Powered By Blogger

World Time Zones

You can use the following world clock, courtesy of ClockLink.com, to determine the current time anywhere on the globe. Simply move the mouse over a region and the clock will show you the boundaries of that time zone and the current time in that zone, relative to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), in London, England.

The digital display at the bottom of the clock is set to Eastern Standard Time. This is the time zone in which my hometown, Buffalo, New York, is located.

World Time Reference

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Listen-and-Write.com Evaluation


Purpose/Brief Description
Interactive site. This site allows users to listen to audio excerpts and then transcribe those excerpts. The audio selections are taken from newscasts, sourced from various news organizations. Users can play back the selections in three different modes, full, quick, and blank. The full mode requires the user to type every letter of every word; the quick mode needs only the first letter of each word and then provides the remainder; and the blank mode inserts blank spaces for random words, which the user has to fill in with the correct letters. Various languages and proficiency levels are supported.

Learner Fit
This site is a good fit for upper levels of ELLs: due to the relative complexity and rapid rate of speech in most newscasts, practice on this site would benefit upper intermediate and advanced ELLs. Beginner and low to mid-intermediate level learners would become quickly overwhelmed.

The site meets some of the Conditions for Optimal Language Learning Environments, as listed in Figure 1-2. The student is exposed to varied and creative language used in the various newscasts.
Because students control playback – and can repeat an audio as many times as they want – the level of stress or anxiety should be fairly low. Learner autonomy in this application is pretty much complete: the student can play back and type at the speed that is comfortable.

Teacher Fit
This site is only a fair fit for teachers. The site lacks any specific controls or features for instructors…I cannot find a control that allows teachers to observe the performance of students as they listen and transcribe. Thus, for teacher participation, the site would have to be used in class, with the instructor watching as the student transcribes. This would work but would also raise the affective filter and increase student anxiety and cut into learner autonomy. Alternatively, the student could log into the site and allow the teacher to view his performance history on a given audio. Either way, the teacher would have to rely on the student to gain access.

How Can It Be Used?
By its nature, the site lends itself to the teaching of the listening and writing modalities. As such, it would be a great tool for teaching vocabulary/spelling and syntax, as well as pronunciation. Different parts of the brain are activated with the dual activities of listening and writing. The learning is reinforced by the natural rate of speech and the fact that the user can always halt and repeat playback.
For example, a teacher could devise a lesson or lessons around specialized vocabulary from the subject in the audio. Exercises on pronunciation are also a natural extension of the listening/writing process.

Likes/Dislikes
Likes:

The audio excerpts are from current news, so there is a natural motivation, on the part of most students, to listen closely for both language learning and information. Also, several different proficiency levels are supported, making it easier for a student to find a shorter, less complex passage that, many times, is read more slowly.

Dislikes:
Given the nature of professionally produced newscasts, most excerpts are in the uppermost proficiency levels. Perhaps some excerpts could be re-recorded at a slower pace with simplified vocabulary (and identified as modified for lower level ELLs) to increase the number available to those levels.

No comments:

Post a Comment