1. European Day of Languages
Introduction to SpeakApps
www.speakapps.org
2. 15.15-15.30 Welcome by Sake Jager
15.30-16.30 David Singleton (Trinity College Dublin)
‘Life rather than age’
Interact through #speakappsEDL
16.30-16.50 Coffee break
16.50-17.45 Demonstration of the tools
17.45-18.00 SpeakApps after 2012
www.speakapps.org
3. About SpeakApps
• Life Long Learning Project, 2011-2012
• Partners:
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
• University of Jyväskylä
• Jagiellonian University Krakow
• Dublin City University
• Development of tools and tasks for oral production and spoken interaction
• Open Educational Resources
4. Relevance for language teaching and learning
• Plurilingualism key objective in Europe
• Strong demand for languages overall
• Dwindling numbers of language students in traditional institutions
• Institutions are facing the challenge of “reinventing themselves”
• New methods of teaching and learning are needed
• Internet technologies as facilitating tools
• SpeakApps tools:
• Used with large numbers of students in UOC
• Provide a way of offering students more and enhanced practice outside the
classroom
• Based on task-based, communicative approaches to language learning
• Compatible with language learning based on CEFR
5. David Singleton, professor of Applied
Linguistics (Trinity College Dublin)
Video lecture: ‘Life rather than age’
Interact through #speakappsEDL
5
7. Why this project?
Speaking is considered the most difficult skill when learning a second or
foreign language
•Especially grammar, vocabulary and fluency are difficult
•The learner tries to compensate these problems by using synonyms and general
knowledge, guessing and by asking for clarification
•Language learners learn to speak by
• Talking to other learners or preferably native speakers
• Listening to the radio, podcasts et cetera
• And by watching films / TV with subtitles in the target language
SpeakApps wants the learner to help practicing and improving their oral skills online
8. 3 online tools
Oral production: LANGblog
- asynchronous communication
- multimediablog with audio en video
Oral interaction: Tandem & Videochat
- synchronous communication
- ‘regulated’ and ‘self-regulated / autonomous’
- ‘open’ tasks
8
9. Oral production
LANGblog
Blog in wordpress
Various tasks
Comment with text, audio, video
Through the website or from the computer
Practice
Spontaneous speech
Not too long
Give students a reason to listen to each other
Feedback
9
10. Oral interaction
Tandem
Autonomous in pairs
With Skype, Adobe Connect, Elluminate and Videochat
A cms with an interface for the teacher and student
Different tasks like:
•Spot the difference
•Describe images / objects / direction
•Ranking
•Guessing
•Role-play
10
15. Results Pilots 2011-2012
SpeakApps is…
Accessible and user-friendly
‘Active’ students improve their speaking skills significantly
Tasks with feedback are appreciated the most
Feedback from the teacher is preferred the most
Students appreciate the link between CEFR (http://erknederlands.org) and own recording in
Langblog!
More video than audio
Rather tasks that are related to the course material
Teacher-regulated is preferred
Practicing takes time
15
17. 5. Online community: delen en downloaden
- community voor taalleerders en taaldocenten
- kennis delen
- materiaal downloaden
- materiaal online gebruiken
- in Mahara
- laatste fase (september – december 2012)
17
18. On 31 December 2012
SpeakApps:
•Online platform with online ICT-applications and pedagogical framework
•Where language learners can practice their oral skills
•For language teachers and learners
Plugins for own LMS or
access to portal OUC
