Sharing Technology to Learn a Language

The learning process has changed dramatically in recent years. Long gone are the days of chalk and talk when the teacher used to talk and talk and write on the board and students sat, listened and took notes. Nowadays classrooms and learning spaces are much more interactive places and technology has played a major role in this interaction making learning much more fun.

I’m sure however that many of you have sometimes felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of technical learning aids which are readily available.

The problem is that there is so much out there and before we find the one or ones which suit us best we have to go through a whole load of uninteresting material. Wouldn’t it be great if we could share our favourites straight away?

The material which works best for you really depends on how you learn and what motivates you, so if you like music, for example, you might find  Lyricstraining interesting.  On this website you can search for hundreds popular music videos that have been subtitled, although with some of the words removed. You type in the missing words as you hear them. If you’re not fast enough, the video will stop until you fill in the correct words. There are four levels of difficulty.

If you’d like to improve your pronunciation, try out the English Pronunciation Module, created by the Centre for Modern Languages at the UOC, which has lots of useful examples and practical exercises. I recommend that you use Mozilla Firefox in order to get the full benefit of the recording feature.

I could write a long list of other Internet sites and apps, but, as I said above, that might be “overwhelming”.  What would be truly interesting is to hear from you and find out what apps or sites have worked for you and helped you to enjoy the learning process. I’m waiting!