Vocaroo- Practicing Speaking by Recording Your Voice and Send It to Your Teacher

Today's Website~


●    Vocaroo

Powered by Vocaroo

※  This is a sample gadget for you to try recording and to play back your voice.   

      The messages are not saved or downloadable. Click on the Vocaroo website

      listed above to send a link of voice message vial e-mail.

What is it about?

●  It is a service used for sending voice messages across the Internet. .

●  Your voice messages will be saved as records when you sign in.

●  The link of recorded voice messages could be send via e-mail.

●  You can post your voice messages on the Internet (embed it in your blog, or post

    the link on your website). 

Why is the content good for language learning?

●  Individual students can record their speaking outside the classroom.

●  The simple voice recording tool is easy to use, and it can be used as speaking

     homework, and the teacher can assess students pronunciation, intonation, and

     their discourse structures. 

●  The teacher can give individual students feedback via voice messages.

●  Students' voice recording could be post on the Internet for other students to

     listen and share their opinions.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  It could be used as speaking homework, to compensate the insufficient time for

    practicing speaking in the classroom.  Students could either practice pronunciation,

    dialogue, longer conversation with certain topics at home, imitate the ads or work 

    together in class to have short play with their voices.  

●  It could be used to check students' (beginners) pronunciation or intonation and 

    the teacher could give individual students feedback via voice messages.

●  The teacher could present students' work in class, and have students appreciate

    other groups' work.  The work could be post in the blog or as an assessment.

●  Here are some ideas from Teacher Training Videos Website.

Some Ideas on How to Use Vacaroo from Teacher Training Videos

Limitations~

  

●  The students need to have headphones and computers at home.

●  It is a free tool, so the voice messages could not be stored for a long time.  And

    if you download the voice file,  it will need large capacity.

●  Could have problems if the teachers would like to use it collaboratively since

    there is only one headphone in a computer.

●  It might take teachers much time to assess students performance and give 

    students feedback.
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 Example~

●   Click on "record", and click on "yes" to let Vocaroo use the microphone function

     to record  your voice.

●   Click on "Click to Stop" once you finish recording.

  ●  You could listen before you send the voice message.  You can record it again if 

     you are not satisfied with the voice message.

●   You can either send it to a friend, post it on the Internet, or download the message.

●  You can embed the voice message in your blog, or put the link on your website.

●   Download the voice message.

●   Once you get the link of the voice message, click on the link to listen to it.

●  You can also:

     Click on Teacher Training Videos to Check Out How to Use Vocaroo

TagCorwd- Teaching Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing in Another Way.

Today's Website~


●    TagCrowd

amadeus (1) bbc (1) born (1) breakthrough (1) comic (1) die (1) doubtless (1) england (1) entfuhrung (1) experience (1) extraordinary (1) father (1) figaro (1) final (2) flute (1) freelance (1) gained (2) germany (1) health (1) idomeneo (1) kemp (1) led (2) major (1) mannheim (1) marriage (1) member (1) mozart (3) munich (1) musical (6) opera (4) orchestra (1) particularly (1) performed (2) pianist (2) political (1) popularity (1) position (1) poured (1) premiere (1) recognising (1) salzburg (5) seriously (1) sort (2) style (2) success (2) throughout (2) travelling (1) trip (1) visited (1) waned (1)

created at TagCrowd.com

What is it about?

●  Like wordsift, It is a useful tool to visualize word frequency in any supplied text.

●  To visualize the text, you can either upload your text source from web page URL,

     from your file or paste the text. 

●  It quickly identifies the most frequent words, presents them visually and shows

    word count next to each word.

●  There are some options, you can visualize different languages(15 of them,

     but no Chinese) showed in the text, and select maximum number of the words

     to show.

●  You can embed the visualized text in your blog, save it as an PDF file, print it

    out (post it in the classroom bulletin board), and show it in full screen.

Why is the content good for language learning?

●  Visual aids of the vocabulary help learners identify the key words and link

     the meaning in the text.

●  It helps summarize the speech and written words.  Students can paste their

    writing and see if they can use synonyms to replace some words  which are

    used too many times.  It helps students to reflect on their work.

●  Could be an visual analysis for text or survey date because it shows the word

    count next to each word.

●  The function of "group similar words" could help categorized word groups, help

     teachers to introduce tense and the roots of words.

●  If the teacher would like to introduce special website for learning English,

    the teacher can select the source "from web page URL" and specify the main

    ideas in that website, text or the source.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  Have students predict what this text will be according to the most frequent 

    words showed in the text.

●  Students can guess the topics/genre/context from the most frequent words and 

    see how frequently they appear in related texts/genre/context/topics.  (Teachers

    can select a text related to the topic and compare the words used in both texts. 

●  Look at the word counts of the most frequent words and see if students can

    find synonyms or antonyms to replace the words or rewrite the sentence.

●  You can set the minimum frequency (for example, 5 times) in the text and have

    students focus on the vocabulary and talk about the way they are presented in

    the text.

●  Choose the function "group similar words", and teachers can introduce the tense,

    such as learns/learned/learning, or the word groups in the text.

●  You can have your students work together to summarize the text by using the 

    chosen words, or rewrite the text and paste it on their TagCrowd.

Limitations~

  

●  Unlike Wordsift, TagCrowed only provides data.  It is not interactive.   However,

    it can be used to compare with the result of Wordsift.
 
●  The least frequent words are not clear, especially when choosing more words to show

    in the screen, you barely see the smaller-size words. 

●  The "full screen" function isn't working well.  The visualized text still looks small 

    in the screen. 

●  Some words with capital letters are shown in small letters.

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 Example~

●   Choose the web page text you would like your students to learn, and copy the URL.

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● Choose the text source from web page URL (see the picture below).

● Or you could choose the text source from your file or paste the plain text 

   (see the picture below).

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●  Before you visualize the text, you can select the options provided.  (Here, we choose

    "show frequencies" and "group similar words".  The maximum number of words shown

     is "50".

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● You could see 15 most frequent words in the text in bigger sizes.

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●  You could have students guess the topic, the genre and what context these words

    will be shown.

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