British National Corpus (Week 4)

What?

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century, both spoken and written.

BNC webpage

How to use it?

Step 1: Go to BNC website and you can see as above
Step 2: Type a word or phrase in the search box and press the Go button to see up to 50 random hits from the corpus.
Step 3: You can search for a single word or a phrase, restrict searches by part of speech, search in parts of the corpus only, and much more.
Step 4: The search result will show the total frequency in the corpus and up to 50 examples.

Suggested activities:

1. Pronunciation activity. Teacher can check students' pronunciation of the words. This is because the tool is describing the authenticity language use by native speaker.

2. Teacher can make a concordance games in a classroom. Teacher line up all the students and ask one another the concordance of words. If they are correct, they will get a point.

I like it because:

1. It shows to the students the word usage 'as it really is' which is an authentic examples
2. It shows a pattern of word grammar
3. The Corpus is not just a teacher or expect opinions, it is based on an evidence.

I don't like it because:

1. students may get confused because it gives a lot of example for one word.

Relevant site:

A video on Youtube gives you an idea of how to use BNC.

Listen and Write (Week 2)

What?

Hi, today we are going to look at the next tool in learning language which is 'Listen and Write.' It is a simple but very useful site for learners of English. It helps students in dictation practice where you listen to a text and then you have to write down every word you just heard. The users' work is checked in real time and they have to spell each word correctly. If they make a mistake, they need to try again until they get it correctly. The users can stop and play the text again as many times as they like. There are a lot of different levels of difficulty, so the users will find their own suitable texts based on their level.The activity is suitable for secondary school at the age of 13 to 17 years old. It can be used by the teacher as a classroom activity or as a homework.

Listen and Write webpage

How to use it?

Step 1: Go to the Listen and Write website and you will see a webpage as above.
Step 2: Choose a story that you want to listen. There are different types of difficulties available such as Full mode, Quick mode or Blank mode
Step 3: After that, click the play button to listen and at the same time try to write words in the box provided.
Step 4: If you unable to spell the word correctly, you can click the hint button. A red 'good' will appear at the end of line if you write correct sentence.
Step 5: You can also submit your own oral recording as part of the bank of recorded items.

*If you want to have a clear instruction on how to use the tool, you can visit Russell Stannard Website


Suggested activities:

1. Teacher used it as a listening activity. Teacher can ask students to work individually or in pair. Students listen to the audio transmission and fill in the blank to complete the text. The process of doing it may help students to become better listeners in real-life situation.

2. Besides, teacher can give a homework for students where they need to find an article on internet and record it. Then, they will exchange the recording with the others to transcribe. It makes the learning process becomes more meaningful for the students.

3. Autonomous learning can happen when the students have free time and practice a listening skill by their own, outside classroom environment.


I like it because:

1. It can add on students' vocabulary by referring words to the dictionary.
2. Students are expose to the authentic language because there are lots of articles available on it.
3. It can develop students' autonomous learning where students practice the language by their own.
4. It is free and everyone can use it
5. Students can choose their preferences level based on their competency in a target language
6. It is a fun way of learning a new language
7. Students can evaluate and assess themselves after doing the activity

I don't like it because:

1. Unreliable sources of text as everyone can contribute to post the article
2. Students can get distraction with the other links on web
3. Some students may not have a proper technology facilities such as internet connection
4. Teacher does not know the progress of the students if it is an autonomous learning. This is because there is no form of feedback can be given to them.
5. Students may use a 'Hint' button to complete the task without trying it first.


Related Link

Listen and Write on YouTube