Useful ICT Tools for Language Learning and Teaching

This blog is a compilation of information reports on internet sources that might be useful for EFL students and teachers. The compilation was made by a group of students from the English Written Composition, level II taught the semester 2011-II at the School of Languages Universidad de Antioquia with the guidance and support of their instructors. Its purpose was to create a forum through which knowledge about useful sources for learning and teaching English could be shared with other students and instructors in the Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Program. To create it, students from the two English Written Composition courses worked in pairs, reviewed different sources, extracted from them information that they considered important, designed conceptual maps and outlines, and wrote multiple drafts. The product is a series of 13 information reports  on internet sources as varied as Hot Potatoes, Lyrics Training, Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab, Starfall, USA Learns, Skype, Voxopop, Cramster Web Writing Tool, babbel, BBC Learning English, Busuu, and Yappr. Although not perfect in their lexical, grammatical and textual features, since they were written by students who are just beginning their language acquisition process, the reports contain useful information about the history of these sources, their main features, their usefulness and limitations, and some final remarks about how they can be used by students and instructors from the program.

Tell me more

TELL ME MORE is a language learning program developed by a team of language experts whose objective is to provide learners with a variety of tools for developing the different language skills in a cultural context. It was founded in 1987 in Paris, France by Auralog and it has been a global leader with more than 7 million of satisfied users worldwide.

An interesting feature of the program is that it offers an advanced speech recognition tool that analyzes the phonemes of the spoken sentences, evaluates the pronunciation and intonation of the learner and shows him a graphic register with his voice and the correct way to say the sentence, making easier for the learner to imitate the pronunciation of the native speaker.

TELL ME MORE is a versatile program since users can accommodate the program to their timetable and necessities. Students can study anytime, anywhere in the classroom, school multimedia rooms or at home allowing them to plan their study sessions. The idea of the program is to provide enough opportunities and tools for making the learning process more easily and dynamic.

Once installed in your computer, you can start using the program following the course contents or creating online discussion groups so you can learn much more from others practicing and increasing vocabulary. In addition, this program offers the users to be always accompanied by an online tutor who is aware of their learning process and accurately detects the difficulties of the students; this way the tutor can address the points that the learners need to emphasize for effective learning.

The program is not free, which is the only disadvantage that it has; people should buy a license to use all the benefits that it offers. On the other hand, before buying the program people have the option to take a test class on this website www.tellmemore.com and experience the way that it works.

TELL ME MORE has different activities to work so the learner of a foreign language can choose between them according to his needs and his own learning process. The first option is by the traditional use of workshops focused on the improvement of specific language skills. The second way is by “content topic” which contains twelve different daily situations where the student can learn as he faces them. Both options are addressed to be performed in cultural contexts.

Written by

Diego Espinosa

Katterine Ramírez

Sara Toro

Grammarcomic.com

Grammarmancomic.com is a creative website for young English learners where the principal tools for this purpose is reading, writing and drawing comics. The site shows series of funny comics in which students are challenged to detect grammatical errors committed by the characters.

This original and innovative website is full of colors and striking designs that make people want to get into the grammarman super hero’s world. The comics we find here mix images, texts and sound to relate the story. Apart from the episodes of grammarman, we can also find more fun material such as interactive games, reading sources, puzzles and curiosities.

Grammarman comic began in august 2005. Its creator is Brian Boyd, an Irish teacher who lives and works in Thailand as a full-time English teacher for the British Council. His idea started when he realized that all his students loved reading comics all the time, even in his English class where they did it secretly. So, he thought that making English activities with comics would catch the kid’s attention better and it would make them enjoy learning English grammar. Since then, Grammarman comic has been published once a month in magazines and newspapers in Thailand, Canada, Brunei, Malaysia, Argentina, Russia and China. The website started also for making the comics available for people who do not live in these countries.

Comic’s specifications

Grammarman has been called by his creator as "the world's first and only grammar superhero" which mission is to defend English language from the grammar enemies. He has the ability to detect errors in spelling,and grammar structure. Grammarman lives in Verbocity, a massive multicultural urban center, where he takes care of the citizen’s language and good communication.

