Teachers often spend a lot of time and energy in the classroom trying to transmit information from inside their expert heads into the novice heads of their students. This is the tradition view of pedagogy that needs changing. Here’s why…
Students learn to write better by writing more often. That’s why I have added a new automated evaluation to Labodanglais.com and Labodefrancais.com. It’s a self-scoring writing assignment to evaluate English and French writing. The teacher simply sets thresholds, scores, and feedback messages. Students write, submit, and receive their scores seconds…
Wouldn’t it be great if a student could instantly receive a score and feedback, after watching a video and explaining to a classmate what he or she heard? An evaluation like that would be much closer to the way language is actually used in the world. Labodanglais.com makes it possible. Students watch a video and then record themselves summarizing it. The assignment plugin scores their oral automatically. Doesn’t that sound so much better than giving students a listening quiz?
Saying words and phrases aloud has several benefits. Here are some oral practice strategies that work well. Did you know that it is 10% easier to remember items that you say aloud compared to items you read silently (MacLeod & Bodner, 2017). And practicing difficult to say words will help to improve your pronunciation and rate of speech. Also, you will gain confidence in your ability to communicate complex ideas as your memory, pronunciation, and rate-of-speech improve.