Speaking Online

Speaking is one of those skills that I always find challenging to develop through homework assignments. I've come across 3 websites that I think have potential.

English Central
Developed by someone in the Google family, this site uses Youtube videos as a corpus for listening and speaking practice. Students can earn points for recording their voice through voice-recognition software which provides feedback on the student's pronunciation.

So far students really seem to like it (especially those that are shy to talk in class) and the biggest barrier is to get everyone registered with a username/password they can remember and registered into my class so I can track how many points they earn each week.

I like that they can choose which videos to watch and record themselves with. There truly is something for everyone there!

VoiceThread
You or the students create a video based on a still image, or a series of slides/videos. You and students record your comments with audio or text to respond to each area.

I haven't used this one myself, but am encouraged by the examples posted by other language teachers. Here's one example of students in Brazil:


Another lesson where you can learn Brazilian Portuguese:



VOXPOP
I know very little about this, but someone mentioned it on the CALL list serve so I'm interested. It looks to be similar to VoiceThread, but I need to investigate more.