This super hero has a work team conformed by two more heroes. Alpha-bot who is the world's smartest android. There's nothing about grammar that Alpha-bot doesn't know. The other team member  is called Sitax who is an unusual visitor from a distant galaxy who came to earth to learn English by Grammarman’s side.

Grammarman comic as a teaching tool

All the website contains a big diversity of links with pieces of advise for teachers on how they can use these comics to teach English in their classes, depending on the contents of each website’s section. A lot of fun and educative challenges can be implemented through these tips.

“Notes for teachers and articles for teachers” are some of these links. They are very useful for planning activities in the classroom based on Grammarman comic. These sections also justify the comic’s strategies for teaching English giving reasons about why it is so useful, why teachers should implement this playful tool in their classes. Additionally, these links explain all the comic’s advantages for catching the student’s attention and the true educational mission of Grammarman hero.

Grammarman comic as a learning tool

The principal reason for Grammarman comic has been so well implemented in English classes is because children really enjoy reading comics. They find it hilarious and completely absorbing, so they can see learning English like something easy and truly reachable thanks to this.

In this website, there are lots of playful activities for students based on comics. One of the most implemented in English classes is the “wordless comics”. It’s about comics stories related by only images. So, kids can create their own stories starting from the images they see. What kid doesn’t enjoy making up stories? It helps children get vocabulary and grammar structure while they are using their imagination and having fun.

Moreover, these comic’s activities are supported by audio, used for students to read the comics and listen to the characters at the same time, so they can enjoy their funny voices and learn about English pronunciation and intonation. The mix between images and sound has always been a really effective pedagogical strategy, then it makes part of the important advantages of the grammarman’s website.

After reading all these amazing features and discovering this site advantages, and seeing how this tool, facilitates the student’s language comprehension, it is highly recommendable to consider the use of Grammarmancomic.com as a good resource in the process of teaching and learning English to young students today.

Written by 

Ana Maria Rico

Livemocha

Livemocha is a very good popular, free language learning website, where you learn other languages by taking online courses and improving your speaking skills by interacting with native speakers. It was founded on September 24th 2007, and now it has a big learning community from over 200 countries around the world. Registration is necessary if you want to start learning a language, you can subscribe and complete courses in a number of different languages including English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese Icelandic and Italian. Spending 160 hours the user can complete the course from the basic to the advanced level; each level made of ’4′ modules.

Advantages and limitations

Live mocha offers over thirty languages, so if the users can handle the linguistic challenge of learning more than one at the same time they can do it. Many programs just have a few exercises available for students, but Livemocha has a lot of optional exercises, which allow students to practice until they have truly learned the lesson. Learners can improve their language skills with other users by using speech or text chats on the site. There are also people who practice their native language and the target language alternatively. This site is dynamic and flexible because you can log in at anytime.

Leveraging the advantages of a web 2.0 platform the learners use content text, audio and video inputs to learn the nuances of a language. It is also possible to find native speakers to tutor and help you learn the language. One limitation is that if you do not have access to Internet, you cannot work on the program since you need web connection to develop the activities the program offers you. 

How to use it

To get started you must create your free account; it is pretty simple and does not take long time. After, you must choose your languages of domain and the languages that you want to learn. Then, you have to confirm your address e-mail, and once you are already a member and you have activated your account you can log in. So, you can discover all that Livemocha has for you.

Features and usefulness

Live mocha offers grammar instructions, reading comprehension exercises, interactive role-plays with other native speakers from the Livemocha community among other different activities. All users can help others in learning the languages; for example, when learners submit coursework for peer review, native speakers can provide feedback on how that learner is progressing.  As soon as someone reads something aloud and submits it to the site, a native English speaker is willing and able to give feedback on the submission because Livemocha utilizes the English speakers who want to learn other languages to help the English learners.

Written by

HENRY ORREGO LONDOÑO

KARLA PEÑA SUAREZ