News in Levels

http://www.newsinlevels.com/

 

 

 

News in Levels is a so-called learning site, but it is a user-friendly news site

even though it is written all in English transcript.  Compared with my favourate Breaking News English, volumes and varieties of materials are still insufficient, but this has some benefits because all articles are divided into level 3 from level 1 for different levels of learners. The speed of the narration is also varied carefully depending on individual levels, while articles in the news taken up being wide from politics to entertainment. This site encourage the beginner to be accessible to daily events and current English language.

 

Limitations:

Only Level 3 has a video film (generally a real film). Another visual image or picture is to be provided for both of Level 1 and 2 learners.

 

Suggested Lesson Plan:

Level 1    listening, dictogloss,introduction of new vocabulary, shadowing, pair work,

                understanding of the gist, questions

Level 2    listening, introduction of new vocabulary, shadowing, understanding of the context,

                analysis of the situation which the events happened, close questions, pair work, discussion

Level 3    watch a video, introduction of new vocabulary,understanding of the context,

                 analysis of the situation why and how the events happened,  divising a countermeasure,

                 pair/group work

 

 

 

Glossary

（Resources and Materials）

 The following websites contain a lot of resources that teachers can access and use to prepare teaching materials.

 

1. Language Guide.org

 

 

http://www.languageguide.org/

 

A collaborative project to develop interactive, sound-integrated language learning resources.  8 languages are provided.e.g.English,German,Italian,French,Portuguese,

Swidesh,Dutch and Turkish.

 

Categories of Vocabulary: writing, body, food, animals, house, miscellaneous, transportation, geograph, time

 

Advantage: Students can learun a wide variety of vocabulary according to their levels (beginner/

                     intermediate/advanced). Advanced level; e.g.armpit, calf, pinki

Limitation : Good for increasing vocabulary but no interaction with peers.

 

 

 2. Enchanted Learning

 

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/support/index2.shtml

 

 

You get access to all the content of the Enchanted Learning website -- over 20,000 pages.

No banner ads! You get an ad-free version of the site plus extra printing capabilities

       (printer-friendly pages and the ability to enlarge images).

Advantage:  These materials are good especially for kids to young learners.
                     This is not a free site, but ＄20/year is still reasonable for gaining
                     these enjoyable materials.
Limitation:   Most of materials are not suitable for advanced students.
                     There is no sample sound even though it shows many animals, birds or vehicles.
 

http://translate.weblio.jp/

Weblio is a free online integrated dictionary service that can search plural dictionaries and a glossary at a time and can display promptly. It can look a search keyword up from dictionaries registered with it transversely and display an applicable item in a list form. Weblio is pronounced as [weblio]. The name of Weblio is the coined word that crossed "Biblio" (biblio) and "Web" (Web). "Biblio" means the plural form of "the book" in Greek, and it becomes the etymologies such as English "Bibliography". It includes around 650 dictionaries from business to a sign-language. Since this service is attempted for Japanese readers, all descriptions are unfortunately provided only in Japanese.

However, I happened to discover different useful usage of this tool especially for non-native English teachers. It can be used to make any text hearing to 4000 words at one time. In other words, we can easily reproduce our own texts into listening materials with native female’s voice. In the case that you have a long text over 4000 words, you can just do a same procedure as many as you need. It may be computer-generated voice, but is still like a real human voice. Even if you cannot understand Japanese, you can just copy and paste your texts in an empty box, and save the voiced date with a web file or CD.

 1) See an empty box in the left hand. 2) Copy/paste your text into it.

                                                                      3) Click 'listen' in the bottom of the box. Then you can

                                                                           see this blue audio screen.Listen and save the data.

                                                                           You can adjust the speed according to students' level.

                                                             

 

Limitations:  Japanese basis incl. Japanese ⇔ English and Japanese ⇔ Chinese

                  The quality of free translation service is inaccurate and not to be recommended but

                  the dictionary functions might be useful.

My Favourate Links and Literatures

 

 

1) Russell's Teacher Training Videos Com:

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/top20.html

 

 

 

2)Stephen D Krashen: Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition -

    Original Version  published in 1982

 

http://www.sdkrashen.com/Principles_and_Practice/Principles_and_Practice.pdf#search='krashen+on+line+pdf+principal+second+language+acquisition'

 

    
3) Personal Website of Robert C. Gardner:

http://publish.uwo.ca/~gardner/

 

4) Personal Website of Z.Dörnyei:

http://www.zoltandornyei.co.uk/#untitled4



 

WordShift is one of a free on line multimodal tool and very similar functions as Wordle. However, it was created to help teachers capture and display the vocabulary structure of texts, and to help create an opportunity to talk and explore the richness and wonders of language. This arranges words in more original ways than a plain text, which can be also used on gift cards, and for highlightening texts and embedding blogs.

The procedure is very simple.

 

First, prepare/copy/paste any text, and just press 'Sift' to visualize. (65k characters max) Then, the programme shows beautifully designed words in a minute.

 

If you click a specific tag in ‘Sort’, you can change the arrangement such as alphabetical or frequently used order.  Then, if you click any tag in ‘Mark’, you can highlight the words according to your purpose.  In particular, Wordshift offers us a visualization of word thesaurus relationships and Google® searches of images and videos related to the target words.

