Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Vaestro Voice Channel is an interesting site 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.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Audio Messages.

Selfcast lets anyone with a webcam immediately broadcast over the web for free, and anyone (without registering) can watch and also participate via live text chat. The presentation is also recorded and can be watched in the future, too.

This got me thinking about if this would be an option to consider when working with international sister classes (assuming time zones worked out). I’ve got to think about advantages and disadvantages of something like this compared to a tool like MeBeam and Tokbox, two online video conferencing sites. They both allow you to just use microphones for audio if you don’t have a webcam.

On advantage I can see for Selfcast is that less extra equipment would be needed — you would only have to have one webcam on one end, and wouldn’t need mikes for text chat. And more students could be online at the same time. Obviously, not having the ability to make audio comments would also limit, to an extent, the student interaction. But it might be worth looking at as an option.

Any thoughts?

i Popetz lets you create a free online puppet show where, assuming you have a microphone, you can provide narration or “voice” to your puppet.

The controls are a bit complicated, but there’s an easily accessible “help” diagram. It’s easy to record your voice, and that’s one of the features I like the most.

I’ll be placing the link somewhere on my Examples of Student Work page.

TechCrunch just posted about Flowgram, an amazing screencasting, link-sharing tool that’s now in beta. However, if you go to TechCrunch’s post, you can get an “invite” code that would allow you to register and use it.

It appears that Flowgram lets you show one or multiple pages on the Web, and, when you’re making this screencast, you can move the screen up-and-down to focus on particular areas on the page. You can show videos or images. You can provide an audio commentary, and people can leave comments.

This kind of application offers multiple language learning opportunities for all levels of English Language Learners.

I’m not putting a link on my website to it yet, since it’s not open to the general public. But when it is, it’s certainly a top candidate for one of my “The Best…” lists.

I’ve posted about Outshouts before. It allows you to send songs (and post them) along with audio and text messages that the user creates. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, though, it’s possible that some of the songs the site has available might be inappropriate for classroom use, so it should be used with supervision — if at all.

The same company has just created Video Outshouts. This one lets you record an audio message and send a music video along with it. One nice thing about Video Outshouts (which appears to be different from its other version) is that you don’t have to register in order to use it. However, I offer it with the same caveat that I gave about the first version — some of the songs might not be appropriate for classroom usage.

Mingoville is an exceptional site from Denmark designed to teach Beginning English Language Learners. There are many interactive exercises and games, it’s very colorful, and there are both listening and speaking activities. I haven’t explored the site fully, but it has an easy voice recording feature.

You can experiment with it as a guest for a few minutes, but then you have to register. It’s completely free, and registration took about twenty seconds.

It’s so good I’ve placed in on my website under Favorite Sites. In fact, if your students are a little intimidated by having 8,000 categorized sites to choose from on my site, going to Favorite Sites is a good place to start.

Thanks to a post in Kevin’s Meandering Mind, I was reminded of a site that I should have included in my The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

For some reason, when I originally made the list I forgot to include Sketchcast, an excellent site that has appeared on some of my other lists. You can read my original post about it here.

It’s now included in the post where I originally shared my choices for best sites for speaking English.

This year I’ve been helping my my students learn academic vocabulary.  One new word has been “interpretation” and its various forms.

I’ve shown students several optical illusions that can be found at this site or at this one.  Then, they have short conversations with other students about what they see:

“What is your interpretation of what’s in the picture?”

“It seems to me that there’s a ……”

I’ve placed the link on my Teacher’s Page under ESL Hand-Outs and Lesson Plans.

I learned about a great site from France that teaches English idioms through the use of cartoons, audio, and games.   Because I couldn’t really figure out what to call the site in English, I settled on Cartoon Idioms.

I found this link through the Resources For The College site, which I’ve posted about before.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Idioms and Analogies.

Karaoke Play is a new online site that lets you sing a favorite song and record it online.

Singing karaoke is an excellent way for English Language Learners to develop language skills. Students can do it individually or as a group.

There are several other online karaoke sites. What makes Karaoke Play a bit different from the others is that, in addition to showing the lyrics you need to sing, it shows a music video of the song. This difference also makes it more problematic for students. The videos are from You Tube, and most school districts block it. So, even though the site itself might get through District filters, students won’t see anything when they pick a song because the video will be blocked.

If you one of the few Districts that don’t block YouTube, it’s certainly worth giving Karaoke Play a try. If not, stick with the excellent Sims On Stage site for singing practice.

You’ll find karaoke, and other music links, on my website under Student Songs.

YAKIToME seems almost to good to be true for English Language Learners. It lets you copy and paste pretty much anything you want and the convert the text to speech.

