Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

This was one of the trickiest “The Best…” list for me to compile. As I was going through my favorites, and all of the great suggestions others contributed, I concluded that it might work best to really create two lists. The first list — this one — will highlight sites that actually have students recording their own voices in a number of different ways and post their speaking assignments online. The second list, which I’ll publish later this month and will include a number of the sites that readers suggested, will focus on sites where students have to listen to spoken examples for developing better pronunciation skills.

That next list will be called “The Best Sites For Learning English Pronunciation.”

It’s sort of an artificial division, I know, and obviously in teaching and learning a second language speaking and listening are intertwined. In fact, students can use some of the sites on this list to practice what they hear on the sites in the next list. But I do think this separation works for the purpose of making these lists.

In order to make it on this list, a site had to be free, easy to use, and accessible to English Language Learners.

You can also find these links, and 8,000 others, on my website.

Here are my eleven picks (some are tied) for The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English & Pronunciation:

Number nine is Blabberize. It allows you to upload an image, have the mouth’s image move in a comedic way, and then “speak” your voice. Students can use their own photos, or a famous person, cartoon character, etc. Blabberize can be used in the same way ESL/EFL teachers sometimes have students use puppets — students can feel more comfortable speaking when it’s not really “them” doing the talking.

(Make Me Talk is a very, very simple tool that lets you upload a picture, choose some lips to put on it, and then lets you record something for one minute while the lips move.  It doesn’t have many of the advantages of  Blabberize, but it is simpler to use and easy to create something quickly.)

I’ve ranked creating your own Voki at number eight. A Voki is a talking avatar students can design and easily post on a blog or website. Sue Waters has written excellent step-by-step instructions on how to post a Voki.

Rap Happy is number seven. Singing is a less threatening way to get students to start speaking English, and many younger students in particular love singing rap. Here, they get to choose a beat, record their own lyrics, and post the url of their performance on a blog or website.

Snapvine and Bedroom TV (a strange name, I know — it used to be called Springdoo) let students easily email voice messages (a kind of voice-only blog) and save them on their own account or post them on another site, too. Since they’re so similar, though Snapvine might be a little bit easier to use, they’re tied for sixth place.

Outshouts is number five. You can create a voice mail message that goes along with a song and email them both to a teacher or a friend. You can then post the url on a blog or online journal. You can also save your past messages in your account. The main reason I ranked this above the previous two sites is because in Outshouts you can also write your message in the email you send so a listener can both hear and read it at the same time. I’m recommending this site with once caveat, though. Some of the songs might be inappropriate for classroom use, so teachers probably want to check them out periodically since they appear to change.

Number four is Daft Doggy Voice Recording. You can record an extremely long message, no registration is required, and it has a built-in email feature to send the url of the message. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Gabsight, though, gets an “honorable mention” since it, too, is easy to use and doesn’t require registration. It’s primarily a video messaging system, but works fine with audio only. It just doesn’t have a built-in email feature like Daft Doggy, and only provides you with the url of your recording.

Sims On Stage is number three. This wonderful site lets users record karaoke, write and record a story, and provides many other speaking options. (Unfortunately, Sims On Stage closed down as of March 31, 2009)

Number two is LiveMocha. This fast-growing language-learning site has an incredible number of features. For speaking, not only can users send their recording to whomever they choose, but there’s also a social network component that lets others provide feedback. Another nice aspect of the site is that it’s structured so that users are responding directly to prompts from LiveMocha’s scaffolded teaching/learning system.

And, now, for the number one Best Site To Practice Speaking English & Pronunciation, it’s…..Voice Thread. Between the free unlimited account for educators, the ability to type text as well as record audio, the ability to grab images off the Web to reinforce understanding, and the great feature of being able to leave audio comments, I don’t think anything beats it.

(Editor’s Note: I’m adding another site called Chuala to this list. You can read my post about it here. I’ve also added Flowgram)

Gizmoz lets you pick from a variety of images, then choose a background, and then quickly speak a message or, using the text-to-speech feature, type one. Then, after signing-in (registering or signing-in just takes seconds) you can either email the link or post it yourself on a blog or website.  The only tricky part is that you can access messages other users have created, too.  I didn’t see anything that was inappropriate for the classroom, but I just don’t know how much that’s monitored.

