Index cards are great in the EFL/ESL classroom for making an ongoing collection of spelling and grammar mistakes/errors.

When students make a mistake/error that the class finds amusing (or the teacher feels is important to collect), a student or group of students records it on an index card. They write both the correct and unusual/incorrect English and add some visuals (their own drawings or pictures they found on the Internet) to make the differences more pertinent.

The example in the picture above is such an example. My students in the UAE commonly use ’set’ instead of ’sit’. I do my utmost best to mime a jelly man setting in the fridge, which students find this amusing, most of the time.

By the end of the semester, the class can build quite a collection. This serves as a valuable record of language that students have produced and worked on throughout their time together.

With monolingual classes, the cards made in one semester will be a good resource for following semesters (students are likely to make similar mistakes and errors). With multilingual classes, small flags could be drawn on the cards so students can look at mistakes/errors typical of other speakers.

Uses of the cards

• Making them is a fun classroom activity to address writing and speaking correction.
• They are great for getting students to notice language they need to work on.
• They can act as welcome relief for those very rare (virtually non-existent) times when you bore your students. Here, you have to hope someone says something suitably incorrect.
• They provide a good source from which to recycle language and make review materials and tests.
• Small groups of students can sit by the cards if they finish their work earlier than others.
• The teacher can use them for a light end-of-class activity, which also serves as a fun review.
• They can be shared with other classes.
• They can be put on the classroom wall as a “Remember this this week” mini poster.
• Students can use a small collection of them to make “correct language” presentations to each other.
• Students can vote on the best / funniest / most creative artwork on the week’s / month’s new cards.
• The cards can be used to explore grammatical and lexical patterns as extended language awareness practise.
• They can be used with any discipline – not just ESL (chemistry formulae, historical dates, maths equations‚ etc).
• The corrections can serve as a contrastive analysis focus to find out why the mistakes/errors are made – especially good when students are translating directly from their own language.
• The teacher can select some of the mistakes/errors he/she feels will come up in a language activity and pre-teach the correct forms.
• Hopefully, at the end of the semester, it lets students see progress they have made.

Other index card pics

My students frequently spell ‘two’ as ‘tow’. Here is their correction card:

An activity from Cutting Edge Pre-Intermediate focuses on short answers. Here are the correct and incorrect answers to one of the questions in the book:

There I was the other day, making another lesson for my BreakingNewsEnglish website and thinking I’d done another reasonable job. I uploaded the lesson and the very next morning received an amusing e-mail from one of my site’s visitors.

He was a little concerned about his students reading my news article and then asking him whether British people really did eat Indians (the people).

My lesson was on a recent protest against racism in Australia. It involved Australians visiting an Indian restaurant for lunch. My article said:

Australian expatriates all around the world also showed their support by having an Indian for lunch.

My site visitor wrote:

In American English, it sounds like someone is eating Indian people for their lunch. Did you mean ‘ate lunch with an Indian’ [person]?

Thinking about it logically, my visitor’s interpretation would seem correct. However that meaning (“…having an Indian for lunch”) sounds somewhat racist to my ears. I changed the article’s wording to reduce the chances of people thinking Brits took part in illegal eating practices.

Anyway, thinking about it a bit more, Brits can and do have more than an Indian for lunch. We can also have a Chinese or an Italian.

Curiously, I don’t think you would hear people in the UK saying: “I’m having a Thai for lunch” (Thai meal), but then I haven’t lived in the UK for 17 years. Neither would I expect to hear these:

“I’m having a Lebanese for lunch”

“I’m having a French for lunch”

“I’m having a Japanese for lunch”

“I’m having a Russian for lunch”

Why not?

I searched on the Internet but couldn’t find any answers. Did another bit of thinking about it logically and came up with this possible explanation:

Indian, Chinese and Italian restaurants and takeaways were the only major overseas restaurants in Britain in the several decades following WWII. Over the years, people dropped the word “meal” from the phrase and “have an Indian” entered the national way of talking about going to restaurants for lunch/dinner. Other international cuisine only came to Britain in the past few decades and so it hasn’t been ingrained in our culinary-talk deep enough yet for ellipsis to take its course and “meal” to be dropped. Of course, I could be wrong…

Other uses:

In Britain, people also say “order an Indian / Chinese / Italian” (which could get you in trouble in other parts of the world) and “go out for an Indian / Chinese / Italian”.

