Corpus tool for learning and research- BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS (BYU-BNC)

Hi!

For this entry, I would like to share with you a website which provides millions of text corpus. Its Bitish National Corpus by British Young University (BYU-BNC. Corpus is a collection of texts. Sounds complicated? Don't worry. I will help you to understand. (I also in your situation when I first heard the word.;p)

The LOGO

WHAT IS IT?

It is websites which stores a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources. It is good for language learning as people can check how the language is used based on its frequency.

 

WHO CAN USE IT?

The tool is suitable for students who are:

• beginner, intermediate and expert level of English

HOW TO USE THE TOOL IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

• the collocation games

Teacher prepare a pre-prepared slide of words. I each slide, teacher write one words. Then, in class, teacher divide students into 2 big groups. They are asked to guess the best word that go with the sentences. The teacher then can check the concordance lines in class. (believe me, its fun!)

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool promotes autonomous learning, where students can always look for the concordance by themselves at home. Autonomy is important in independent learning as it built students' confidence and knowledge.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT

• It is authentic-the examples of words are all based on the real life usage
• It prepare students with real life words
• It is FREE!

WHAT I HATE ABOUT IT

• It is too  wordy. There are lots of words and it sometimes make students lost interest in a short time
• The website is too plain-nothing colorful or fun.

STEP BY STEP USING BYU-BNC

Step 1: Go to British National Corpus

Step 2: Enter the text that you want to look up

Step 3: You got lots of example of the sentences using the word

how it looks like

Okay. I hope I do provide you with some help for the website. Have fun using concordance!:-)

Send your video via MAILVU

Good day, everyone!

For this entry I would like to share with you another cool website which is called Mailvu. Personally, I love this website. It enable you to send video email in just a minute! It is very easy and simple to use. If you don't believe me, read further and decide.

Sending email is not just sending words

WHAT IS IT?

Mailvu is a tool that enable you to send video email. That's mean that you can send your video to another person email through Mailvu without the fuss to attach any video in email. The tool do all the jobs for you. All you need to do is record your video and enter the person's email address. The tool is basically free for free account. But they also offer Business account (of course you need to pay for it!) which has more features. 

WHO CAN USE IT?

The tool is suitable for students who are:

• beginner, intermediate and advance level. The tool is very easy to use nad the task difficulty can be made vary according to students' level. And of course its your job, teacher!:-)

HOW CAN IT BE USED IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

• connected classroom-speaking activity

Connected classroom is having students doing speaking or writing outside the classroom. Mailvu can be use for connected classroom activity to make students practice their speaking. The teacher could give a topic for students to respond to at home. Using Mailvu, the students will have to record their response and sent to the teacher email.

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool can be used to promote autonomous learning among students. In connected classroom, students are doing the speaking at home, without teacher's help. Autonomy is important in language learning as it more effective and solve the motivation issue (either the students are interested to engaged in the activity or not)

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT

• It is very easy and simple to use
• It allows autonomous learning via giving students chance to do the speaking activity on their own
• It support connected classroom activities
• Once you received a video email, you can reply the sender with the video email too
• It is FREE!

WHAT I HATE ABOUT IT

• Unless you have Business account you will not be able to save or to put the video in your website or blog. 

STEP BY STEP USING MAILVU

Step 1: Go to http://mailvu.com/index.htm

Step 2: Click 'Allow' to use your camera and microphone

Step 3: Record your video

Step 4: When you satisfied with your video, click Send Video  
            Mail

Step 5: Enter the information asked like the email address   
           of you and the person you want to send the video to

Step 6: You video is sent!

Click allow and record your video. Then click Send

Enter your friend's email address and the video mail is sent

As I did not sign up for Business account, I can't embed my video email that I have done here. So, if you want to know how it works, try it yourself. It really simple and easy and quick! It is really something you should try!

Now everyone can make a movie. Thanks to ZIMMER TWINS!

Holla :-)

I am in a pretty good mood today as I just finished making my first own movie (actually more like animation...but its still cool.:p). Yup. I am using Zimmer Twins, the new website that I would like to introduce today. Oh. Before I forget, I just knew an interesting fact about Zimmer Twins which I don't think many people know about it unless they really search it. It is about how Zimmer Twins got its name....Ha3. I will only tell you at the end of this entry. So, try to guess about what is it as you go through this entry.

The font looks spooky, right?

WHAT IS IT?

Zimmer Twins is a website which allows you to make movie using the predetermined characters,expressions, actions, and backgrounds. Unlike Dvolver, (the movie making website I introduced earlier) this website is way too awesome. The quality is very good. Its almost as good as Happy Tree Friends cartoon and you dont have to have a degree in movie making course to made a movie. Futhermore, it is so simple to use.You should to try it!

WHO CAN USE IT?