You can choose the type of voice (it uses ATT technology, which I’ve had a link on my website to for a longtime because it’s so good), the rate of speed (there are numerous settings), and even customize pronunciation for certain words. You choose to see the text when you’re listening to it being spoken. And you can create private groups if you want.

Most importantly, unlike some other well-intentioned similar applications I’ve posted about it, it seems to work without any technical difficulties. Plus, it’s free.

I have a number of text-to-speech links displayed at the top of several of the pages on my website, and will add the YAKIToMe link there.

Chuala is the latest addition to the Favorite Sites section on my English Themes For Beginners/Early Intermediate page.

On this free site, which you can use without registering, you hear the pronunication of English words and you can record your own pronunciation of the same word to compare the two (assuming you have a microphone, of course).

It’s pretty neat. 

This is the last part of a three-part series on developing oral English skills. The previous two lists were The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English and The Best Websites For Learning English Pronunciation.

You can access those two lists, as well as forty other of my “The Best…” lists at Websites of the Year.

All the sites on these lists can also be found on my website.

Of course, all these sites are also all free, or they wouldn’t be on the list.

Here, in my opinion, are The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills:

Number eight is 1-Language. It offers a free audio course comprised of forty units. Each one includes a written dialogue , audio, and exercises. It’s broad and accessible.

Number seven is a tie between a number of sites that have audio and animated exercises for Beginning English Language Learners. There used to be one or two that had a bunch, but those sites recently went “down.” The ones I’d like to highlight on this list are: Jr Naver, which has six conversations (don’t worry about the Korean writing, it’s in English) — just remember to click on the little box within the animation so you can see the words as they are spoken; Yahoo Korea, which has thirteen similar animations though, here, click on the circle; and another Jr Naver site that has thirteen dialogues, though it’s a little tricky to navigate. That link will lead you to the animations and audio — this link will lead you to the scripts.

OmAudio is number six, and is similar to 1-Language. It also has a lot of other resources on its site.

Everyday English from the Headway series, published by Oxford University Press, has six sections on conversations, and I’m ranking all six of them at number five. They are rated Beginner, Elementary, Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate, and Advanced.

Number four is LiveMocha, which I’ve ranked highly on a number of other lists. It’s excellent for developing oral, and other, English skills.

English Baby! is number three. It has daily exercises, subtitled videos, dialogues, the works!

I’m putting English Listening Language Lab Online (ELLLO) at number two. It has over 1,000 audio slideshows, games, exercises, songs, etc. — all geared towards developing conversational skills.

And, now, for The Best Site For Developing English Conversational Skills…..it’s the British Council’s J@M. They have a series of excellent audio and animated stories related to everyday situations. Be sure to click on “dialogue” within the animation to see the words as they’re spoken.

My next “The Best…” list will be The Best Sites For Developing Academic English Skills and Vocabulary. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for that list, or comments and differing opinions on this one.

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I had to make a lot of difficult choices to come up with this latest “The Best…” list.

One decision I made was to focus this list more on Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners, or for more advanced ELL’s who primarily would use these sites more to “brush-up” or review some basic pronunciation skills. I am developing another list that I’ll call The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills. That one will probably be geared more towards Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners, and will include more of the sites I received from readers in my call for recommendations.

Several readers recommended sites using the phonetic alphabet. I’ve included them in the second part of this post, but didn’t include any in my Top Ten list. I know some very gifted teachers have been able to help students learn through using this alphabet. I, however, have generally thought it was too confusing for my students, so I don’t feel comfortable including them as one of “The Best…” sites.

In addition, I had a very difficult time ranking this particular list. All ten seemed pretty good to me and, unlike on my other lists, I just couldn’t pick one over the other. So these ten are not listed in order of preference, though I’d be interested in hearing from readers which ones they particularly like.

As with all my “The Best…” lists, links to these sites can also be found on my website.

This list is also linked to the The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. Those sites could certainly be used in conjunction with using the ones on this list.

Here are my picks — not in any order of preference — for The Best Websites For Learning English Pronunciation:

Susana Canelo and Crystal both recommended Ship or Sheep, and I agree with them. The site offers excellent practice using minimal pairs.

English Online has a good pronunciation course that’s worth having your students try.

I recently blogged about Spoken Skills. If I have a favorite out of any of the sites on this list, it’s this one. Spoken Skills provides good, clear, listening practice, and also provides users the ability to easily record what they hear and play it back for comparison.

Minimal Pair Practice and Quizzes from Charles I. Kelly is one of the many extraordinary activities he has created over the years. This is also one of the sites I might slightly favor in this list.

Simple English News has short and current news stories spoken very clearly and very slowly. It’s great for pronunciation practice, and it has engaging content.

Voice of America Special English News, also recommended by Crystal, is probably for students who are closer to being Intermediate English Language Learners than Beginners, but it is an excellent resource because of its interesting content.

