How can I pronounce this word?

Salam everyone, 

                                                          (Salam: Peace in arabic, used for greetings)

Has any of your students ever asked you  "how can I pronounce this word ?" the only right answer for this question is "DUH!", 

We both know that we are not a walking dictionary that knows how to pronounce every word, so how can we help our students learn how to pronounce a certain word? 

       Youglish, is here for the rescue 😁💪

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What is Youglish ?

Youglish is an online tool that can assist you in pronouncing words different languages*

        * I'll be only reviewing English because this is my area of interest.

Why Youglish ?

1. You have plenty of English dialects to choose from 

                            

2. There a section that offers tips to enhance your pronunciation 

                                

3) it's mostly free

4) You get to use and engage your listening and visual skills using the videos and transcriptions.

5) You can find your word in different sentences/usages.

                                            

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Relevance to teaching and learning English 

1) Why would this be relevant to your teaching or learning English? because our main purpose of learning & teaching is to communicate our needs better whatever they may be. Knowing the right way to pronounce a word will assist that. 

2) Students can use the phonetics section to learn more about their words which helps them say them better.

3) Youglish encourages active learning because you have to find everything on your own.

4) Students can use it to learn about the usual context of a word.

5) Students can learn about different topics and cultures and can discuss them eventually.

6) Using videos in teaching speaking helps students develop fluency levels, according to this article

    - I would use this in my classroom to show my students a source that they can go to, to check their pronunciation. 

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Using Youglish 

Try Youglish with this link  using my steps :)

- Go to the home page, then type whatever word or phrase you'd like to learn how to pronounce in the "search for" section, then choose what dialect you want.

                                    

                This is what you'll get once you press "say it", here I typed the word "happy"

        

- The search will give you all the YouTube videos that have the word happy in them (128664 videos in this case) & will take you immediately to the where the word is exactly mentioned in.

- Starting from the left, you can go back, go back 5 seconds, replay, play, move to the next video as shown below 

                           

- You can change the speed of the video, increase or decrease the size of the video screen, choose a light or dark screen as shown below 

                                            

- You will have a transcription of the video under it like this

                                    

           
- If you press the blue box on the right side of your transcription, you'll see that you can search for  whatever part you want from the video and you can replay it: 

                                        

- If you press on any word from the transcription, it will turn red and will give you tons of info about your word: (translation, synonym, usages, and definitions)

                                  

- Under your transcription, you'll see options to share the video, save it, record yourself talking or go straight to the original video on YouTube.

                                            

 - Under the video,  there's a phonetics section, which teaches you about the phonetics of your word.

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Limitations 

👎 The "record" option is not really user friendly, I think a whole section for recording would make it more practical.

👎 Students will not get a feedback about their pronunciation, so they'll self assist. 

👎 Teachers can't control the content that shows up to their students.

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So, will you add this to your resources section for your class ?, let me know in the comments 😇💕

The fastest assessment tool

Salam everyone, 

                                                          (Salam: Peace in arabic, used for greetings)

    

    If I could name this blog "the lazy teacher guide "I would because I love the tools that can give me the best results with the tiniest amount of effort because as teachers we're always tired.

💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

  So, for this week, I brought to you the fastest way to assess your students🙀 & it's through using

*drums rolls* 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁     💥Socrative💥

 Before you start, use this link Beautiful suggestions to suggest any topics for my next blogs :) 

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What is Socrative ?

Socrative is an online tool that offers the quickest formative assessments for teachers to use with their students. 

Why"Socrative" ?

1)  It has three main ways to assess your students: "quiz", "space race", & "exit tickets" which you can choose from depending on your goal.

                 1.1) Quiz : for this you can choose MCQs, true/false, or short answer questions. 

                                                                *or you can do just one of them.

                                                                    Three Qs options

    

Three delivery options for the quiz 

                 2.1) Space race: for this feature you just choose one of the quizzes you created,                                                           and do it, through a race.

 

-Students can be put in groups (allowing choice helps with learning)

Students can choose the icon of their group. 

The "race" component can be helpful for competitive students.

                 3.1) Exit ticket: you can use this feature at the end of your class as a wrap up. Student will log in to the room, and answer these: 

                            "How well did you understand today's material ?"

                            "What did you learn in today's class"

                             "Please answer the teacher's question"

                    Here's an example of a student's response 

                      

  

2) You have "rooms" in the app, which is basically your virtual class. Students log in to your room code to log in to the activity,

3) You have a "results" section which you can use to check your students' grades in your quiz.

4) You can share your quiz with others (educators)

                                            

5) You can use your gmail to create an account, which is very fast and convenient. 

Relevance to learning and teaching English 

- Socrative can be used as a formative assessment tool, replacing paper based quizzes if done correctly. 

