Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a great web2.0 tool for recording and sending voice messages. Users will be provided with a link when they finish recording, which they can share via e-mail, facebook, twitter, and so on.

How to use Vocaroo

How can we use it for Language Learning?

Using this tool as a part of a task can be very beneficial to students. For example, lets assume the students have received a homework to do a voice recording of them describing their favourite restaurant, and the recordings are to be sent to the teacher via e-mail. Not only does the students get the initial speaking practice, but after their first recording they may feel unsatisfied with it. What often happens is that students retry multiple times before sending their work to the teacher. 

Another benefit to this is that shy students normally dislike doing presentations in front of the class, and this gives them an opportunity to practise their speaking just like everyone else, whereas inside the classroom they tend to be quite reluctant.

Also, when this tool is used autonomously, I think it can boost a learner's confidence in speaking and listening. The learner could say a sentence, and listen to it for corrections on intonation, pronunciation and so on, improving his/her speaking and listening. This hopefully will result in positive participation in the classroom for the learner.

Benefits and Limitations

• Bypasses the conventional recording procedures(voice recorders, extracting data from the recorders then putting them onto a CD, etc)
• Extremely simple to use
• Great for speaking tasks and practice
• Easy to share with whoever the user wants 
• Students are able to listen to their recordings multiple times and improve it until they are satisfied

• Without a microphone, this tool is completely useless
• Vocaroo currently is only accessible through internet - it is unavailable offline
• Technical problems can arise - if the Vocaroo server unexpectedly shuts down in the middle of a recording there is no way to recover it
• The sound quality is not ideal

Language Guide

A great site for learning vocabulary for beginner learners

The video pretty much shows how the site is used. It is a great website considering how many categories it provides(the sound and video becomes unsynchronised in the video, but it is the only one I could find). 

As you can see from the video, when hovering over any of the pictures, the spelling of the word appears where the mouse cursor is and a recorded voice tells the user what it is. This is great for students struggling with pronunciation. On top of that, some parts of the objects/animals are also provided for students("Scorpion"'s "Stinger" and "Finger"'s "Fingernail", for example)

For me, the best part of this website is that it is multilingual. 

 On the top of the page, students can decide which language to view the categories of vocabulary. The voice and spelling is still in English, of course.

Benefits and Limitations

• Offers a wide variety of vocabulary
• Good for beginners wanting to improve their vocabulary and pronunciation
• Simple to understand how to use
• Multilingual options
• Much better suited for self-studying rather than classroom teaching(will depend on the task)

• Although there is a good selection of vocabulary, students are limited to the provided words
• Quite impractical for efficient use in the classroom(will depend on the task)
• No specific activities on the site