One more thought

Do people say “I’m having / going out for / ordering an American (meal)”?

Curry picture from (jswching@flickr.com).

Perhaps my favourite classroom tool of the past year is My StoryMaker from the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh. It’s great fun and has never failed to entertain me or my students – always the sign of a good activity. Most importantly, it really gets students thinking about language and focuses them on producing creative, quality work.

What is it?

My StoryMaker lets students choose their story’s characters, setting and certain objects. Students start by writing their name. They then choose their main character, the general theme of story (love, making friends, travel…) and a third variable (who the main character falls in love with, what the main character wants to find, etc.). This is usually a lot of fun for the students as they have to agree on the basics of their story.

With these three things chosen, My StoryMaker gives students the title of the story, such as:

• The Dinosaur Who Made Friends With The Fox
• The Boy Who Fell In Love With The Mermaid
• The Girl Who Wanted The Cheese
• The Ghost Who Traveled To The Desert

I used it this week and as usual the students collaborated brilliantly and focused on their language and story. Even the most reticent students eventually quitened and applied themselves to the task (10 minutes of moaning followed by 35 mins of concentrated effort). I usually put students in pairs to share one computer – that way they have to work together to create their story. This gets them sharing ideas, discussing grammar and spelling and taking pride in their shared efforts. I can’t remember any other activity in my career as a teacher where students have worked together so totally focused and lost in their activity for 40 minutes – and still continued after I left the classroom.

My Students

My students are in their late teens/early twenties but they loved the characters and the story titles.

I’m in my mid-40s and so did I.

My students are also Arabs, who have little formal tradition of writing stories but a very long history of narrating them. The fact they were so interested in My StoryMaker leads me to believe it would work incredibly well with students more used to writing.

Fun

Once the title and characters are chosen, the fun begins/continues. There is a whole story to write with as many pages as time and imagination permit. A small green arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the page moves the story on to the next page.

Students write their story in the dialogue box. They can click on objects to the right of the box and introduce them to the story. Of course they have to write about why the objects are there and what part they play in the story. Clicking on a character or object activates three mini menu wheels from which students can let their character interact with other characters and objects. The menus also let the characters do something or change their emotions. The menus provide a lot of useful vocabulary for lower-level learners and provide a welcome aid to move the story forward if the students run short of ideas. Selecting any options in the menus automatically puts the related text in the dialogue box. (The cleverer students will learn this is a good way of having the story written for them )

Why I like My StoryMaker so much:

1. Students love it.
2. It is incredibly intuitive and easy to use.
3. It encourages independent work – Many students have given me new stories they’ve written because they enjoyed writing them.
4. It focuses students on writing a real story – the visual aids really inspire them.
5. The end-product makes the students want their language to be more accurate.
6. Students really want me to help them with ideas, language and correction.
7. It totally engrosses students in producing written English.
8. Students have a lovely colour story to read, add to their writing portfolio and show people.
9. It creates situations where there is language students need and do not know. This is an excellent and authentic opportunity for dictionary work. The printed story provides a record for students of that new vocab in context. It is likely they will remember it the more times they read it.
10. The stories they write can be shared with other students – Once students have written their own story, they are genuinely interested in reading the work of other students.
11. The stories can be built into a classroom library and read again to revisit vocabulary and grammar.
12. My StoryMaker is great for incorporating into work with tenses.
13. It really allows me to facilitate student learning. I spend my whole time listening to students and helping them fill gaps in their understanding.
14. Students really want to do as well as they can.
15. My students say they want to take it home and make stories with their little brothers and sisters.

There is another amazing story maker I came across a while back called ZimmerTwins. Might write about that later – Will take it into the classroom in the next week or two.

PS – My StoryMaker doesn’t open in certain versions of Internet Explorer. It has no problems with Firefox.

Of all the English teaching materials in the world, the ones I like best are those that are online and free. Not that I mind paying for good materials, mind you – it’s just that online materials are better (imho) than those you pay for – both those online and in textbooks.

