elllo - English Listening Lesson Library Online

LINK: http://www.elllo.org/

WHAT

ello is a fantastic website that mainly focus on the listening skill, in conjunction with other skills. It has a vast collection of audio of various topic from personal to world knowledge acrross culture.

For second language learners, listening to native speakers might be a rare oppurtunity in own country. ello provides a medium to listen to how English is spoken all around the world by native speakers and non-native speakers too. Besides, students  may familiarise with different accents and use of language.

The different activities provided allow students to choose what they would enjoy most. Some might enjoy listening with visual while some might enjoy listening to a video. The power to choose what they want and the fact that it is acessible outside classroom encourage the autonomy in learning.

Taking control of their own learning, by choosing the topic of their interest make them engage to the learning. They become interested and take part in the activity. It means they have higher possibility to acquire the language effortlessly through meaningful learning.

EXAMPLE

It is divided to few sections:

Topic:1139 'Sea Turtles'

Speakers: Dusty (US) and Mike (Canada)

• Views: It is basically a conversation between two people giving their view of a certain topic. The conversation is real and authentic (may include pauses, fillers and back-channelling).
• Transcript tab - The transcription of the audio is provided. The speakers information are also given (name, picture and country). You may choose whether you want to hide or show the text.
• Audio slide view tab - Listen to the audio with the help of visual slide. The whole text is divided into few shorts sentences, and subtitle is provided. 
• Vocabulary tab - It explains the word or phrases in the text, in details with few examples. You could listen to the explanation and read it at the same time.

• Activity - On the right hand side, there are exercises to check comprehension and test vocabulary. Students could check their answer after doing the task.
• Further information - Related topic/link and video response of the topic is also provided for further discussion. 

Topic: Mixer 121 'Favourite Proverb'

Speakers: Various

• Mixer: It has few speakers (with various accents from different country) and the opinion given individually with no interaction to each other. 
• Transcript tab - The audio transcription. You could also click the words in blue to listen to the explanation or meaning.
• Audio slide view tab - You can choose among the speakers and listen to their speech. A picture is provided in relation to the text. In this case, the picture of Confucious is shown when the speaker is talking about a proverb by him. 
• Vocabulary tab - Similar to the view's section, it gives further explanation of a difficult word.

Topic: G70 'Yoga Pose'

Speakers: Jeff

• Game: A listening game, where users have to listen and choose the right image of the topic being discussed.  
• Choose the right image: Students will listen to Jeff description of yoga pose and listener need to identify which picture fit the description. 
• Full audio and transcription is provided.

• Audio downloads - The download link for the audio, vocabulary, and notes are provided
• Activity - There are exercises provided (vocabulary, reading and speaking quiz) as well as answer. 

Topic:  1032 'Should the man pay for everything on the first date?'

Speaker: Steve (UK)

• Videos: It is a recorded video of various english speaking users all around the world about various topic. It is interesting because we could see the view of people about random topics. 
• Watch the video - Click to watch the video and choose whether you want it with subtitle or not. 
• Transcription is provided on the right column. 

• Activity - Video Quiz (multiple choice questions) to check understanding.
• Further Information - A link for related topic is provided for further discussion. 

Topic: 1 'an oil spill, a theft, a long walk, taxes and a new book'

• News: It is a newscast of six different topics.
• Animated cartoon with quiz - There is a quiz section with cartoons and multiple choice question after listening to a short information. 
• Transcription - They could also listen to the whole news and read the text as well.
• Activity - On the right, there is some excercises focus and vocabulary and listening (gaps fill and short answer questions).

 

ADVANTAGES

1. Real languages - ello use authentic language where English speakers from different background participate in the activity. Meaning, it provides various accents of English speaking. It prepares students with real communicative language and make student aware that meaning is what count in a conversation apart from correct use of language.
2. Different approaches - It has few different sections, such as Game where students would enjoy it. Rather than listening for comprehension, they would also choose listening to answer quiz.
3. Printable document - teachers and students could benefit from the exercises in classroom. For example, teachers provide listening, and hand out the printable exercises for student to answer. In other words, no technology is needed.
4. Downloadable audio - This audio is in the format of MP3 and can be played through mp3 player, if interenet access is not available.
5. Interesting activity - Teacher could create different classroom activity for students base on the topic provided in ello. For example after listening to a group of people about their favourite proverb, students could also discuss on their own favourite proverb.
6. Easy and Free - It is easy, accessible, and free for all internet users.
7. Skills Development - Most of the listening activity could then be extended to to other idea of teaching where students make a group discussion about the opinon given or write a summary of what is said by the speakers.
8. Post Discussion - Most of the sections in ello provide a related topic and in 'view' section, there are also video responses from random speakers. This will allow more creativity for students who wish to extend their knowledge about that particular topic. The idea of differentiation is applied here.
9. Topics cover many aspects -Obviously, it encourage personalisation because interesting content is chosen to fit students level and interest. 
10. Answers -  Answers are provided so that students could check it straight away.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Repeated exercises - The exercises here is repeated and students may find it boring after a few tries. 
2. Searching topic - There is no tag or label that make the topic searching easier. 

