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Mobile Learning for Language Development | Nik Peachey

As a novice teacher in North Africa in the early 90s, I remember clearly dissecting English language newspapers and magazines and scouring the local shops for bootlegged English language audio cassettes to find interesting content to base activities on for my students.

I also remember carrying around a bag of audio cassettes which my students would use to record their learning diary entries on and which I would take home to listen to before recording my reply and taking them back for them the next lesson. I guess this is why I find it baffling when I hear about schools or classrooms where students are being asked to turn off or not bring their mobile phones and devices.

I understand that competing with the screen can be a challenge. The apps that students use on these devices have been designed by people who have researched just how to distract and grab people’s attention, but I feel that the best way to grab their attention back is to start training students how to use the devices in a ways that will enhance their learning both in and out of class. One of the first things that we could do as teachers is help students take control of their devices, by turning off notifications for example (at least during lessons). Removing screen notifications as well as noises and vibrations will help prevent unwanted distractions.

Next, we need to help them put their mobile device to good use.

We can use a backchannel to connect our students and enable us to share and exchange digital materials with students during the class. A backchannel could be a simple chatroom that all students can enter. We can paste hyperlinks to articles, videos, audios, activities and worksheets into this room and then students can instantly access the content without having to type in long URLs or search Google. I use http://backchannelchat.com/ for all of my classes. They have a browser version as well as a mobile app that students can download for free. The app has been adapted for educational use, and as a teacher, I can easily control the chatroom by moderating messages and pinning tasks to the top of the room.

At the end of a lesson, students can download notes from the backchannel and save any useful links, comments, new vocabulary or documents.

We can use apps like Mentimeter to make our lessons more interactive. This is just one of many classroom response apps that enables teachers to deliver quizzes, polls Q&A sessions and even brainstorming tasks to students’ devices during the lesson. It also gives instant feedback that teachers can display on the whiteboard. I’ve used Mentimeter to get students brainstorming vocabulary into an interactive word cloud. This is great as they can see the word cloud changing as they add their words. We can also use it to do comprehension and concept checking and know exactly how many of our students are getting the answers right.

We can also start building multimedia lessons that are rich in graphics and images and which link directly to web-based resources. https://www.genial.ly is just one of many tools that we can use to create visually engaging materials that students can access on their digital devices. This is an example of a lesson I built for a group of students to get them to plan a fictional trip to Cambridge. They have a range of resources that they need to explore and which help them to find images, locations on a map, weather information, and interesting places and events. As they explore these resources, they can use the information they gather to plan a three-day trip together. Using the QR code at the beginning of the lesson, they can scan the materials directly onto their mobile device and access all of the links and instructions directly.

These are just a few of the many ways students can use their devices in the classroom to enhance their learning. In my webinar, we looked at many more and also investigated some of the apps they can use outside the classroom too. To find out more you can watch the recorded session here:

Watch the recording

Nik Peachey has worked all over the world as a language teacher, teacher trainer, technology trainer, and educational technology consultant. He is an award-winning course designer, materials writer, and author


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#EFLproblems – Phonetics and Pronunciation

Talking in someone's earWe’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. We’ve received some queries about phonetics and pronunciation, specifically how to make pronunciation apps part of the class.

Talk to your students

There are many apps and the first thing a teacher should do is ask their students if they’ve got a pronunciation app and how they use it. Being aware of students who have a pronunciation app will help the teacher integrate it into the class. Then, it is also important to talk to the students about how they use their app. This discussion will also generate some ideas. The discussion may also make some students curious about a pronunciation app and how they could use it.

So, let’s now explore how to integrate the use of the app into the classroom.

Let’s consider first the sounds chart.

Be a resource for students

As the teacher, you can help your students understand certain concepts. For example, voiced and unvoiced sounds. Having a brief discussion on this in class will help students use their app better. They will see that /p/ in “parrot” is unvoiced and that /b/ in “be” is voiced.

Activity:

Ask students to find 3 sounds on their app that they find difficult. Tell them to write the sample words and the sample sentences from the app. Then, tell them to find 5 other words they know for each sound.  Ask them to write a short sentence with each sound, as in the app.  Finally, ask them to record the words and sentences, and to play it back. How do they sound?

As the teacher you may want to confirm that the words a student has chosen do represent the sound they have difficulty with. You can also ask students to compare their pronunciation of the voiced/unvoiced pair.

Chart your Progress

If you can, provide students with a small sounds chart. They can probably find one on the internet. Ask them to indicate with a small arrow the 3 sounds they find difficult. Then, as they progress and feel comfortable with the sound, they should put a tick next to it, and add another sound to their list.

Work with others

Encourage students to share their experience with other students in the class. When students find they have difficulty with the same sound, they can help each other, comparing their list of words and sentences. Then, they could also record each others’ words and sentences, comparing their pronunciation with each other as well as the example in the app.

If pronunciation is important for your students, have a sounds chart in the classroom. This will reinforce their work with the app. It is important that they notice not only the sounds they have difficulty with, but also to be aware of the sounds they find easy.