Why is this?

The guys providing lesson plans for free…

1. are doing it because they love writing and creating materials. They aren’t doing it because it’s their job.
2. have a clear vision of what they want to do and then get it done.
3. are not constrained by editors who require materials to fit within a global, generic textbook mould.
4. are dedicated and talented materials writers.
5. know what motivates students.
6. appreciate what busy teachers need.
7. can create materials publishers are too afraid to touch.
8. are in the classroom day in, day out.
9. have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t with today’s learners.
10. can and do very regularly produce materials based on what happened one hour ago (almost) or on that day.

I am writing this post to congratulate some of my favourite materials writers for the valuable work they do in providing millions of teachers and students around the world with top quality, free and very regular lesson plans. They do so despite having full-time jobs. I know at least one has a full-time and several part-time jobs and a side job or three.

I make a few lessons myself and receive a few e-mails from busy teachers and happy students thanking me for them. I guess the good people below also receive similar mail:

Sue Lyon-Jones

I would love to produce the visually appealing and pedagogically well-thought-out materials Sue produces at http://www.esolcourses.com/. She has built a beautifully laid out site that is easy to navigate. Her links entice us to click on them. When doing so, we are constantly rewarded with some of the best materials available anywhere in the world. Sue hits the spot ever time with her grading of language, ability to arouse interest and her use of multi-media. She currently has me in a panic that I’m not using video   Sue also has a lovely blog (http://the-pln-staff-lounge.blogspot.com/)and is an enthusiastic, sharing and ever-supportive tweeter (http://twitter.com/esolcourses)

Chris Cotter

A quick skim through Chris’ site (http://www.headsupenglish.com) leaves one in no doubt Chris is a man dedicated to the cause of providing high quality materials on topics that will motivate learners every time. Chris creates weekly all-skills, X-page lessons on current news for high-intermediate and advanced learners. He also has mini-lessons on extremely original and stimulating topics. Another facet of Chris’ site is his weekly newsletter in which he provides tips and ideas for teachers. Chris has also written a book full of practical and reproducible ideas for the classroom: http://www.betterlanguageteaching.com. Chris also tweets: http://twitter.com/cotterHUE.

Todd Beuckens

Todd’s incredible http://www.elllo.org is my favourite site for listening. It is simply unbeatable. There are over 1,000 excellent listenings on all manner of topics. Each listening is accompanied by lovely flash activities and games that engage students with the transcript. It includes dialogues read by voices from all over the world. Todd also has a blog ELLLO-ology (http://ellloblog.blogspot.com/)

David Deubelbeiss

A visit to the Site Map of David’s ning (http://eflclassroom.ning.com/directory.html) is a jaw-dropping experience. It is unbelievable how someone with a full-time job can create something so incredibly all-encompassing. It is the candy store (of Willy Wonka-esque vision) of EFL teaching – everything you want is here. David has obviously worked tirelessly to create a learning and teaching community based around high quality materials, discussions and everything web 2.0. When I grow up I want a site like David’s. Catch up with David on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ddeubel.

Sandy and Thomas Peters

Sandy and Thomas are behind the excellent Topics Online Magazine (http://www.topics-mag.com), which started way back in 1997. It is a wonderful resource for reading. The couple have amassed a wonderful wealth of inspiring readings written by students from all over the world. My students love it. I love it for its cosmopolitan nature and the fact my students can peek into other cultures via very accessible readings. The striking photos on the site enhances its attractiveness.

It is my hope these people continue to create and be happy with what they do each and every day.

It is also my hope they get suitably rewarded one day, perhaps commensurate with their considerable efforts day in, day out over many years. J They don’t charge $29.95 or more to subscribe to or access their lessons, nor do they earn commissions, speaking fees and royalties from the big publishers.

Follow them. Bookmark/Favourite them. Use their resources. Recommend them.

I was more than a little jolly surprised to read the above link on a website one day:

So I did “Click Here For Sexy Videos Of Sean Banville” and wondered (dreaded) what I would find.

“Golly” I thought to myself, “When did I do this? …

… Surely not when….

… Couldn’t have been that time I….”

This was closely followed by “Oh no, what will my wife do when she finds out?”

