This website, maintained by RosettaStone, offers free language exchange for language learners, putting them in contact with native speakers and learners alike. The site is easy and secure and once you have created a profile, you can choose from various language exchange options from e-mail and chat exchanges to video chat. I like that the site is monitored so that the users are really only allowed to share ideas in the target language, as opposed to using the site for help with homework or using it as a personal dating site.
Although most of these resources are best used by students individually, for classroom use, a teacher could assign the students to document one or two hours of chatting per week or even have them present to the class about some topics they discussed in chatting with native speakers and other learners.
Students could also keep audio journals that document their progress. This website offers good advice on recording your voice to make podcasts. They provide a list of free software that can be easily downloaded to record your voice on your computer. Using voice recordings could really be fun in the classroom, as students could make blogs to keep up with over the course of the semester or year in which they can express what they have learned and present their podcasts to share with others. Voice recordings could also be used to involve students more in the classroom. The teacher could have the students create their own listening activities in groups for the rest of the class. If doing this, it’s probably a good idea to work with the students individually during office hours to make sure what they have chosen is appropriate and presented coherently. The possibilities of incorporating this sort of technology in the classroom are limitless.
Wow, the language exchange website is a great idea! Thank you for sharing it, Julie.
ReplyDeleteThe site is available to learners of any languages as long as they can find conversation partners for the same languages they want to use. I think this is greatly helpful for those learners in foreign language learning settings where it is not easy to find native speakers around to casually talk with. I will definitely introduce this to my students, but I will try the website first and see how it works before that.
Wow, this seems really interesting. This is definitely something I would like to try in my classroom! What a great opportunity for students to speak with native speakers!!
ReplyDeleteI love the language exchange website! It's great for high school students because the site monitoring will prevent students from being harassed by a stranger online. Usually the potential for verbally abusive strangers would deter me from recommending online chatting to my students.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome! It would be so cool to set up a language exchange like this, especially if you're in a foreign language setting. I was talking to someone else about this idea: I wonder if students could keep speaking portfolios to see their progress through the semester, and figure out things they could work on. This site seems ideal for that because it gives tips on recording and as an added bonus, there is contact with other native speakers. So students could share their speaking portfolios with native speakers elsewhere and get their input, along with the teacher's and their own self-evaluation, on what they can work on/have improved on already.
ReplyDeleteVery nice Julie, and thanks for doing all the legwork and finding extra websites that help in making podcasts and even creating blogs. I think creating a blog about what they have learned/experienced would be great for students- not to mention great for teachers who want insight into the process of learning and student response to activities.
ReplyDelete