Wordle——Make your own beautiful word clouds!

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a website that can quickly calculate the word frequency of your chosen text and make it into different types of beautiful word clouds based on their relevant frequency.

How to use Wordle?

Wordle is very easy to use. Basically, here are the steps you'll need to do.

1. Go to Wordle. Click the 'Create' button.

2. Paste your chosen text and click 'Go'.

3. Wait for a few seconds and you'll get your word clouds.

4. Make certain adjustments by choosing your the font, color, layout and some language to make it look better.

5. Give it a name and save the url address and the code.

For further instruction on how to use Wordle, please watch this tutorial video.

How does Wordle foster language teaching and learning?

1. Pre-reading Tasks. Before introducing a piece of reading to students, teachers could show them the word cloud first and do the following tasks.

• Ask students to guess the general idea or the topic of the text.
• Ask students to discuss this topic so as to activate their schemata. 
• Ask students to make up some sentences with the most frequently used words. 

2. Post-reading Tasks. After students have read the text, put the text away and do some follow-up activities based on the word cloud.

• Ask students to write down the topic sentence of the text based on their memory and the word cloud.
• If students have higher level of proficiency, the teacher could ask students to reconstruct the text. 

In both pre-reading and post-reading activities, this tool can help students to construct their own language, during which process, they will have to pay attention to not only vocabulary, but also collocation and grammar in order to reconstruct the text. It encourages students to do a lot of language processing, through which language acquisition is achieved.

What are the good points?

• Easy to use, no need to register.
• Highly customized and very beautiful formats of the word clouds.
• Calculate word frequency very fast.
• Result in beautiful final product.

What are the limitations?

• You have to have Java in your computer for Wordle to work. Ipad is not available.
• Every time you change the font, the whole cloud changes. So once you see a cloud you like, save it ASAP.
• When I embed it into my blog, the picture was too vague. The one below is captured by Jing.
• It does't concern any further vocabulary exercise except the frequency.

An example

This is a piece of news from Warwick official website, reporting that University of Warwick the 'Top Target' for graduate employers.

Please click here for the news.

I set up all the colors, chose a favorable font and crossed out those most frequently used English words such as 'the' and 'is'. I also canceled some words which I think is not quite relevant to this topic. And the picture below is what I've got. You can also check it out by the specific url address which I forgot to save. So, always remember to save the url and the code.

My Self-Introduction Using My Brain Shark

Wallwisher

Created with Wallwisher

English Central

What is English Central?

English Central is a website that help people to learn English by watching videos. It is perfect for students to practice speaking and pronunciation as well as vocabulary. Most of the videos are authentic materials, ranging from famous speeches to popular TV serious. It offers different categories to meet all kinds of students' needs, including academic English, business English, media English, social English, travel English and even English for young learners.

Click here to check out my introduction of English Central's homepage.

How to use English Central?

This is an official tutorial video on how to use English Central to 'speak a video', and to learn vocabulary.

What are the strengths and weaknesses?

Strengths

• It is the so far the best website (I have ever seen) to help English learners with their pronunciation.
• And it is FREE!
• It automatically analyzes your pronunciation and then tells you your problems in RED subtitles.
• There are plenty of videos to choose from for learners of different purposes, ranging from videos for younger learners to business English, from famous speeches to updated movie clips. Learners could choose the video according to their own preference. Therefore, they are likely to be more motivated.
• It also classifies videos according to the learners' level of difficulty, so that learners can choose videos according to their own proficiency.
• Some of the videos, especially those for higher proficiency students, are authentic materials, which are closely related to their real life topics.
• Besides practicing oral English, students could also learn some new vocabulary.
• Some videos, especially famous speeches or TED talks, are beneficial to learners in a much broader sense. The ideas and knowledge in the videos can be very helpful to learners in many aspects other than English.
• It is likely to enhance learners' motivation and autonomy.

Weakness

• It requires relatively fast internet speed and good computer system. Sometimes it doesn't work smoothly since it contains video playing and audio recording and pronunciation analyzing at the same time. It takes time especially when it analyzes your recordings. So just be patient and don't press any other buttons before it finishes the analyzing process.
• There are still some technical problems when analyzing recordings. Sometimes when we speak fast, it can not distinguish words that are pronounced together without obvious pauses.
• In order to get a good recording for analyzing your pronunciation, you do need to have a good earphone and microphone connected to your computer.

Vocaroo

What is Vocaroo? 

Vocaroo is an online voice recorder. It allows people to record their voices and email it to others or download the document or embed it in a blog.