OK, OK… Before I go on, I must immediately dispel any lingering thoughts that I actually….

There are no videos of me on that site. Or any other site.

Glad we got that out the way.

The above experience brought home to me what I much later learnt to be related to one’s digital footprint – that indelible record of everything you post or do online (or do not post or do!!!).

What worried me about this link was the fact I had absolutely no part to play in this part of my footprint. My name had been taken, hijacked, misused and abused. I have since found dozens of less-than-savory uses of my name that are now part of my digital footprint but not of my making.

What is a digital footprint?

The electronic evidence of a computer user’s activity. These “footprints” can be left by simply joining a website, posting to blogs, releasing any personal information online, or even just connecting to the Internet … In some cases, other Internet users may create digital footprints of you by releasing your information or posing as you. Users are learning more and more about this concept and have come to realize that they might just be able to Google themselves and find their digital footprints. On a more serious note, users must be careful not to leave such a footprint that they will be the target of stalkers, predators and pedophiles.
(http://newmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Digital_Footprint)

Serious stuff.

Now… my concern is what potential future employers might think were they to do a web search on my name prior to considering me for a job.

In terms of the foolish and potentially damaging things one can unwittingly post online (in one’s younger days , of course), I do consider myself fortunate in having a relatively clean footprint. My Facebook page is empty, I haven’t left rants on blogs, my tweets on Twitter have been ‘sensible’.

I have spent thousands of hours online, creating thousands of web pages and surfing gazillions of websites. I have been extremely careful about the information I put online – conscious of that potential, future job. Employers are using web searches and digital footprints more and more when recruiting. My last Google search on my name produced 52,300 results. I’m positive the vast majority of these would not raise any recruiter’s eyebrows. I do, however, wonder about the searches I had no control over.

Worried?

We have all read in the newspapers or seen on TV how people have been fired, not given jobs or dumped by partners for comments they left on Facebook and other social media sites. A 2007 report on Internet use found:  “…most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information. Fully 60% of Internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online.”

Now this is a worry – I’d say we need to think more carefully about what we put online. You never know when it might come back to haunt you.

Be careful of video cameras too.

A teacher’s first meeting with a brand new set of students at the beginning of a new school year is always interesting. I really look forward to it. I love that moment of walking into class and the students stop and look at you. You know lots of eyes are on you as you log on to the teacher’s computer and shuffle your teaching notes. It’s great wondering what the class dynamics will be over the coming months. No two classes are ever the same. The incredible variety in the personalities of students always ensures each class has its own unique and very memorable character and dynamics.

This semester (started this week) I decided to do something different in my first class to make a change from my ‘things that work’ list of warm-ups and getting-to-know-you activities.

I decided to use a glog. My first ever glog. But not my last.

I spent a good few months looking at a good few tweets at the end of 2009 that absolutely raved about Glogster and its merits in the classroom. I felt I had to find out what it was all about or miss out on an important new classroom tool.

I downloaded Edu Glogster and made my first glog – incredibly intuitive and great, great fun. I quickly understood it was a learning tool full of promise.

I made a glog on me – my introduction to my new students (low pre-intermediates).

Here it is:

On my glog, I put photos, texts and images that related to me and my life and linked them all to readings, listenings and videos I created. I tried to make it interesting and fun for my students, while getting them to read and listen to English.

In the pop-up audios / readings / videos…

• I made an mp3 for the photo of me at 8 and explained it was a very special photo because I had hair.
• I told the tale of how I felt like a movie star on my wedding day in Japan and chatted about my wife.
• I wrote about the snazzy clothes I wore in the pic when I was 18 months old.
• I explained behind the smiley image exactly what made me smile a lot in class (and what might not make me smile).
• I interviewed my children about life.
• I showed off my kids’ piano-playing talents.
• I took my students through a brief travelogue of the countries I have visited.
• I put up a really good argument that Arsenal Football Club are “by far the greatest team the world has ever seen”.
• I explained my thoughts about living in the UAE.
• I told them the story of how I’d gone shopping the week before and bought a new iMac computer.

I was a little nervous about how the students might take to this glog. Was I really so interesting? But… I was so happy with the way things went. I showed them the glog on the smart board and pointed to the play buttons and links. I asked them to open the link in their e-mail so they could see the glog on their own computer (in pairs) and click, read and listen.

