Do you know Podcast?

Podcast is a digital medium in which users could enjoy and subscribe digital episodes, such as audio, video and PDF files, with electronic devices. I listened this ESL podcast called giving someone your recommendation. At first, the host and a female speaker read the dialogue at a slow speed. Then the host explained the meaning and implication of each sentence, especially the spelling and usage of new vocabulary bold in the dialogue in different environment. For instance, when “solid” was used to describe a person, it meant that the person was good, reliable and trustworthy; it could also be used to describe a physical object like “table”. Then, the host and the female speaker read the dialogue at a normal speed.

We can use this podcast in these ways:

1.     This podcast can be used to improve students’ listening skills. Back to the undergraduate English class in China, we usually practiced listening through dictation like this— the texts were read at normal speed once, slow speed twice and one more time normal speed. The first time was mainly for students to get the gist of the text, the second and third times were given to write down the content and the last time was for correction. We could use this podcast as a dictation material to assist listening practice.

2.     This kind of podcast can also be used to enlarge students’ vocabulary. Since the host spelled the new words first and then gave explanations in different contexts, it is convenient for language learners to catch the spelling and meaning of the vocabulary. If the script is available, it will be more direct for them because the new words are bold in the material. We could let the students listen (and watch) first, and then explain the words about which they have doubts.

3.     Since the podcast is close to real life, we could let students create similar dialogue by using some key words from the podcast to improve their speaking skill as well as cooperative skills.

ePals---- Find Your Partner around the World

ePals is a worldwide site to find partners of other countries to accomplish a project together. I found an Indian project called “On My Plate” interesting because many projects deal with the exchange of language or culture among countries in the world, but this one aims at developing healthy, nutritional eating habit by exploring different cuisines and food facts of other countries. The topic of food is really a big issue in the world, especially in countries with large populations such as China and India. If there are proper ePals, this project will give the Indian primary students a new outlook to the food out of their country.

Another one is Collaborative Detective Story Project which is initiated in a class in Pakistan. In this project, students first know each other through emails and questionnaires, and then one class composes the first paragraph of the story and the second class read and proofread. The exchange continues until the end of the story. At the age of 11 to 13, boys and girls really have great curiosity and creative imagination. This project would arouse their interest easily and everybody is looking forward to knowing how the story will develop while they are learning the language through interaction.

After exploring the site, I feel like the young generation is so lucky because it was so hard to find a pen pal in other provinces when I was a teenager, let alone an epal. However, with the site, students are provided a world map to find their foreign friends who share the same value or characteristic with them.  One of the features of this site we can use is students will see and feel another country by their interaction with another group of students from that country rather than just read or watch some reports created by others on the newspaper or television. They can incorporate with each other to share any kind of authentic resource if there will be one or more classes to participate in the project.

How to Use GoAnimate in Classrooms

A Joke from Lovely Animals by chuxiaoxuan on GoAnimate


I used GoAnimate to create comic strips. It is more complicated than the photo story tool Animoto. Because of some technical problems, I tried two templates to finish this task. The first one was Lil’ Peepz, in which a user was asked to go through 17 steps from choosing background, adding a character and his/her actions and voice, making the character move and adding new scenes. Maybe because this template occupied too much memory, the website shut down. When I tried to reedit, I couldn’t load the autosaved video. Because it was time-consuming to start over the whole procedure, I had to choose another one, and I went to the template called Wildlife. The procedure to make comic strips with Wildlife is comparatively simple in 4 steps as the picture shows.

With this experience, I can put this tool into teaching practice for different level language learners. For intermediate and higher level students, I can combine the topic of comic strips with some grammar points. For instance, if the task is about past tense, the students are asked to create a story or a dialogue depicts events or actions happened in the past. While for beginner level students, I’ll use the simple template, such as Wildlife, to produce free topic comic strips to arouse their learning enthusiasm.