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★ The Treasure Hunt Club
No. 42 Surveys, Quizzes, and Lots of Listening
Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Welcome back to the Treasure Hunt and welcome to 2009. This past
year was an exciting one in CALL. 2008 was the year that Web 2.0
tools really came of age. So many great sites are now available with so
many interesting activities and functions and so much good content.
The challenge for instructors is no longer finding good content and
activities, but now the challenge is selecting the most suitable tools,
introducing them to students, supporting them as they get accustomed
to these new tools and then training them to be active independent
learners.
This month I have a few really nice sites to introduce. The first two are
sites I've had bookmarked for a while but haven't gotten around to
including in this column. The last three are sites included by Russell
Stannard in his Best of 2008 page at his site Teacher Training Videos.
Teacher Training Videos is exactly what the title suggests, a site full
of videos showing how to use technology for language teaching. It's a
fantastic resource for tools and tips.
(
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/).
My Studiyo (
http://www.mystudiyo.com/) is a site that allows users to
make great-looking quizzes that can be embedded into web pages. The
quizzes themselves are simple and easy to use. They are designed to
include images or a combination of images and text and so they look a
lot more fun than regular multiple choice quizzes.
SurveyMonkey allows you to design and create surveys and then collect
and analyze the results. (
http://www.surveymonkey.com/Default.aspx)
A basic service is available for free (allowing you to make surveys with
up to 100 responses) and it is probably enough for most teaching
situations. You can customize the surveys and you have lots of options
for collecting and analyzing results.
Lingualnet (
http://www.lingual.net/lingualproductitems/index.php) is a site
that has lots of video content organized for use by people learning English.
I have introduced this site before, but it has grown greatly in content and
functionality in the last two years. Users now have control over subtitles
and can make comments on the content. The site is owned by Michael
Rost, and a lot of effort has been put into making it a good learning tool.
Learners can control the subtitles, there are quizzes for comprehension,
and learners can rate and comment on each of the videos. The site is
now very user-friendly and nicely interactive.
Yappr (
http://en.yappr.com/welcome/Welcome.action) is another video-
based site. The player gives learners quite a bit of control: you can see
transcripts and translations, listen to a clearer version of the audio, or
repeat sentences. A chat function allows registered users to interact with
other learners and at present there is a good mix of learners from around
the globe.
Listen and Write: Do the dictation yourself (
http://www.listen-and-write.com/).
This site is a news dictation site that is really nice for serious English
students. New topics are added daily so this site can be great for
earners interested in following the news more closely. The dictation
system is quite sophisticated and only allows learners to input the
words after they hear them. You can try an example on the starting
page for the site.
That's it for this month. See you next month.