Grapevine is an audio “chatboard” that I’m adding here.

It’s super-simple to set-up a private forum where students can listen and respond to others and don’t have to be online at the same time.  English Language Learners can communicate with other classes around the world, like in our International Sister Classes Project or just be given a simple speaking assignment to complete.

I love its simplicity and ease of use.  It’s still in Beta, so you need an invitation to join.   I received mine within seconds of requesting one, though.

It some ways it’s similar to the Vaestro Voice Channel that allows you to have, for instance, your own class “voice channel” where students can easily record messages.   TVO Wikispaces has a good explanation and some examples on its site, along with a bunch of other good language-learning resources.  Vaestro, though, is a bit more complicated than Grapevine.

I’m adding Voxopop to this list.  Formerly called Chinswing, it lets you easily create private voice “chatboards.”  Students can leave messages and respond to one another, or teachers can leave speaking assignments for students to complete.  It’s similar to Grapevine and to Vaestro Voice Channel.

I’ve posted in the past about how the ability to make easy screencasts — with audio– could be an excellent learning opportunity for English Language Learners (you might want to take a look at that post). The online tool that has been available, Screencast-O-Matic, works okay for this purpose, but seems a little too complicated.

There’s now a similar tool called Screentoaster that couldn’t be more simple to use, and they’ve just added both the ability to record audio and add subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your screen.  After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or subtitles.

Vocaroo is a super easy way for students to record a message — of any length — and then place a link or an embed code on a student or teacher website. It’s got to be one of the most simple ways for audio recording out there — no registration is required and you just click “record.”

The extraordinary The Art of Storytelling is a site from the Delaware Art Museum that allows you pick a painting, write a short story about it, record it with your computer microphone, and email the url address for posting on a student website or blog. It’s extraordinarily simple, and extraordinarily accessible to any level of English Language Learner. No registration is required.

Utterli looks good to me.  It’s free, and you can write text,too. It’s sort of like a “micro-blog” with audio.   You can also record by computer microphone.

PodOmatic looks like an extraordinarily easy way to create a podcast. Sign-up and your class has your own channel — all you need is a computer microphone.

Woices allows the user to easily leave an audio message about a specific place. That message can then be listened to by others.

Similar English-speaking practice can be done by using sites listed here, but Woices would provide an authentic audience for English Language Learners. They could leave messages about where they live now, places they’ve visited, or their native countries.

Chirbit is the newest addition to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.  After registering (which is very easy — I love sites that don’t require an email activation), you can very easily make a recording or use a text-to-speech feature to create audio.  You’re then given a unique url address for the recording.  It’s as simple as that.

It has other capabilities, too, including responding to the audio message.

For students those without Internet access at home, here’s a tool worth considering:

I recently received my invitation to join Google Voice, Google’s new phone tool. You can read all about it at Lifehacker’s guide. In terms of teaching, I could see it as an easy way for English Language Learners, particularly those with no Internet access, to practice speaking “homework.” They can call my Google Voice number, leave a message, and I can then access both their audio and an automatically generated written transcript of what they said. I can then easily embed both on a classroom blog.

Audio Pal is a new tool that lets you easily record a message — either by using a phone, computer mike, or text-to-speech — and then add the embed code to your blog or website. Students can update it as often as they want, and get as many different ones that they want. It’s pretty neat. No registration is necessary, and it’s free.

Myna is a new audio recording tool that’s great for students to use for speaking practice and to create podcasts.  It’s really quite a simple tool for use by English Language Learners or anybody else…after you watch the short demonstration video. It was confusing to me prior to watching it.  It’s easy for users to add music that’s already in the Myna library to their recording, and certainly easy for them to record their own voice.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll soon be publishing a companion list to this one called “The Best Sites For Learning English Pronunciation.”

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