 

 

 

 

Why is it adopted for language learning?

 

Vocabulary development is a crucial part in language learning. This multimodal tool help learners increase their vocabulary, and reinforce their cognitive process by speaking in a pair or group work in order to understand the meaning of the text. The variety of selections in creation and changeable patterns arouse learners’ interests, and also, discoveries of the most frequent words enhance their motivation. Moreover, it has flexibility in the usage for language teaching due to more added functions than Wordle, and therefore, nowadays it is used for an educational purpose.  After completion of your WordShift, Jing might be convenient for capturing the graphics.

 

 

How can teachers foster this tool as a classroom activity?

-   For warming up; introduction of new vocabulary, review of words, or oral practice

-   Speaking activity; discussion about frequently/less used words, or talk about the meaning of words/images/videos

-   Writing activity; re-construction of the text

-   Reinforcement of vocabulary/grammar; classified the words by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

-   Collaboration; art work such as poster creation

-   For handout/PowerPoint

 

Advantages:

-       Simple and interesting; it can be also used for illustrating our own blogs.

-       A variety of options for customize a text.

-   Speedy manufacturing process.

-   WordShift makes words more attractive.

-       WordShift can develop classroom activities more widely by using a word thesaurus, images and videos from Google® searches.

-        These images and videos are draggable.

-   You do not need to find a text when you demonstrate the procedure because there are sample texts shown under the box.

 

Limitations:

-    The created graphics keep on changing, and there is no device for saving.

 

-  There is no code for embedding.  Therefore, after completing your WordShift, you must copy or print it by yourself.

 

-       The stop words such as the/and/of  are not displayed in this Tag Cloud even though these are high frequency function words.

 

 

 

Padlet

New Version of Wallwisher

 

 

Cosidering the future of computing, Wallwisher build a new virtual surface that has all the benefits of being digital and the simplicity of a notepad.  Here is a newsletter from Wallwisher as of 08/02/2013.

(from 'hello@wallwisher.com)

 

 Over the next of couple of days, all Wallwisher.com addresses will change to Padlet.com addresses and you will be redirected to Padlet.com if you visit Wallwisher.com. However, rest assured that your walls, accounts, and all the wonderful content will continue to function as is. Even your embedded Walls. So, you don't have to do anything.  

Better privacy settings

• Set a master password for your wall.
• Add people by email addresses.
• Define roles (e.g. Read, Write, Moderate, Admin).



 

 

Creation @ speed of thought

 

• Single click Wall creation.
• Drag and drop file uploads.
• Rich text support, Math and Code highlighting

 

Real-time collaboration

• No need to refresh to see what others are posting.
• No "Ok" buttons. Posts save as you type.

 

Touchable

• iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones.
• Pinch and zoom, and all that jazz.  

 

 

Wordle

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimaraner)

 

Wordle is a free on line application created by Jonathan Feinberg, an IBM programmer, solely as an amusement. It can generate ‘word clouds’ from any texts whatever anyone selects, and then, can highlight the words in a wider or bigger size according to the frequent usage ratios. You can see the beautiful and stylish looking words to the text you supply, which will be randomly produced within a few moments. I personally love this symmetry or asymmetry beauty.

The procedure is outstandingly simple. 

-      Prepare a text.

     (Wikipedia is a convenient site to find a text; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki )

-      Go to http://www.wordle.net , and click.

-      Paste in a bunch of text/enter the URL of the link, and go/submit.

 

All graphics you create with this tool belong to you.  You can edit the created words, and change the fonts, layouts, color et cetera as you like. In addition, you can save/print/ embed/share them as you wish. If you click ‘Randomize’, the graphic changes automatically and repeatedly.

Why is it adopted for language learning?

 

Word clouds are multimodal tools for arranging words in more original ways than a plain text, which are used on gift cards, highlightening texts, and embedding blogs. 

The variety of selections in creation and changeable patterns arouse learners’ interests, and also, discoveries of the most frequently used words enhance their motivation. Moreover, it has flexibility in the usage, and therefore, nowadays it is used for an educational purpose.  After saving your Wordle, you can print/convert it to PDF/embed it into a web page.  You can also use Jing to capture the graphics.

 

How can teachers foster this tool as a classroom activity?

-      For warming up; introduction of new vocabulary,  review of words, or oral practice

-      Speaking activity; discussion about frequently/less used words, or talk about the meaning of words

-      Writing activity; re-construction of the text

-      Reinforcement of grammar; classified the words by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

-      Collaboration; art work such as poster creation

 

Advantages:

-      Simple and interesting; it can be also used for illustrating our own blogs.

-      No words limit

-      A variety of options for customize a Wordle; it even includes a language/word choice in Edit device.

-      Speedy manufacturing process

-      Wordle makes words more attractive

 

Limitations:

-      The created graphics disappears unless you save it. In other words, you cannot find the same graphic when you move to another.  Remember to save it as soon as you create a favourate one.

-    Wordle does not show up some particular words such as 'the','and' or 'but', and also numbers since it may think these words are 'stop' words. If you wish to include these articles or conjunctions, please refer to 'Language' menu in order to change the setting.
 -    There is no sound.