For the next 25 minutes they read, looked and listened. And laughed.

I felt it was a great way to meet a new class. They really interacted with my glog and were quite absorbed by it.

I followed it up with a light-hearted quiz on what they saw, read or heard…

… and then got down to some serious stuff… writing. I hope a lot of what I had included on the glog provided them with some kind of model (more in terms of content than language structure) for them to write about themselves. The scripts I got back from them were definitely more creative than those I’d received in previous years.

I thoroughly recommend making a glog to introduce yourself to students.

I’m greatly looking forward to experimenting with glogging possibilities this semester.

Will keep you informed

“OurStory.com goes beyond blogging to permanently capture life’s stories in words and photos. Publish or share the stories privately with family and friends.”

I spent the whole of last semester enjoying this wonderful site with my students. We all loved it for many different reasons. It’s a very intuitive, easy-to-use site that records events in the form of a timeline. It’s easy to add photos and videos.

The site also has a fantastic section on “Question Sets”.  These are large collections of questions on topics such as love, travel, family, etc that can be answered and added to your timeline. They are a totally brilliant resource for ESL classes. There are 252 questions in “Baby Story”, 222 in “Love Story” and 740 in “Remember When”. These provide any teacher with an exhaustive array of filler / end-of-lesson activities, if needed.

I started using OurStory.com because I wanted a way for my students to keep their journals online but got sidetracked into using it for something else. I still think the site would be a fantastic way for students to record their thoughts online, attach pictures and share collaborate with others.

So…I started using the site as a class reflection. After every couple of lessons, I would write up a little summary of what happened in the class and my feelings. I had to remember to include each student in my posts so they were all mentioned equally.

This is what I did the next time I saw my class after writing each online post:

• Turn off the lights and display the site on the white board. My students liked this and eagerly awaited the ‘report’ I had written.
• Different students would read different sentences from my post. After each sentence, there was opportunity for students to feed back on my thoughts. This was usually quite fun. Students blushed when I said nice things and were quite vocal in defending themselves if I wrote something they disagreed with. It was always good-natured.
• We often had a quick discussion about anything that needed to change in the class from that time on – me, my teaching, my materials, student behaviour, etc.
• Before I turned the lights on again, I asked the class what they thought my next post would contain. This (perhaps… I hope) made the class reflect on what they would do in the upcoming lessons. I wrote down any student ideas and put them in my next post to see if they came true or not.

This reflection worked for me because:

• it was a fantastic way to conduct a class discussion with students about their learning and my teaching.
• it allowed me to focus on and incorporate (welcome) students on an equal basis -  noisier students don’t get to take up more of the teacher’s time here.
• it allowed me to “say” things to the class they might not listen to had I actually said them.
• students were very active in talking about my comments.
• they were all quiet at the beginning of class every time I put up the OurStory site.
• it provided a good record for me to go back to certain events to reinforce times when I was “right”. Especially good after exams when I reminded them we had talked about the importance of self-study only three weeks earlier!
• after a few posts, the students realized I actually listened to what they said and did change things. I think that brought a lot of trust to the classroom.
• it really was great fun. I found the banter between us was my favourite part of the class.
• I could use it to reintroduce my grammar “frustrations” (… and after three lessons students are still forgetting to use the infinitive after ‘did’) or reinforce key teaching points from earlier lessons.
• it was great for recycling class vocabulary (‘metalanguage’) and vocab from their texts.

There are many other reasons but I need to keep this post ‘of blog length’.

A new semester starts tomorrow.

I greatly look forward to two new stories with my two new classes.

I greatly look forward to sharing more with you about this lovely website

This is the conclusion to a three-part series on how I use audio files to provide my students with feedback. As I said in the previous two posts, my students really like getting feedback orally for a variety of reasons. I like using audio because it provides me with an authentic  and pedagogically sound medium for both further listening  practice and communicating with my students on a more personal level (I hope my voice is warmer than my pencil).

The third use of oral feedback I would like to describe is that of conversing with students on a more fun and informal level. I call this ‘classroom conversations’. I suppose it could be sub-titled ‘The Teacher’s Weekly Journal Entry for his Students’.