- Students become active learners when they use Socrative.

- Teachers can use this tool to assess their students' learning which can be used to enhance teachers' teaching approach. 

- Teachers can find problematic areas in their students' learning using Socrative.

- Shy learners can express their opinion in their own comfort through an exit ticket

- Learners can become more engaged and think critically when using Socrative as a result of the immediate feedback.

- It can be used as a way to make the class more fun when students are bored (very normal 😂)

                    If you are interested in reading articles and journals about using Socrative in EFL or ESL classrooms, I have some for you 💕 

1. https://ijsses.tiu.edu.iq/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Volume-2-Issue-3.pdf#page=4
   
2. https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/940868.pdf
   
3. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1269289
   
4. https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=90082

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Using Socrative

A limitation in Socrative is that I can't give a link for an activity where you can do it on your own, however I'll try to use the exit ticket option and if it works, let me know in the comments :)

        Here's the classroom code and QR code :

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Limitations 

👎You can't create the questions for the exit ticket.

👎Students can't do it unless they are with you whether f2f or online.

👎Students will need access to their phones or computers.

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So, do you think Socrative is the fastest assessment tool you've seen ? 👀                                         

Will "wordwall" be your best friend next class ?

Salam everyone, 

(Salam: Peace in arabic, used for greetings)

Do you usually struggle with making your class, a class that your students look forward for ? I'm here to tell you, you are not alone.

For this week, I'll be helping you in discovering "Wordwall", a website that offers online and printable activities, which will make your lessons more exciting and engaging.

                          Wait till the end, I have 4 activities you can do with Wordwall :) 

Why Wordwall ?

I'll start first with the boring part, "Research"

• According to research, Wordwall can help your students reach vocabulary mastery because it offers many opportunities for autonomous learning as mentioned in this article Using Wordwall to reach vocab mastery
• From my understanding of the website, Wordwall would go well under the CLT approach, because it offers many opportunities for natural talk that students can use in real life (this depends on what material you put in the activities).

On the more exciting part, why I liked it and here's a few reasons: 

1. You can create folders for all the activities you do, which can be nice if you teach different classes. 

                        As shown here:

2.  There are different activities "templates" that teachers can pick from

                    Here's a few: 

3. You only need 5 or 10 minutes to create any activity, you just add your own material to the templates provided.

            Here's me putting my material: 

4. For one activity, you can have different themes and you can use different fonts. 

                                                        *I'll show you a demo below 

        

5. To add the "competition" component in Wordwall, you have a leaderboard for each activity which helps students become excited.

                    Here's how it looks: 

 photo taken from: https://twitter.com/nelakhdar/status/1325076652842504192

6. You can create an assignment and track your students' results, which is a great and fast assessment tool.

7. You can share the activity as a link or QR code with your class.

                                        

*You can try to join the activity above 😁😎

8. Students can use the app individually or as a group (having options reduces stress for some students).

4  Activities to do with Wordwall 

1. Random wheel 

                                                    

• I used this activity to help me choose students for reading because students tend to get shy. You can Try my random wheel or scan the code below for the activity.
• You put in the items in the wheel, then you can spin it to choose one of them

 Advantages:

            👍 Once one item is picked, you can eliminate it.

            👍 You can let students do it themselves.

2. Anagram

• I used this activity to help students learn important idioms for IELTS, you can try the activity from this link Anagram activity or scan the QR code below. 
• As a student you have to rearrange the letter until you get the right phrase or word.

Advantages 

        👍 instant feedback, when students do it wrong, there will be sounds that will alarm them.

        👍 quite challenging so it would be fun for students that enjoy a challenge and puzzles.

3. Airplane 

                      

• I used this activity to help students learn the components of a story, you can try it here Airplane activity or scan the QR code below. 
• Students would have to fly the airplane into the clouds of the right answer which make your cloud turn to a green tick. If the students flies to a wrong answer, they'll get a red cross. 

Advantages 

                👍 Creative and suitable for students who enjoy gaming.

                👍 Immediate feedback as mentioned above.

4. Group sort 

• I used this activity to assess students' ability to differentiate between verbs and nouns. You can try the group sort activity  here or scan the QR code below.
• Students have to sort the items to their correct group.

                                    

Advantages 

                  

                    👍 When student get the answers right, the game gives them many ticks.

                    👍 There are different themes for this activity, actually most if not all the activities in                                      Wordwall have different themes.

                       & that's it for the activities, which one was your favorite ? 👀

Limitations of Wordwall

👎 You only have five free templates "activities". 

👎 If you want to use the activity to explain a concept, it might be difficult because you can't pause and play it, the website controls that part

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So, do you think Wordwall will be your best friend next class ? let me know in the comments 💕