can take initiatives to use  mobile devices and apps  to practise the language in a self-directed approach.

My today's interest is the British Council's LearnEnglish apps. The Brithish Council provides you with fun and interesting mobile apps that can help your learners enjoy English learning experience. Let me discuss two of these apps.

1. LearnEnglish Grammar

           

~Image from LearnEnglish Grammar app~

As you can see in the above image, the app gives learners an option to practise English Grammar. There is a wide range of activities they can choose from depending on their level of English, from biginner to advanced level. They can also take a test to monitor their progress.

What is interesting is that most of the activities are interactive and are presented in varied modes (text, audio, video, image) to make learning more exciting.

Please, note that the app does not go into details to explain Grammar rules. However, this is not a big problem because you can access the details on the British Council website by following this link.

2. LeanEnglish videos

                                ~Image from https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/apps/learnenglish-videos~

This is another mobile app from the British Council which can help learners practise English, especially the listening skill. The app is equipped with videos on various topics, which are uploaded regularly. It also displays a script which you can read as you listen to the video. However, learners also have an option to challenge themselves by listening and watching the videos without reading the script. What is more, you can download the videos and watch them offline, so this can help in case of limited bandwith.

It is interesting that learners are provided with some questions to answer after watching the videos to check their progress.

One thing I did not like with these two apps is that their free versions contain ads that pop up as you are using the apps. This may cause discomfort to the users.

If you would like to explore more British Council English learning apps, visit  https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/apps 

In general, mobile learning is advantageous because it allows learning to take place anywhere, anytime. It also exposes learners to a variety of content, and arouses learners' motivation by providing them with interactive game-like activities. However, the use of mobile devices require careful guidance, especially with young learners because they may distract them. Again, in some contexts, mobile devices are prohibited in primary and secondary schools. This makes it difficult for learners to benefit from these new technologies.

I hope you enjoy to read my post. Please, leave a comment to let me know what you think about the British Council apps and mobile learning in general.

H5P, an interesting tool for blended learning

 Blended learning (a combination of face-to-face and online learning) has been a popular mode of learning in the context of Covid 19, where physical interactions  among people were discouraged to reduce the spread of the pandemic. Due to the lockdown that was imposed in most parts of the world, most schools opted to teach online. Even when the social contact restrictions were eased, schools have adopted blended learning to help teachers and learners get familiar with this mode of learning to be able to cope with similar crises in the future.

For blended learning to be effective, an number of ICT tools are needed especially for teachers to create online materials to engage their learners. Today, I am talking about H5P short for Html-5-Package, an interesting tool that can help you create interactive activities for your English language online classes.

Image from H5P.org

As shown in this image, you can create varied interactive activities including drag and drop, gap filling, matching, word puzzles, flash cards, multiple choice questions etc. You can also create presentations and interactive videos. You can have a look at samples of created activities here to have an idea of how the tool works.

To use H5P, you need to integrate it with a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle, Edmodo etc. Please note that this is a commercial tool and can't be used for free. But you can create a 30-days free acount to experience how it works.

Here is an example of an interactive gap filling activity that I created with my H5P free account to help students practice jobs vocabulary.

This is how it looks like if a student attempts to answer the questions.

One of the drawbacks of H5P is that it might take some time for teachers to create activities. Again, the fact that it requires  LMSs to use it might be a limitation for some teachers who don't have access to these platforms. Moreover, it might be expensinve for low resourced contexts because not everyone can afford to pay $57/month for the basic package.

Would you like to create your own interactive activities? Follow this link, create an account and explore the tool on your own pace.

Please don't forget to leave a comment to say what you think about H5P.

Improve your learners' pronunciation with YouGlish

 Hello everyone!

This week, I am talking about a tool that can help your English language learners improve their pronunciation to develop the language fluency. According to Ron (2015), oral fluency is defined as the ability to plan and produce spoken language and the extent to which this is automatic or controlled. Studies have shown that, pronunciation plays an imprtant role in achieving oral fluency. In other words, it is very important to be able to produce accurate speech sounds to be mutually intelligible. How can ICT support this?

There is a wide range of tools that can help your learners improve their pronunciation. One of  these tools is YouGlish. This is an online youtube-based tool that helps its users to learn the pronunciation of words in different languages including English. The tool can be accessed  from any device such as a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. 

                Image from youglish.com 

As in the above image, all you need to use YouGlish is to type the word or phrase for which you want learn the pronunciation, then click 'say it'. You will be given plenty of videos in which the word or phrase is used in authentic contexts. This tool has interesting features that make it user-friendly. For example, it provides users with a transcript that allows them to read the words and phrases as they are spoken. This feature can help learners understand how words are used in sentences. What is more, they can control the speed of the videos to listen to them at their pace. It is also interesting that YouGlish gives an option to choose the English accent you want to hear (e.g. Amrican, British, Australian etc.). This gives an the language users an opportunity to experience various varieties of English.

Teachers can use YouGlish to help learners get familiar with the words or phrases that are hard for them to pronounce. For example, EFL learners can easily confuse the pronunciation of 'dearth' and 'death', therefore playing videos in which these words are used in context can help learners get used to their pronunciation. To foster self-directed learning, teachers can also encourage learners to use YougGlish to practice the pronunciation of the words they encounter outside the class which seem unfamiliar to them.

One of the limitations of YouGlish is that if young learners use it independently, they may encounter inappropriate content because the platform may not necessarily filter the content available to the public.

I hope you enjoy to explore YouGlish. Please, leave a comment to say what you think about the tool.