All I do is press record and chatter away to myself at the end of the week about what I thought of the week and my classes. I then put the saved mp3 file on a shared folder for my students to access. I do an online version of this using the excellent collaborative timeline site OurStory.com. I thoroughly recommend this site for building up the story of your class throughout the semester.

For some reason, my students seem to like listening to me rambling on about nothing in particular. I think the real reason is that I try and mention each of the class by name and they want to get to “their bit”. This sometimes makes for a bit of fun conversation / banter at the start of class after the weekend. Some students want to know why I said what I said, while others want to know why they didn’t get a (bigger) mention. This is usually a good carrot to encourage students to work hard in class. Hard, diligent and studious workers always get lots of praise

This form of feedback really gives me a chance to tell students my side of things. The classroom can so often be an ‘us’ (teachers) verses ‘them’ (students) situation. It’s a good opportunity to show students that teachers are humans. And that we have feelings

Here are some of the things I have put in a ‘classroom conversation’ mp3 file that surprised my students and hopefully made me more approachable:

• My heart was beating overtime when Supervisor X was observing me last Tuesday.
• I didn’t sleep well on Monday night because I was so worried about students’ exam scores.
• I was so proud to be with my class on the recent field trip – They were all so responsible.
• I was very happy that class told me about Student Y’s problem. It meant I could change my lesson plan and do something more fun.
• Student Z told me she liked my lesson and that made me happy all day.
• I hate giving presentations so much I lose control of my lips and my voice goes up and down at will.
• I worry that when students waste time or don’t do their homework, they won’t get the job they want or go to the university of their choice.
• I was very sad at the mess the students left the class in on Thursday afternoon and had to spend 30 minutes tidying up their rubbish.

Some of the good things about using this kind of feedback are:

• It brings you closer to your students.
• Students like it.
• It practices students in authentic listening.
• You can introduce things that you might not have time for in class.
• You can reinforce things students might not have been prepared to listen to in class (especially good after a poor set of exam grades).
• Students will respond – either face to face, in writing or with their own mp3.
• It’s another avenue to address classroom management issues.
• It’s a good way to recognize quieter, less confident  students and show them they are valuable members of the class.
• It gets students taking more of an interest in their role in the class.
• It gets me thinking more about my class and how I can make or do things better.

Try it at the end of this week and let me know how it goes.

I have found that providing students with progress reports via audio files is a very motivating alternative to providing written feedback on their progress. Generally, I do both. I am required to enter written feedback in the online records kept for my students. However, there are several things that don’t overly excite me about this:

1. I sometimes find them to be overly formal and (on occasion) stilted.
2. They occur too infrequently – usually mid- and end-of-semester – to provide students with useful information.
3. They can (on occasion) fall prey to ticking-the-boxes syndrome and thus can (on occasion) not be so overly heartfelt.

Now…

This is why I like giving audio files to students as progress reports.

Reasons for this are:

1. It gets students to practice authentic and relevant listening. They have a real reason to listen and are usually extremely motivated to do so.
2. It is more relaxed than the formal, college-required progress reports.
3. You can make the feedback fun and irreverent.
4. You can (on occasion) say things that you could never put online.
5. You can really personalize it.
6. Their parents don’t know about the audio files (Shhh!!) whereas parents usually see the more formal written progress reports.
7. You can say a WHOLE LOT MORE in an audio file than you could ever write in a formal written report (unless you wanted to dedicate your winter break to progress-report writing).
8. You can do it very often. It’s not overly difficult to do every two weeks. Would love to do it every week, but…
9. It’s quick – You can do progress reports for a class of 20 in 30 minutes.
10. Students really appreciate the personalization and extra effort.
11. The effect of the feedback can be extremely immediate– you can almost guess from a student’s face which part of their feedback they are listening to.
12. Providing lots of enthusiastic praise in the audio files works wonders.
13. I have found students like to listen to each other’s feedback more than they would read it.
14. You can easily tailor it to those who need it more.
15. It really gets you thinking more about your students, what they need and how they are doing.
16. You can provide the class with a global feedback file on how they’re doing collectively in addition to individual files.
17. Giving students audio files can encourage students to respond – either via their own mp3 or in writing.
18. It makes me appear more human to them (I think – could be wrong).
19. Given regularly, it really comes part of a system of monitoring progress.
20. It’s fun – Students like it.
21. They can reciprocate and give you mp3 feedback.