CONCLUSION

This is a very useful website for teachers and students. For teachers, they may have some teaching ideas base on the activity or topic provided. Meanwhile, students could learn from here by themselves for their own pleasure rather than for learning purpose. It will surely assist in autonomous learning, a very important concept of language learning.

WordSift - Isolating important words

LINK: http://www.wordsift.com/

WHAT

Wordsift - just like its name, this website is a brilliant tool of 'sifting' or isolating the important or useful words and group it as one. Now, could you imagine how this tool contribute to lesson planning?

It is useful as a pre-reading activity where when you have a long story or article, and you can let this tool choose the important words from that. It delete common words and the words that give the gist of the article stay.

It is not sifting the important words alone, it has also has supportive function like visual meaning and thesauraus. For a student, it will surely help them doing reading preparation because rather than isolating the important words, they would also able to quickly look at the meaning of a difficult words in one click. Easy tool motivate learning.

The context of the way a word is used is also provided in one page through sampling. This is very useful where teachers may help students to further understand the meaning of a word through context. 


HOW

1. Paste the text into the box.  Text can be taken online. (poems, short story, journal, extract, etc)
2. Click Sift

EXAMPLE 

Text: Poem by Joey Rodriguez, 'Tears, Pain and a Happy End'

• I sift the long poem and it gives you a gist of its content.

As you may notice,

• Sorting - You could sort out the words from 'rare to commmon' or 'A to Z' and vice versa, depending on your choice.
• Frequent words - The most frequent words are bigger than the rest

• Visualise the word - through google image search engine provided. 
• Visual thesauraus - where the thesauraus of the word is shown.
• Sample Text - you could take out the sample of how a word is used in the text. Example below shows how the word 'upon' is used in a text. 

Jay Rodriguez

Poem Source: http://www.loveislonely.com

Jay Rodriguez

Poem Source: http://www.loveislonely.com

ADVANTAGES

• Classroom activity - A good tool for pre-reading / pre-listening activity. 
• Instant meaning - If students wanted to know a meaning of a word, they could easily click the word, and the associated words will appear in the Visual Thesauraus box. 
• Visual meaning - There is a visual section where  some words are better explained through picture rather than another definition.
• Sorting words - I find this interesting because we can choose to sort the words from common to rare. In other words, it helps teachers identify the difficult words that need to be taught. 
• Sampling - It could take out the sentence where a particular word being used. Students could refer to the usage of a word.

CONCLUSION


This is a suggested website for both students and teachers. Students could use it as a reading preparation and teachers may want to come out with an idea of teaching using the information given here. Worth a try!

British National Corpus - Learning Real English

LINK:  http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

WHAT

British National Corpus is a useful website for teachers and students to find how to use a word/vocabulary in a sentence in a correct way. It is a word collection of sample of written and spoken language in British English from vast sources.

90% of it are written English collected from newspapers, journals, books etc while the rest are spoken language transcripted from informal conversation and spoken language from different context.

I would suggest this website as a reference to look into an unfamiliar word that is rarely used in writing. Teachers may want to show students how a word is used rather than give the definition.

In language learning, it helps in promoting spoken language which suits the context and situation of where it has taken place. It also consider culture and appropriateness of the use of the language in different event. It encourage the usage of real language.

EXAMPLE

• Enter word - type the text in the search box and click 'Go'.

• Sample of text - If I type pretty in the search box, it will provide you with the examples taken from various resources of the use of the word in British English. 

ADVANTAGES

1. Useful tool to search for the real usage of a word in real life.
2. Sources are trustworthy. 
3. Quick and simple.
4. Advance search is available where users could search the words by part of speech or also looking for phrases. 

DISADVANTAGES

1. Some of the sample is quite complicated and may not be of a good sample.

CONCLUSION

One of the language teaching aims is to prepare students for real life communication, which is beyond classroom context. Learning new vocabulary has been a necessity for students to enhace their command of language. However, the priority on correct use of language and passing exam may discourage the use of real language for communicative purpose. In other words, students may have difficulties expressing themselves in real communication.