Help them improve

Students may sometimes need you to check on their progress. Be available to help. Maybe once a week, at the end of a lesson, ask about their progress with the pronunciation apps. Ask if they need any help. They may ask you to record a sample sentence. You could offer sample words that may be more helpful than those they have chosen. And, of course, they may have made some mistakes you can correct. Remember, you can help your students get the most from the pronunciation app.

So, you as their teacher can be a resource as well as a helper. In the first case, you can add to their knowledge. In the second case, you can facilitate their progress.

Play the game

Students will usually play the games that come with pronunciation apps. Encourage them to chart their progress.

1. Encourage them to keep a list of the sounds they got wrong

The app will give them immediate feedback on this, so students can simply write the word/sound before moving on to the next one. They can do this in a notebook or simply indicating the difficult sounds on a sounds chart.

2. Encourage them to play a game regularly

Suggest they play a game at least twice a week; once after the English class, and another time on a day when they don’t have English. Ask them to chart their scores for each time. Is there any difference? Students may discover that their scores after English class are generally higher than the others. This may indicate that a student does better when English is fresh in their minds. They may want to listen to English outside of class on a more regular basis. They could listen to music, or watch a movie or TV show without subtitles.

Playing the games will give them information about their learning which they can use to improve their learning of English.

These activities will link their English lessons with their use of their pronunciation app. This alone will help students focus. It will organise their use of the app and make it a useful tool in improving their pronunciation. Making the app part of the lessons will also bring another dimension into their learning, their experience outside the classroom. Finally, helping your students to use the app adds to your role as their teacher, the role of facilitator and resource.

Invitation to share your ideas

We are interested in hearing your ideas about using pronunciation apps, so please comment on this post.

Please keep your challenges coming. The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks. Each blog is usually followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats.


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If there were no books…

Student with iPadRobert McLarty, Publishing Manager for Business English and ESP at Oxford University Press, explores the increasing use of digital media in education, the effect it has on students, and how it will affect teachers in the future.

A couple of years ago a group of schools in California decided to pilot a new approach to the teaching of algebra. Providing the students with iPads along with an interactive full curriculum app, the year-long pilot was to compare the results of a print-driven approach and a tablet-led one. Both groups had experienced teachers but the results were convincing. Over 78% of the “digital” students scored A or B compared with 59% using the “old school” approach.

Let us not worry how similar algebra and English are – they are both subjects which most students will need at some stage in their careers. They are also both subjects where some students “get it” immediately and others don’t. They are also often taught by experts who find it hard to understand why learners struggle with some basic concepts. Why is a tense continuous? When do we need to use brackets?

What the application clearly does is help the teachers explain, illustrate, practise and correct in a more effective way than print materials. It hasn’t replaced maths teachers, it has actually enhanced them and made them more effective, interesting and, probably, productive. Obviously the gadget itself has more immediate appeal to most sixteen year olds than a book would have. What we cannot deny, however, is that the modern generation of both learners and new teachers are used to the richness and range which digital offers us. If we can harness that technology and marry it to an efficient teaching methodology then surely we will have moved English Language Teaching on in much the same way the OALD, Headway or Practical English Usage did at different times?

The algebra app offers a personalized learning experience; in other words, each student doing an appropriate task for their level at the right stage of the lesson. It offers video tutorials where the new point is explained so that those who didn’t get it, or missed the lesson or want to go through it again, can do just that. It offers step-by-step examples and quizzes to test learning. It offers homework tasks with instant feedback prescribing remediation or intervention as required. It also offers a community approach to learning where you learn from your peers as much as from your teacher. Its three stage approach is based around teaching, review and assessment, a very similar methodology to our standard direct method approach. So what will it take to provide a similar course for English language learning?

A lot of good content has been developed for English language practice and reference but there is less which can be effectively used by teachers actually in the classroom during the teaching stages of their lessons. I don’t believe this would actually be a book on screen. It might well borrow the aims, objectives, activities and syllabus of a book but would probably deliver them in a way which suited a modern digitally equipped classroom where the tablet will replace the book.

Some weeks ago I asked a group of teachers what they would do if they were trying to teach a language point but there were no books. The stages they opted for, and the methodology they chose sounds very familiar. First select an image, video, dialogue or text which contextualises the language. Next engage the class, check their current knowledge and introduce the new items. After that they would provide useful extra practice at a variety of sub-levels before encouraging the students  to experiment and find further opportunities, texts or examples to help them personalise and remember.

A lot of great content is available on the internet but there is too much for a busy teacher to deal with and most of it is raw and unedited. What a good teacher of the future will need, and can then provide to their learners, is enough coherent learning objects to suit the needs of their learners, to keep the class engaged, to help them learn and practise new language all within a well-tested and graded framework provided by an expert in the provision of learning materials. These objects will be for use both in and out of classroom, allowing us finally to arrive at the ultimate course, designed to fit each individual learner with the perfect combination of print and digital publishing.

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