[Listening] VoiceTube

Thinking about improving students' listening skill?
Struggling with super tight school timetables? 
Tired of coursebook stuffs?

Extensive listening can be a better solution

How to guide EFL/ESL learners to do extensive listening

In my experience, high students tend to be interested in novel things, such as pop songs and current events in Western world. Thus, I used to introduce new English songs or video clips relating to core course to my students at school. I'd design some worksheets or questions for them to practice and learn from the authentic materials. Although it was motivational and popular among my students, this intensive practice depended much on limited TIME.


Extensive listening may be a better solution since students can practice after school and outside classrooms. VoiceTube is a fairly nice website, established by a Taiwanese work team. Learners can sign up with there email addresses or Facebook accounts, which makes it more accessible.

The materials are up-to-date, authentic, organised, and even graded. Learners can choose what they want autonomously. 

 
The provided functions are very useful as well, helping individualize input, which is hard to do in classrooms. Students can monitor and adjust their learning as they like.

Practicing listening skill, students can enlarge their vocabulary at the same time. They can look up unfamiliar words with one click and keep their own vocabulary notes. In the notes, learners can learn the meaning, sample sentences, and look for other clips in which the word are used. 

Having vocabulary notes, learners can review the meaning, refer to sample sentences, and look for other video clips, in which the words are used. That is to say, students can learn how to use the vocabulary in both top-down and bottom-up ways.

After watch/listening the video clips, students can take attached quizzes. They can share the result on Facebook, which may result in extrinsic motivation. Even if they fail to answer the questions, they are given chances to replay and some hints. Thus, the task is quite challengeable to learners.  

Also, as speaking and listening are interwoven skills, learners can practice their speaking on the respect of pronunciation and intonation by recording and comparing their speaking with the original soundtracks.

If you're interested, just try and love it.

Spend a little time trying it and introducing it to your students. : )

Please feel free to leave your comments on this tool or on my post.