From vocabulary to multimedia skills

Teacher Riin combines English vocabulary with sound editing skills in an e-learning day activity

Summary

 Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) can give context to your foreign language lessons. In this scenario, students practice vocabulary but at the same time, they practice audio editing. When they physically record sound and process it, they will also start noticing what factors can impact sound quality. This can be a great occasion to collaborate with your ICT teacher colleagues. Throughout the activity, the teacher keeps students active through brainstorming and online quizzes, which also help her formatively assess their work.

 

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Keywords

Multimedia, personalisation, classroom polling, audio editing, vocabulary, foreign languages, CLIL

Quick reference
Objectives
Learn new vocabulary and improve students’ collaboration and digital skills
Country
Estonia
Subject
Foreign languages
Prerequisites
Student account on Google Education, audio recording device (e.g. smartphone)
Implementation level
Advanced
Target group age
12 - 13
DFA tool
Classroom polling, Dashboard/Monitoring tool
Duration
2 sessions

Context

Foreign language classes provide the opportunity to combine language learning with content from other subjects or transversal skills. Teacher Riin Saadjärv from Puhja School, Tartumaa teaches multimedia skills as part of her English lessons. 

The activity

Teacher Riin started with a word cloud on Mentimeter to ask what students think the aim of the class will be. A word cloud is a simple but effective visualisation of data; the size of the words displayed depends on how many students have entered the same word as input. 

As a second step, she asked students to discuss why some keywords occurred more frequently than others. The outcome of the word cloud was embedded on a special webpage made with Google Sites (see Figure 1) that also shows the learning outcomes for a particular class.

Figure 1 The teacher's Google site can be used to deliver instructions, poll results and make announcements (e.g. announcement of e-learning dates).

Teacher Riin shared the tasks through a Google Site with her students. To use Google Education, students need their personal accounts, possibly the ones provided by Google Education to their school. However tasks and instructions can be delivered to students through any dashboard or online communication platform.

Students did a self-assessment test for vocabulary in H5P, a tool that can help teachers create interactive HTML content and engaging activities for their students (see Figure 2). They receive instant feedback about their progress from the quiz results.

Figure 2 A quiz question created with H5P (left) and with Quizlet (right).

Then they practiced vocabulary on Quizlet (alternatively on Quizizz), which provides an easy way to create exercises for students. There are different options for learning, e.g., flashcards, tests, spelling, writing. Again, students receive instant feedback; they can also practice as many times as they like. Then, while watching an interactive video, students answered questions that pop up (it is possible to add “in-video” questions to videos on H5P).

Next step: Working in pairs, students created an audio file with correctly edited dialogues. Their task was to make up two dialogues in English, in which one student is asking for directions and the other one is giving directions. They were asked to use some specific elements (e.g. recordings of the street noise, fade in/fade out) to add authenticity. Students can record these themselves or search for royalty-free sounds on the internet (here is a list of such websites).

For recording and editing, they can use any suitable editing software they have on their device. They can also try out a digital audio workstation (DAW) that they find themselves or with the help of an Informatics teacher, e.g. here is a comprehensive list).

Students share their audio files both with their teacher and peers. They assess each other’s recordings through Wooclap. It would be helpful to provide a set of rubric criteria for this assessment. Alternatively, Flipgrid can be used, that has an embedded rubric. 

The students did a final self-assessment, on a Google form that the teacher prepared before the lesson. The teacher used her students’ self-assessments as feedback that help her understand her students’ learning experience better.

This practice is originally designed for the e-learning school day in Puhja School, when students work on their assignments from home. Therefore it is suitable for remote or blended teaching. Different e-learning environments are used to create tasks and evaluate the learning-process. It is a great way for students to use their ability to work independently. Before students start working on their own, the teacher can explain what is meant by self-directed learning, and how students can set goals and tasks for themselves.

If the students are at home, they can write the script for the dialogue in a shared document (Google docs) and decide on the sounds they will use in the recording. Each student records their lines of the dialogue separately.  Then one student combines the dialogue files into one recording, and afterwards the other student adds the sounds. Work in pairs can be organized via videoconferencing breakout rooms or shared online documents. In a hybrid setting, the in-class students should be equipped with headsets to ensure smooth running of the discussion and no disturbance while talking with their online pair in a breakout room and  preparing and  recording the dialogue. 

Outcomes and lessons learned

“We will use this practice in the future, but for the next time, a short example audio-file might help students understand the task.” Riin reflects. At the same time, they can directly comment on the file to practice peer assessment.

Students of 12-13 years of age might need support in choosing and learning to use a sound editing tool. Teachers can collaborate with ICT teachers to prepare this activity, as it combines ICT, multimedia, and foreign language learning. While practicing vocabulary, students learn about sound mixing. When they physically record sound and process it, they can also start noticing impacts on sound quality, such as the room size and equipment, distance to the microphone, background noise, etc.