Technologies to support oral skills
For younger learners effective classroom strategies have traditionally involved use of songs, rhymes and traditional stories with repeated language structures. The internet can be a rich source of authentic oral models via recorded songs, talking electronic books, podcasts and video clips that help learners with pronunciation as well as acquisition and reinforcement of new vocabulary.
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These tools can also help to support teachers who don’t feel as confident with their own language skills. Technology also affords children the opportunity to record themselves for playback at a later time. Learners report that the ability to listen and play back recordings helps identification of grammatical errors and inaccuracy in pronunciation, encouraging self-improvement. Young children can use Flip, or other video cameras to record their mouth movements to develop phonetic accuracy; recordings can subsequently be compared with standard models sourced from the internet. Learning resources, such as songs and poems, can be downloaded from the internet and practiced as a whole class via an interactive whiteboard prior to a live performance that can be filmed for posterity. Taking a karaoke-style approach, children are able to digitally Emerging technologies, emerging minds | 23 visualize rhymes and songs through freeze-frame photography, artwork and text based legends that can be synchronized to the words. Audio recorders like talking tins, pegs or cards can be used to reinforce the learning of traditional rhymes or to record the singing of popular songs. Talking photo albums have been successfully used to create stories or non-fiction texts with an oral narrative. Here photos and text can be inserted into each page of the album and the user can subsequently record a corresponding narration. For further examples look here: www.segfl.org.uk/spot/post/recordable_talking_devices/ Recording devices like these are cheap, portable and simple enough to be used by even the youngest learner, where being able to overwrite recordings multiple times is essential to allow learners to achieve relative success in their oral work. Audio recorders have also been used to encourage reticent speakers to use oral language more openly in the classroom; a child makes a recording in isolation and plays this back in the classroom, validating their voice to their peers (Howard and Pim, 2007). Recording devices also have a key role to play in assessment (see Chapter 7