Wordsift--A fantastic tool to learn vocabulary in text

Wordsift--A fantastic tool to learn vocabulary in text

Vocabulary is always the complicated part for Chinese students to study. They often feel difficult to memory. For those high level students, the problem is not only about remembering but also about how to use those these words or phrases. Most students don't know how to study vocabulary. Wordsift is an online tool both for students and teachers to study vocabulary.

The Wordsift has some significant characteristics:

1)  All the common words like 'the, a, to, of, etc.' are avoided, and the most important words of the text are in larger size.

2) The words can be sorted by various criterions, just click those buttons below the words cloud.

3) Those special vocabulary can also be marked red, like 'academic words'. So, it is very convenient for students to get clear impression of different kinds of vocabularies, and easy to remember by specific categories. 

4) Below those tool buttons, there are two columns. one column can show you some website and pictures that are related to the word you chose to click. Another column is a word mind storm to show some extended vocabulary related to the word you chose.

The right column is my favourite part of this tool. It can be used to help students to understand the word in a more complete way. Most important is that it saves a lot of time for both students and teachers. 

I think for those high level students, this a good tool used for self-learning. Teachers also can use it as a material of slides. For example, those pictures showed on the left column are easy to get their original version, and then embedded in your slides or blogs. You can also take screenshots and paste it into your slides. 

In language class, after showing students the word clouds, the teacher can ask the students to draw their own word map first, and then let them compare it to the one appears on the screen. 

I think the drawback of this tool is that, it may be too difficult for those young learners to understand. However teachers can help the student to understand it.

As my students are those preparing for IELTS reading, I will use this tool to analyse those reading passages from past papers, using the tool of 'sort' in order to place those words in different categories. The word map can help students to learn synonyms of a word and examples of the usage. I will use screenshots to make some slides to show them the results of searching or ask them to look up by themselves and then to make some portfolios.  

   

Wordle--Beautiful Words Cloud

Wordle--Beautiful Words Cloud

When I taught preparing class for IELTS reading, I always considered whether there is a way to show learners the key words in a vivid way, not  just a list of words. It always took a long time to check those key words and design them into a stylish way. However, when I saw Wordle in class, I felt so excited. It is exactly what I want. Although Wordle was not created for language use first, it is suitable for showing a text's most frequent vocabulary.
The benefits of the Wordle :
1) More frequent the words in the text, the bigger the words appear, so it is easy for students to focus on the frequency.
2) The common words like 'the, a, of, etc.' are excluded.
3) The ‘Randomize’ feature creates different versions of a particular text instantly.
I tried to paste a passage from NEW CONCEPT ENGLISH in the box. A beautiful cloud appeared. I changed the style and colour by easily 'click' those links above.

4) And any individual words can be excluded by 'right click'. So the teacher can chose what to show.

5) Both long or short texts can be exhibited, and the words limitation can be changed easily. So you don't need to worry the text is too long.

After I changed the words limitation, it looked more clearly.

As you see, the words are attractive. This tool can be used as a good practice for them to predict the topic of the text. If there are any unknown words, learners can study them before seeing the whole text.
However, the Wordle also has drawbacks. One problem is that the most frequent words may not be the most important words of a text, especially for the long and difficult one. So it may take a long time for the teacher to move those unimportant words.

Collaboration Tools for ELT Class

Have you ever thought of building a chat room for students to discuss some topics out of class? Have you ever considered of asking the students complete a task like writing an essay together out of class? All these activities may seem difficult, but they are not so tough with those collaboration tools online.

I'd like to suggest three online tools that the students can use to complete collaborate tasks. The first one is Stormboard. 

 Stormboard is a place you can create a board where others can be invited to post a discuss. Everyone can post their literatures in a particular colour, so it is easy to recognise.  The host of the storm has the right to edit those posts. What's more there's a special column for participants to chat together before they post anything on the storm, so the storm board will not turn to a chat board.
The benefits of the stormboard is obvious. It is easy to edit ideas of every participants and can be exported as Words, PDF and Excel files. As a result, students don't need to waste time on copying all the contents.
 The second tool is Mopad. This tool is especially for learners who need to complete an essay or report together. Usually when learners need to write an essay together, they will write own part separately, and then read each others and revise. This traditional way is not so efficient, because the learners waste a lot of time on reading and rewrite. Using this tool can help learners to save time and discuss their opinions even they don't have time to sit together. This tool also has a column for chatting, so participants can discuss their parts together before adding any words on the pad. Every Pad has a leader editor who can organise and edit the article into a final draft.
In ELT classrooms, this is a great tool for students learn from each other. Because they can see how others organise words and sentences.

The final one is Google drive. I think everyone knows it. It is a tool for sharing any materials like photos, office files, videos and PDF files.  It is also a social network. The learners can use this to learn each other much better, sharing their learning experience easily.

Everything has two sides, there are also some challenges for teachers using these tools. The most challenge one is the training for students. Every student who will use this for learning tasks must be very clear about what they can do and how to use the right resources. Another important point is all these tools are serving for learning, so they should not be too complicated for students to use, or it will be a waste of time and energy.

Triptico--tools and games

You can use it for review what you have taught to students.

Tripco which was created by a teacher is now widely used lately. It has been introduced in our ICT class, and we tried to use one of its quizzes called 'What's the quest?'. This quiz can be used in any levels of classes, either in language classes or other subjects. Because it can be used as a way to review what you have taught to students before.

Here are some questions that we designed in our ICT class:

After creating this quiz, we invited some classmates to play, and they expressed that this quiz was really interactive and they tried to think of the questions hard.

I think in second language classes, it is a good practice for students to memory what they have learned. For example, they have just learn how to describe a place, then the teacher may design some questions and answers, which are related to describing features of a place. A question may like 'Where you can buy the most delicious banana shake in campus? ' or  'Where can you get your parcels?' The questions that teachers design do not have the only answer, and the students can give their own opinions, and discuss whether their answers are acceptable. Students may acquire the language by this kind of activity.

Powtoons--the first try!

A useful tool for making slides for L2 Class

This is my first time to use Powtoons. It is quite interesting. I tried to use it to make some slides of introducing some useful language for agreeing. As my audience are usually secondary school students, I chose a style which is not so childish. I think this tool can be used as a instead of Powerpoint, and it is easy to share it online, which means students can get it easily. 
I think this tool is also can be used by students to complete some tasks like giving presentation of what they have learned in a text. It also a simple tool for students to make some short cartoons that are related to their language study, like advertisement and travel plan.
However, there are still some problems need to be deal with. 

1. You need to sign in (off course it is free for basic use)

2. When I edit it, it's difficult to find where to add music into it.

3. After finish it, you can share it in Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but I haven't found the link to share it in Blogs. 

However it is easy to add videos both from your own computer and Tutobe.

You can start Powtoons from here:

After click the 'start', chose what you want to create.

Then choose a style you want.

You can use any of the slides, as many as you want.

Edit literature, add pictures and videos. Quite easy.

Finally， you can share it on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Can't wait? Just have a try!

An experience of online course

An experience of online course

    Online course is quite popular these days. Last December I tried to registered one online course named Understanding Language. This course was organised by British Council and University of Southhampton. It includes not only videos, but also activities and quiz. what's it provides some useful links to those online videos that help we learn more about language learning and teaching.

Here is one video linked from its website:

During the four weeks of the online course, I found it was very interesting and flexible. So I decided to attend another online course called  Exploring English in February.