Ideas For Teaching Languages To TY Students

Students of today have iPods, iPhones, Laptops, Playstations, Facebook, Twitter and communicate in a completely different manner to previous gemerations. Therefore in order to engage with them and teach languages effectively, it is important to use their communication tools.

Each month Stein Study Abroad will share new and exciting methods and resources for teaching languages to secondary school students.

This month we will look at Podcasting and provide you with simple tools and instructions on how you can use it effectively in the classroom.

Podcasting

Audioboo (http://audioboo.fm/)
 
Audioboo is a website which allows users to create, record and upload audio files to share with their family, friends, classmates or post it on your school website.
 
Audioboo is a useful and creative tool for the classroom as you can encourage students to create their own podcasts in a different language. Students could focus on specific areas of the oral examination such as speaking about their family, themselves, school, their future or for honour’s students they could create podcasts on the issues of drugs, the environment, racism and so on.

Classroom Ideas

Teachers will find Audioboo highly beneficial as a homework assignment as it allows them to listen to each students speech and pronunciation, ensuring they know the strengths and weaknesses of the language within their classroom.
 
Another fun way of using Audioboo would be to run competitions within the classroom on who can create the best and most interesting podcast.