I like WordBuilder because it has a zillion exercises and helps students learns both spelling and pronunciation simply in context.

Kids R Cool teachings pronunciation of words through the form of a game my students like.

Spoken English has a lot of examples. The lay-out can be a little confusing, though, and sometimes the words are spoken too quickly.

Lastly, I think WordBuilder from I Know That is the best site out there for phonics practice. And, yes, it has the same name as another “WordBuilder” site on this list. Like with all I Know That activities, when you click on it, an annoying pop-up asking you to register shows-up. Just click on “Maybe Later” and you’ll automatically proceed to the exercise.

That’s my list. As I mentioned earlier, though, some readers had other recommendations. I’m going to list some of them here, though not all. A few will be included in The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills that I’m working on.

Susana Canelo has an extensive list of good sites for English speaking practice.

Laura suggests Pronunciation Tips From The BBC and Cambridge English Online to gain familiarity with the phonetic alphabet.

Ronaldo Lima recommends a Guide To English Phonetic Symbols and New English File Pronunciation Practice.

In addition, both Ronaldo and David Smailes thought Howjsay was a good one. David also suggested Free Resources For Learning English.

And EFL Geek likes the Sounds of American English.

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Spoken Skills is an online English teaching program that has a lot of parts, many which you have to register (and I think pay) for. I have to admit I haven’t taken much time to look around the site.

I did, however, find a nice page that has a number of listening activities that students can follow-up with by using a mike and speak what they’ve heard. They can then play it back and compare it to the original. It’s simple and effective.

I’ve placed the link on my English Themes For Beginners page under Conversations.

I really like this site a lot, and will be placing it on my upcoming “The Best Sites For Learning English Pronunciation.”  I’ve picked the top ten sites for that list, and just have to get around to ranking them and writing the post.

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.

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.

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 also realized that I forgot to include Sketchcast on this list. You can read my original post about it here.)

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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Earlier this week I posted a list of Online Real Time Collaboration Web Applications.  I’ve been exploring a variety of ways to begin having my ESL class work with students around the world.

Today, Kevin Jarrett posted about a great addition to that list — Talk Shoe.

You should read his post to learn more, but the site allows you to have over two hundred people on a voice and/or text chat conference call at the same time.

I’ve placed the link on my Teacher’s Page.

(John Larkin shares his experience with Talk Shoe in the comments section of this post.  I guess when something seems to be too good to be true, it is!)

Ana Maria Menezes, an exceptional EFL teacher in Brazil, and I are discussing having our two high school Intermediate English classes do some joint projects this coming semester.  With all the Web 2.0 tools out there, we will have plenty of options for a class in California to explore working collaboratively with one in Brazil.  Since my class will be one on Government, I think it would be a neat opportunity for them to learn about how another country’s government works, too, and how people work for grassroots social change there as well.

In light of this potential upcoming project, I’ve been thinking about ways our two classes can easily communicate with one another — without getting any extra equipment.

I’ve learned about a site called MeBeam that might work out really well.  It allows you to have up to eighteen people on the same video conference call, and it’s all browser-based.  But you can participate in the call if you only have a microphone, too, so a Webcam is not necessary.

It’s free and doesn’t require any pre-planning with the site.  All you do is go to the site and give your “virtual” room a unique name.  Then others can log-on, too.

It almost seems too good to be true, which makes me a little suspicious.  But with all the incredible web applications that have been coming out lately, what do I know?

I’ve placed the link on my Teacher’s Page under Telephone.

(Oops, I just realized I forgot to mention that I learned about MeBeam from the MakeUseof blog)

(Pierre Renaud makes an important comment about making sure students don’t click on the “Random Room” link on this site.  That could definitely lead to inappropriate content.  By the way, Pierre has an excellent collection of ESL links here.)

Outshouts is the latest of several new audio web applications that I’ve posted about in the past week.  In addition to sending an audio message spoken by the student, they can also send a song.  The url of the message and the song can then be posted.

It’s extremely easy to use.  I’ve known about this site for awhile, but haven’t posted about it because they haven’t allowed you to email an audio message unless you’ve uploaded an mp3 musical file, too.  This can be problematic if you’re using a school computer.

However, they now have some musical tunes you can access from the site itself.  You can use one of those to accompany an audio message.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Audio Messages.

Wordmaster is a wonderful site from the BBC.  You’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank).  Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style.  You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock.  You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words.

The best thing about the game is that after you’ve either guessed the correct work or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

It’s great for all levels of English Language Learners, though even the “easy” version might be challenging for Beginners.

I’ve placed the link on several areas of my site, including Bilingual Exercises (it’s designed for Chinese speakers learning English but can be played by anyone) and on my English Themes For Intermediate under Favorite Sites.