How to use Vocaroo?

Russell Stannard, a leading scholar for ICT in ELT, has a very helpful website called Teacher Training videos. It is especially designed for language teachers. This website introduces many fabulous language learning websites (including Vocaroo) or software for free. 

Please click here for further instruction of using Vocaroo.

Why language teachers should use Vocaroo?

• With this fabulous tool, teachers can get students to really practice speaking outside the classroom, which has long been a very tough problem for language teachers using traditional teaching methods.
• Recordings seem to 'exaggerate' any minor mistakes, hesitations, repetitions, accents and mispronunciations etc, which are often ignored in a natural conversation. Students, by listening to their own recordings could notice their own weakness and make efforts to improve on those points.
• There is a 'Retry' button so that students can record as many times as they want until they are satisfied with themselves. Therefore, this tool encourages learner autonomy.

How can Vocaroo foster language learning?

• Speaking Assignment. With this fabulous tool, teachers could give speaking assignments to students. After school, students could record their themselves talking about the topic they have just learned in class and then simply send a link to their teachers. According to Stannard's 'The Connected Classroom' theory, the more the teacher connects what students have learned in the classroom with what students are required to talk about outside the classroom, the more motivated students would become and the better they would perform in their recordings.
• Correcting pronunciation. This tool can also be used to help students correct their pronunciation. For example, students can download an audio piece of BBC news, listen to it, read after it and try their best to imitate the reporters pronunciation for several times. And then, students could record themselves reading out loud this piece of news and compare it with the original version to discover the differences so as to improve pronunciation. This is a typical example of how Vocaroo could promote learner autonomy.
•  Vocal feedback. A traditional written feedback takes a long time and contains only a few information. With Vocaroo, teachers could give students vocal feedback within a short time that contains a lot more information. Students, by listening to the teacher's vocal feedback, may feel more engaged and motivated because they can feel the emotion and  the emphasis from the teachers' tone.  Students can also give each other feedback using Vocaroo. 

What are the limitations of Vocaroo?

• Because the recordings 'exaggerate' all the mistakes, students may feel discouraged by their poor performance and become less motivated.
• It can only record voices. But when students want to use some pictures or power point slide to illustrate their points, Vocaroo become less useful.

TodaysMeet

What is TodaysMeet?

TodaysMeet is a virtual online meeting room that allows for communication and collaboration without time and space limit. Anyone, as long as you can access the internet, could create a room, save the web address and send it to your students or classmates or colleagues so that they can enter the room and have an online conversation.

How to use TodaysMeet?

1. Go to http://todaysmeet.com/.

2. Name your room (If there's a red cross under the name of your room, then it's not available. Usually, just add a number after the name, and it would become available.)

3. Select how long you want this room to be available for, ranging from 2 hours to one year. And then click 'Create your Room'.

4. Copy the web address of your room and send it to whoever you want them to join.

5. For students or people other than the room creator, go to this web address and type in your name.

6. Type in whatever you want to say and simply click 'say'. 

7. All people's talk will be presented immediately in the 'Listen' box on the left of the page.

8. After you finish all your conversations, you can save the transcription for future reference.

Why should language teachers use TodaysMeet?

• It's about sharing knowledge and ideas and even questions.
• It stimulates collaborative language learning because not only teachers but also students have the freedom to express their own ideas and also 'listen' to others' ideas.
• It is classroom-based group, but it doesn't have any time or space limitations.
• For most of the time, students' talk are language output. Students construct their own language, through which they collaboratively construct ideas. The rationale behind this online virtual classroom is constructivist language learning.
• It's very easy to use and all the conversation can be saved or downloaded for future reference.
• In a traditional conversation, normally, only one people could speak at one time, otherwise, it would be very noisy and people cannot follow clearly what others say. TodaysMeet allows for multi-speaker conversation at the same time without missing others' talk becasue they can read the transcription later.
• It enhances multi-dimentional conversation flow: teacher to students, students to teacher, and student to student interactions.
  
• There's no need to register or create an account, which would normally take much time. (This idea comes from my friend and classmate East.)

How can TodaysMeet foster language learning?

1. After class online Q&A between students and teachers.

It often happens when after class, students go to ask teacher questions individually and the teacher may answer the same question many times to different students. Or there may be a situation where student A think of a question but other students don't, in this case, they may never have the opportunity to think of the question or know the answer to it. An after class online Q&A session on TodaysMeet can solve these problems so that the teacher can answer once for all and students can share others' questions they haven't thought of and 'listen' to the teacher's answer.