In the upcoming semester, I’d like to try and provide this kind of progress reporting using VoiceThread. I’m sure students will respond so much more to the threaded audio format than the clunkier option of mailing the audio file or leaving it on shared drives. It would be nice to have more of a conversation with the students using media they are so comfortable and familiar with using.

Will keep you posted.

PS I use the free audio editor/recorder from Audacity. It’s pretty much like MS Word except for sound and not letters (you record, copy, paste and save!).

The Audacity manual is here.

Here are some YouTube tutorials on how to record and how to edit.

I provide feedback to my students using mp3 files. I record them using the free audio editor and recorder Audacity (you can download versions for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix).

I have found providing recorded oral feedback via an mp3 file to be a very useful addition to my feedback arsenal. I needed a little time to get into the swing of things but once I did, I loved it (and so too did my students). It’s very easy. I just record the feedback, save as mp3 and then e-mail it to the students.

I would suggest reducing the file size to 32 kpbs (if you can) so files don’t clog up e-mail InBoxes.

Example

Here’s an example text. I write numbers on the text where students need to focus their attention. When I record the feedback, I ask the students to look at number one, and then provide the feedback, and then do the same for #2, etc.

Teachers have asked me if it’s quicker than providing written feedback. In my experience, it takes a little longer if the text is short but saves time if the text is longer. Using audio files also saves time if you want to provide more extensive and comprehensive feedback.

Here are some of the things I initially had to get used to:

• Finding what to say and how to say it to be of maximum benefit to students.
• Starting a new sentence again if I made a mistake (in Audacity you just select the mistake and delete it, as you would do with a piece of text in Word).
• Cutting down on umms and ahhs.
• Creating an easy to recognize naming system when saving the mp3 files. I used the class name + student initials + writing task name (e.g. DF2-05_AM_cities.mp3).
• Finding the time and a quiet area to get into the habit of recording feedback.
• Some people might say they don’t like the sound of their own voice, but this disappears after a while.

Here are the reasons why I like and recommend using sound files for feedback:

• Students like them
  They really pay more attention to what’s on a sound file than what I write on paper. They also seem to get ‘excited’ at receiving one in their mail.
• It makes a change from red ink
  Whatever colour ink you use for correction, it’s usually messy business. Some students might need a microscope to read your notes. I know my corrections can sometimes look more like a maze of insertion marks and words.
• It practices listening
  Listening to the corrections is a valid and authentic listening task. Students are usually quite motivated to listen and will press play several times to make sure they got it all.
• It’s an activity in itself
  This is a sneaky one – The audio provides students with a whole new activity of listening for specific information and re-engaging and correcting their text. Great for recycling language and getting students to think.
• It makes the students rewrite the draft
  Always a good thing. In my experience, they are more engaged in the rewriting process with audio correction than with my scrawled notes.
• It gets students used to metalanguage
  The audio files are a good opportunity to reinforce grammar terms they might not be so familiar with. This is particularly useful for lower levels. Audio files give students more processing time to work out exactly what those big, confusing words are the teacher keeps saying in class (like present progressive, apostrophe, adjective…).
• It is quicker than writing if there’s a lot you want to say
• It’s useful with tiny handwriting on A8 paper
  No matter how hard I try to convince my students of the virtues of A4, I still get essays on Post-It-note-sized paper. You need an ultra thin pen and a microscope to notate these. Using numbers and audio makes this process cleaner and easier.
• It forces me to think more carefully about grading my speech and saying what I need to say as succinctly as possible.

So, I thoroughly recommend using audio to provide feedback. However, if you really want to push the boat out – use audio and visual. This is one of my New Year resolutions. Russell Stannard has excellent tutorials on how to use screencasts in providing feedback on writing:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=207117

and
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec08/mart04.htm

Or check out Vance Stevens’ list of screencast software:
http://vancestevens.com/casting.htm#screencasting