Dragon Dictation

Speaking

 

Dragon Dictation is a free app which students can download to practice their speaking and pronunciation skills.  It is a speech recognition application which is only available on the Apple iOS platform.

 

As you can see in the demonstration video above, transcription of my speech is 99% accurate.  The only error is the absent of the definite article before Apple iOS due to the fact that structural words, such as auxiliary verbs and prepositions, are often pronounced in their weak form and so often go unheard (by electronic devices and students themselves!).

Learners can practice reading short extracts and compare their recorded transcription with that of the written text that they have chosen.

English Central

This website offers learners a wide range of engaging video clips which can be selected by level, topic and skill.

There are various useful activities that can be chosen from:

Watch videos

Learn the words from the video

Recite language from the video clips

VoiceThread

I’ve been experimenting with VoiceThread to offer students the opportunity to develop their speaking ability from home.  I previously used Vocaroo to get students to record themselves speaking for 1 to 2 minutes.  Vocaroo is also useful and more suited to simple voice recordings.  

 

VoiceThread however offers the option of supporting multimedia with pictures and videos.  Students can upload a picture then record themselves speaking about it.  

Once shared, on a forum or blog space, other students can then leave their own comments in response to the original speaker’s recording.  It is a good way of generating discussions, finding out about your students and getting them to speak English outside of class. 

I have made a short tutorial showing you how to make a VoiceThread:

I’d like to get my adult students to share their VoiceThread on our wikispaces page.  It is also a great idea for IELTS preparation courses.    

Here's one I prepared:

If you try it out, do let me know how you get on!

 

Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a great voice recording service which I often use with my students.  They can use it to prepare for in-class presentations or send me their final spoken presentations from home.  It can also contribute towards any speaking assessment grades which many schools often require term by term.

Students are set the task of sending their recordings via email, or if they aren’t too shy they can post it to the class wiki for other students to hear.

Here's a nice video explaining how to use Vocaroo:

It is much easier to give back feedback on a short recording than trying to listen to one student in a class of 16!  I set a time limit on the recordings to make sure that students don’t get carried away and send super long recordings!  I generally don't assess anything over this time limit.

It is ideal for exam preparation topics such as Cambridge First or IELTS Speaking Test part 2.

If anyone is interested in finding out more about Vocaroo please get in touch!