How to Improve Oral Fluency -- Using SpeakingPal on Your Phone!

Nice to meet you! Last week, we learned about Speechling, a website for learning spoken language. Although Speechling can help our students practice speaking to some extent, its untimely feedback and detached practice content from reality has limitations. This week, I will introduce you a more convenient and effective software for practicing spoken language, SpeakingPal English Tutor. This is an interactive application that uses mobile voice recognition function. It features a series of mini courses, dialogues, interactive exercises, role-playing, and language activities, providing immediate feedback for users' oral performance and providing a review mode for the future. It can be used for free both on iPhone and Android. With this software, we no longer worry about searching for situational dialogues to teach words and sentences, and our students can also practice their communication skills.

Usage Guidelines

(1) Use your mobile phone to download SpeakingPal through the link: https://www.speakingpal.com/. 

(2) Register and log in.

(3) Select a preview of the unit example dialogue, you can practice individual words and sentences, as well as entire conversations.

(4) The comment area displays the words and sentences you practiced, and native speakers will evaluate your recordings.

(5) You will receive color-coded feedback, green feedback means you do a good job, yellow feedback means your practice is ok, while red feedback means your oral English should be improved.

(6) You can repeat the word, the sentence, or the dialogue according to the advice of the native speaker and colorful feedback.

Software Evaluation

Advantage 😀😀

(1) Because SpeakingPal can be downloaded on mobile phones, users no longer need to carry heavy books or have a computer device to practice speaking. They can practice anytime and anywhere (Pachler et al, 2010).

(2) Compared to Speechling, students can not only receive help from native speakers, but also receive timely feedback through AI.

(3) The practice of SpeakingPal usually only requires users to spend 3-6 minutes, helping them use fragmented time to learn.

(4) The practice of SpeakingPal is based on interesting conversations in real life, which can not only provide users with a natural speaking experience, but also provide teachers with more language teaching materials. By practicing English in familiar situations, students can learn faster.

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) The SpeakingPal lacks long conversation practice, making it difficult for users to form a systematic learning system.

(2) While teachers require students to use mobile phones in class, it increases the risk of distraction and makes it difficult to manage.

(3) The feedback provided by artificial intelligence is not always accurate, and it may mislead users.

(4) The voice input function is limited by the environment, thus noise and bass volume may lead to inaccurate content input.

If you want to learn more about SpeakingPal, you can watch the video below. 👀👀

In summary, SpeakingPal is a mobile app that is highly recommended for students to engage in autonomous oral practice. Through authentic conversations and timely feedback, it helps users improve their oral fluency, communication skills, and comprehension abilities. However, we need to guide our students to practice relevant dialogues in a targeted manner, and using the SpeakingPal in the classroom requires proper supervision to prevent students from being distracted.

Reference

• Pachler, N., Bachmair, B., Cook, J., & Kress, G. R. (2010). Mobile learning: Structures, agency, practices. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0585-7

How to improve oral fluency -- using Speechling!

Have you ever encountered the following problems in oral English teaching: students are unwilling to express themselves; their pronunciation is difficult to correct; their oral weaknesses are different, and we have difficulty coordinating course content. However, oral proficiency determines whether our students can effectively communicate with others. Therefore, it is important and necessary to choose a network technology for auxiliary teaching of spoken language.

Hard to understand

This week, I will introduce a foreign language learning website to you, Speechling. Speechling supports to learn 16 languages, including English. The Speechling includes over 1000 interesting exercises and free native language coach guidance to help users quickly achieve fluency in speaking. In Speechling, learning a foreign language is not only about reading through a single text, but about reading follow a sentence. On the one hand, users are able to compare their pronunciation with the standard pronunciation in order to see if their pronunciation is accurate. On the other hand, each user will be randomly assigned a pronunciation tutor. Every time the user finishes reading a sentence, the recording of his reading will be uploaded to his tutor, who will provide feedback as soon as possible. In brief, unlike other websites, Speechling provides both technical support and manual coaching assistance to users.

homepage of Speechling

User Guide

Step 1: Go to the website through the link: https://speechling.com/zh/

Step 2: Register and log in to your account, select the spoken language you want to learn;

Step 3: Select a speaking tutor, speaking projects, etc. 

Step 4: Make some oral practice and have recordings, wait for your tutor's feedback.

How to use Speechling

Website evaluation

Advantages 😀😀

(1) Each user is equipped with a native speaker tutor. Their tutors will give them personal feedback, which  is more authentic and targeted.

