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Thursday 23 February 2012

Multi-Purpose English Language Learning!

Elllo.org
About it:


  • A website full of teaching/learning English language material.
  • Material for all levels.
  • Videos, games, news reports, mixer lessons (more than six people share their answer to the same question or topic).
  • Mainly, the lessons are directed towards listening. However,  teachers could manipulate the material and try to use the videos or the games for teaching other language skills.
  • Free mp3 files to download + worksheets that could be printed out.
  • Different "versions", that is different videos are categorized into different versions depending on the materials that accompany each video. For example, version 1 contains a downloadable audio and a quiz page. Whereas, version 6 contains slide show+ quiz, text view, downloadable audio, video response, audio notes and related links.
  Significance: 
  •  A great website that allows students to work autonomously.
  • Teachers can find loads of material that would suit different themes and levels.
  •  Suits most levels.
  • Promotes students listening, speaking, vocabulary, reading and grammar skills.
  • Somehow authentic material, because most of the recording seem to be prepared beforehand.
  • Promotes collaboration among students, because students could listen to the recordings and do the exercises together.
  • Creativity could also be promoted by allowing students to use the content of an audio or a news report and create something as an extension to it.
  • Great to introduce students and teachers to different cultures. For example, there was an audio conversation between an American and a Syrian about bribes (cultural awareness). Different recordings with people from many different cultures and different accents also!!
  • Promotes fluency among students. Continuous exposure to language, by listening and speaking helps students to gain fluency.
  • Motivating and fun. Also, the news section is quite interesting because it can be used with students throughout the whole school year. The news reporter is the same figure all the time.
Suggestions:

Inside Classroom:
  • So many different things can be done using the material in this website.
  • I am really keen on trying to using short audios to introduce a warm up question. 
  • The news reports could be used to introduce different topic that might relate to a particular theme the students are encountering in a lesson.
  • Different audios could be assigned to groups of students and they could work in pairs/groups to answer questions or to complete comprehension activities.
  • The games section is great, because teachers could also ask students to work together on completing the games. Games consist of audios + reading, speaking and vocabulary quizzes. 
  • What is also exciting is that there is flexibility for the teacher to decide on the kinds of dialogues to select. There are monologues and a "mixer" option in which conversations are recorded between 2-6 people.
Outside Classroom:
  • Great for students whom are intrinsically motivated to use this site as a tool. A wide variety of material is available to serve students with different interests.
  • Teachers could use the material available and assign students daily or weekly homework. Such as , listening to an audio and writing a report about it, or presenting it orally to the class.
  • Teachers could also save time and make use of the material available, by asking students to listen to a news report or to any monologue or conversation at home, brainstorm ideas and come to class with ideas, options etc. to discuss with their classmates.
 Shortcomings:
  • I thought that it wasn't really organized. 
  • It is very time consuming to find the material that suits the level of the students.
  • There is a search engine which is quite helpful. However, it would have been better if the material was organized into categories such as level, themes etc. 

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