This is a recommended tool for teachers and students to deal with any unfamiliar words that may cause communication failure if it was used in a wrong way.

Lyrics Training - A fun way to practise listening!

LINK: http://www.lyricstraining.com/

WHAT 

Lyrics Training is a website where students could listen to a song of their choice, and type in the lyric of the song while listening. In other words, this website practising listening skill through songs.

Practically, songs are one of the students' source of English. Luckily, English songs are popular worldwide. Students are expose to different genre of songs and memorize the lyric and learn simple vocabulary. Songs are naturally fun. Using it in classroom, why not? Something that is fun is always engaging.

Beside, students may want to enjoy doing this activity, fill in the lyric, while at the same time sing the song. If they stuck at words, they could look the meaning up and learn it. It encourage autonomy in learning where students could practise this on their own, for the purpose of improving their knowledge of target language.

EXAMPLE

Song: The Way You Are

Singer: Bruno Mars

HOW

• Choose Song - Type the name of the singer or the song title in the search box.
• Select the Game Mode - Beginner, Intermediate, Expert.
• Listen and Type - Start typing the lyrics. 
• Help -  The 'help' button shows how to rewind, skip etc.
• Sign up - If you want to.

ADVANTAGES

1. Fun - Anything that is fun, attract students and encourage them to learn.
2. Preference - They have a choice of their own preferred song. 
3. Level - There is a level of difficulty. It promotes different level of proficiency and making the task comprehensible for learners at appropriate level.
4. Autonomous learning - Students can practise on their own at home. 
5. Vocabulary - If you sign up for the website, there is better option where you could view your scores and the vocabulary of the songs. I find this helpful because learners could review the vocabulary and learn new words.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Appropriate song - Teacher may have to guide students of choosing the right song that really benefit students for learning. Some of the songs are good, but the content does not really contribute to learning.
2. Appropriate lyric -Some of the music videos or lyrics may not be appropriate for certain culture perspectives. 
3. In term of score, there might be a question of validity because there is a penalty if you spend a long time through the song where it could be a matter of typing speed.   

CONCLUSION

Listening to songs in the target language is a fun and creative way of learning that particular language. Fortunately for English teacher, there are numerous sources of English songs that is suitable for language learning. Rather than listening to a song and doing a task on paper, technology makes life interesting. So, start now, promote this website to your students. :)

Listen and Write - Variation in listening activity

LINK: http://www.listen-and-write.com/

WHAT

Listen and Write is another website that focus on dictation, which is another approach to practise listening. It is a useful website for learners because the authenticity of the text is a good approach in preparing learners in real life situation.

In language learning, listening to authentic source should be the main source of English. Adapted conversation is suitable for beginner and if the content is high. Students should be exposed to the real language and practice listening to the accents and get use to the speed of speaking.

This website is a good tool to practice listening and students could check straight away whether they listen to the correct word. Spelling and vocabulary are emphasised here. Thus, Listen and Write is an activity that aim for few skills at one.

EXAMPLE

Topic: Scientists, Engineers Help Elementary School Teachers

Level: 19

You could try doing the task here.

HOW

• Level - Learners could choose the appropriate level and also the article that they would be interested with. 
• Log in - You could log in using your facebook account or simply signing up for a new account. By signing up, learners could review their score and keep track of their improvement. 
• Three modes - (Full mode, Quick mode, and Blank mode) where each promote different approach of performing the task.

ADVANTAGES

• Some of the audio are taken from authentic source, which is a good practice for learners to prepare them for real life.
• There is an auto repeat  function: It is necessary to give student time typing out and listen for the audio more than once untill they get it right.
• There is a hint button and dictionary, that assisst learners with unknown word. I find this helpful because learners could look up for the new vocabulary straight away, while they are trying to understand within context.
• There are degree of difficulty for a certain text and learners could choose which one suit them best. There are sentence level as well as word level. 
• Besides news, there are also videos from youtube that could be more interesting because it has visual and audio rather than listening alone. 
• Suitable for autonomous learning. Student could do this activity on their own.

DISADVANTAGES

• Some of the text are using American English, and may have slight different in term of spelling. 
• There is no clear description of the levels. Students may find it challenging at certain level because they do not know which level suit them best (or where to start with).  

CONCLUSION

I have to say that this website is a practical activity that use a very simple concept, listen and write what you listen to. It is very similar to spelling bee, or any other spelling activity in classroom. What make it different is, it test listening as well. It will be a good activity for students.