Speaking and Listening

Module 5: Language Skills

Voxopop.com is free oral discussion board software hosted on the Web that allows teachers and students to create their own learning tasks and/or join others around the world in theirs, raising student interest and allowing them to work at their own levels. Topics can be whatever the learners are interested in, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Because Voxopop is Web-based, students can participate from anywhere at any time, making it a great tool for out of class language practice. Talkgroup creators in Voxopop must sign up, but there are no fees. There are limitless ways to use this social recording tool. They include:

Pronunciation Learning

Students read and record from a list of words and listen until they are satisfied with their pronunciation, the teacher or other fluent speaker provides feedback on their recordings;
The teacher or fluent speaker records words and the students repeat them back or mark the pronunciation on a handout.

Listening Practice

Students circle the words, phrases, or sentences they hear recorded on a worksheet (or write them down for additional spelling practice). They can compare their answers with other students in class.
Students retell (or draw pictures or respond in some other appropriate way) the weekly story that has been recorded.

Speaking Fluency

One student per week (or lesson) summarizes an important local news story, and the other students ask questions and comment.
Taking turns, one student records a sentence to start a story. The next student creates the second sentence of the story, and so on, until the story is complete. Many tasks can be done with the completed story, including grammar review and writing practice.

Conversation Practice

Students and teachers (or other fluent speakers) create private digital dialog journals in which they have a differrent topic of discussion each week. Teachers can model and correct speech without embarrassing students and can help students meet their individual challenge/skills balance.

Voxopop Help

Alison offers a free course on using Voxopop and Russell Stannard provides a video about Voxopop. Here is a short and easy guide to Voxopop from Nik Peachey: https://www.scribd.com/document/132345202/24078789-How-to-Use-Voxopop

Voicethread

An alternative to Voxopop that can include graphics and other media is VoiceThread. Find it at voicethread.com.

Here's an example: https://voicethread.com/share/6726476/