(2) Users are no longer nervous and embarrassed when practicing speaking. Research has found that in Internet environments, participants have significantly longer vocalization time than in face-to-face environments (Blake, 2009).

(3) Speechling helps users correct their pronunciation, reduces ambiguity caused by pronunciation, and facilitates effective communication in subsequent life.

(4) There are diverse forms of practice here. Speechling does not only use text reading, but combines audio to help oral practice.

(5) The Skill Tree and Audio Journal functions in Speechling record the user's growth process, from which users can gain a sense of achievement and motivation. In addition, users can repeatedly practice unfamiliar words and focus on.

(6) Teachers find it difficult to take into account the abilities and characteristics of each student in the classroom, especially in countries with limited educational resources. While Speechling users can choose the difficulty level of their learning content and conduct personalized learning.

Provide a coach for each user

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) Although Speechling equips every user with a coach, the coach is not real-time online. Therefore, users need to wait for a period of time to receive feedback, which is not timely.

(2) Users may experience blurry recording content due to their physical condition or noisy background sound, which hinders Speechling from evaluating their pronunciation.

(3) Speechling mainly improves users' oral proficiency through practice, lacking real-life scenario practice for communication and interaction, and its assistance in face-to-face conversations is limited.

If you want to learn more about Speechling, you can watch the short video below.

In short, we can recommend Speechling to our students to use it for autonomous learning after class. In addition, we can also present practice on Speedling in classroom to motivate students to speak and improve their oral proficiency. However, we must exercise students' face-to-face communication skills more in the classroom, which is the most important!

Reference

BLAKE, C. (2009). Potential of text-based internet chats for improving oral fluency in a second language. The Modern Language Journal (Boulder, Colo.), 93(2), 227-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00858.x

Blended Learning -- Using Genially to design activties!

Are you tired of using PowerPoint to present classroom content? Are your students also tired of traditional teaching methods? Under the trend of online education, enhancing learning engagement through interaction is becoming increasingly important, but traditional teaching tools seem to no longer meet teaching needs.

A tool from Spain provides us with more ideas. Its name is Genially, and the meaning of the word itself expresses happiness, implying the richness and joy of its function. Genially is a multi in-one design website specifically for creating dynamic and interactive activities, and offers thousands of templates to choose from. Of course, in addition to using templates, you can also directly create posters, infographics, games, and more from scratch. In addition, Genially has thousands of visual effects, including vectors, image libraries (including well-known libraries such as Unsplash, Giphy, and Pixabay), maps, and more, helping you quickly design interactive elements or add dynamic effects. After your work is completed, you can also turn it into a mini website, a product catalog, or other interactive spaces by adding buttons, or by inserting images and community posts, make the overall design interface more eye-catching and interesting! Meanwhile, Genially also supports multi person online writing, which promotes cooperative learning among students. Compared to Kahoot!, Genially focuses more on creating different forms of content, not just games.

Genially

User Guide

Step 1: Open the website through the link: https://app.genial.ly/. Create an account and log in.

Step 2: Choose the canvas, use keywords to search or browse directories for each creative type: infographics, presentations, games, etc

Step 3: Personalize it by changing text, colors, images, uploading your own materials, or using resource images, illustrations, images, maps, and more in the editor.

Step 4: Share your content with others or export your content to multiple platforms.

Genially -- games

Advantages😀😀

(1) The countless templates provided by Genially can help users quickly and easily create content.

(2) Genially's automatic synchronization save function reduces the risk of information loss.

(3) Genially's one-stop service provides convenience for users. Users only need to open Genially to produce content. If users want to search for images online, they can directly open websites such as pixabay and unsplash in Genially to search.

(4) Users can add more visual elements to the classroom through Genially to better explain complex information and concepts. Pictures or videos can attract students, allowing them to quickly grasp concepts and turn tedious experiences into unforgettable ones.

(5) Genially is a blended learning approach that integrates the advantages of face to face teaching with online teaching, such as classroom interaction and technology mediated interaction between students, teachers, and learning resources.

(6) In the sharing process, Genially not only supports to importe various forms of content, but also supports to exporte content to multiple platforms. We can share our works with students, rather than just presenting them in class.

Disadvantages😔😔

(1) There are too many resources and it takes time to filter.

If you want to learn more about Genially, you can watch the video below. It introduces Genially in details. 👀👀

In brief, Genially is powerful and rich in designing interactive content, adding color to our teaching. I can hardly imagine what disadvantages it has. Let's quickly use it! 😀😀