2. After class pair work/group work task discussion.

Usually, students don't have many opportunities to meet each other and discuss pair work or group work face to face. In this case, students within a pair or group could simply create a room on TodaysMeet and discuss their assignments or tasks online. Additionally, the teacher can ask students to send him/her the transcription of their discussion to check and therefore give certain help when necessary. The teacher  may even join the students' discussion but it may be too time consuming.

3. Classroom simultaneous feedback for report or presentation.

This is only adaptable when all the students have their own PC and access to the internet in the classroom. For example, group A is giving a report or a presentation or a role play in front of the class, other students, as well as the teacher, in the classroom can give simultaneous feedback by writing down some notes or comments on Group A's performance. After the presentation, students in Group A could see the feedback from the teacher and all their classmates. This activity can develop students' ability of evaluation and reflection, as well as critical thinking, which are high level learning abilities.

BTW, this method can also be adapted in an academic conference where there is an off-line real life presentation by the lecturer, and meanwhile, an online discussion between the audience.

What are the limitations of TodaysMeet?

• It can be easily replaced by other online communication tools, such as Facebook (you can build a group on Facebook to chat), or chat rooms in Skype or QQ (a Chinese online chatting software).
• You cannot upload or share any document online through TodaysMeet. It's very common when people discuss ideas online, they may want to share a Word or PPT or PDF document with others. The lack of this function sometimes may result in inefficient or inconvenient online communication.

Dvolver

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is an online free movie maker. Teachers, as well as students, can use it to create your own cartoon movies, and send them to others' email or embed them in your blogs.

Click here to access Dvolver: http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/

How to use Dvolver?

Dvolver is very easy to learn for everyone and even students can learn to use it very quickly. Basically, you can just follow the instructions (the words in yellow in the upper left corner) and click "Next" (on the lower right corner) until you finish. Below is a Step-by-Step instruction, which presents an example of how to make cartoon movies using Dvolver. 

1. Select a background and a sky.

2. Select a plot.

3. Select one or two character(s).

4.Type in the characters' lines. 

5. Select music. IF the dialogue is not finished, select 'Add a new scene' and repeat the previous steps until you finish the whole dialogue. Otherwise, select 'Finish movie'.

6. Select movie title design and type in the movie title and director's name.

7. Preview and send the movie.

8. Copy the code in the white box and make sure paste it into your blog in "HTML" mode.

Done! It's just as simple as that. And this is the movie I made.

The dialogue above is cited from Longman New Concept English Book 1 by  L. G. Alexander.

Why should language teachers use Dvolver?

1. It is absolutely a more interesting way to present dialogues than textbooks.
2. Students/Teachers have many choices of the characters and the scenes. You can type in any dialogue you like. Therefore, students are better motivated, especially young learners.
3. It is easy to use, for both teachers and students.
4. Students can create their own dialogues. They are not just 'passive knowledge receivers', instead, they are encouraged to be explorers and creators of language (Brown, 1991).
5. It assists Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), for example, role play tasks.
6. It stimulates students' imagination.
7. Once you finish a movie, it is saved online, so it doesn't take up your computer space.

How can Dvolver foster language learning?

Role play

1. When teachers first introduce the text or dialogue to students, traditionally, by playing a tape or simply reading the dialogues to the class. Now, you can play a cartoon movie.
2. Instead of teacher giving some example sentence and asking students to read after him/her, students can make up their own dialogues using the grammar patterns they have just learned from textbooks. 
3. Teachers can type in the students' dialogues, make a movie in class and ask students to do a role play by dubbing for the movie.
4. Instead of asking students to recite the text, teachers can ask students to make their own movies and send it to the teachers or embed it into students' blogs.
5. Teachers can also use Dvolver to give feedback using the 'one person speaking' plot.

What are the limitations of Dvolver?

1. There's a 100-letter limitation for each speaker in one single turn. Therefore, it can't be used for very long or many sentences.
2. There are only six turns in one scene. But you can add as many scenes as you like. Theoretically, the dialogues can be as long as you like, but they have to be breakdown in to separate scenes.
3. The characters are limited. Especially, in a Chinese EFL context where I belong to, students are not really familiar with any of these cartoon characters.
4. It only allows for one or two character(s) at most and it doesn't work for three or more speakers in one scene. 
5. You can't download the movie. You will have to access the internet in order to watch. I suggest you use a screen recording software to record your movie and save it in your computer so that you can use it where you like.