The tool is suitable for students who:

• beginner, intermediate and advance level of English. Personally, I think it is more suitable to be used with students who are in beginner and lower intermediate English level as the website allows limited words entered in a dialogue bubble. So, students with advance level might find it boring. But again, it depends on how you used it.:-)

HOW CAN IT BE USED IN TEACHING ENGLISH

• speaking activity

In a lesson, teacher can introduced the website to the students. Giving a short introduction and short demonstration on how to use the website would be very helpful for the students as it can help the students understand how to use the website. Next, teacher can divide the students into a group of three students and ask them to make a short movie. Give them appropriate time to finish it (it shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes). Ask the students to send the movie to your email (I will explained why later). Ask each group to present their movie and other students can ask questions. Make sure all the group member have turn speaking

Note: This lesson might take 2 hours to complete

• writing activity

From the speaking activity above, teacher can ask students to write an essay which include a scene form the movie that they produced earlier. The activity can be done as a homework.

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool can increase students motivation as it allows students to express themselves through their creativity in making movies. 

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT IT

• The quality of the movie is very good
• It is very fun and can be motivating for students
• It is easy to use and simple
• It allows students to be creative in designing their own story line for a movie
• It is partially free- If you want to get access to more characters,  characters,expressions, actions, and backgrounds, you will need to pay for VIP membership (which is not too expensive)

THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT

• I dont quite like that it is partially free
• Like Dvolver, the characters dont have voice- but there are sound effects!
• We can't embedded or share it in blog. If we want to put in the blog, we have use other tool (like Vodpod). The only way to share the video is by sending it to emails. That is why in suggested activity previously, you have to ask the students to send it to your email
• The words that you can write in the dialogue bubble is limited

STEP BY STEP TO USE ZIMMER TWINS

Step 1: Go to Zimmer Twins

Step 2: Sign up for free. (they will need your parents'email 

            to send a password but you can give your email 

            instead.)

Step 3: Select what do you want to do- Make a movie or  

            Watch a movie. If you want to watch a movie, just 

            click at Watch a movie and choose the movie that 

            you like

Step 4: If you want to make a movie, click on Make a movie

Step 5: You can choose either want to make a movie using 

            the given starters (so, you will only have to make 

            the  ending) or  from scratch (you will have to make   

            the movie all by you own)

Step 6: To make it easier, you can click at How to Make a 

            Movie button where there will be a simple 

            introduction on how to make a movie- believe me, 

            its useful!

Step 7: Start making your movie

Step 8: You can send your movie to a friend's email.

Choose either want to make or watch a movie

Decide either you want to use a given starter or make from scratch

Start making movie

EXTRA INFORMATION YOU NEED TO KNOW

• REMEMBER! You must sign up first. If not, the movie you made is not save and you can't view it once you leave the website
• As you adding plot, you can always delete the previews plot or adding the new one. Plus you can also view how your movie is progressing although you didn't finish the movie yet. Its very helpful.:-)

I already made mine and I am very happy about it.At least I manage to made a movie. Yay! But as I told you before, I can't embedded it in my blog ( I am too busy to use Vodpod). So, I can't show you my first movie.Sobs..T_T..But to show you how a movie from Zimmer Twins looks like, I had put one (which I got from youtube). I also put a Happy Tree Friends video so that you can compare the quality. 

BEWARE: Happy Tree Friends video might contains scene that can make one feel dizzy.Don't watch if you might get dizzy seeing blood, brain etc.

The quality is not bad right? Go and make your movie and if you think its good, you can send it to my email. Can't wait to see yours.(mood:excited!)


*how Zimmer Twins got its name?
Zimmer Twins is the characters! Edgar and Eva is a twin! Surprised? (I do as I first found out). And their family name is Zimmer.:-)

ELLLO ENGLISH-Making learning English global

Ellooooo

Hello guys! So, how's your weekend?(mine is fun!) Okay, without wasting any time, I want to introduce you the website that have tons of listening activity which were done by people from various countries. Sounds good, right?...:-)

I still don't get it-why 3 Ls?

WHAT IS IT?

Elllo English is a website which contains thousands of listening activities. Most of them come with downloadable MP3 tracks, text views, slideshows, audio notes and also quizzes. With this website, you can sharpen your listening and comprehension skills. The listening activities are categorize into several categories; Views, Mixer, Game, News and Scenes. Each categories offers different context.

WHO CAN USE IT?

This tool is suitable for the students who are:

• beginner, intermediate and advance level of students. It is depending on how the teacher orgsnize the listening activity to cater the students' level

HOW CAN WE USE IT IN TEACHING ENGLISH

• listening activity

Surely, this tool is great for listening activity as they offer all we need to do the listening activity in the classroom. The teacher can choose a topic that might get students interested. Before listening, the teacher can preview the comprehension questions (which are provided) and ask the students to guess what will they listen. Then, play the recording and ask them to listen. Give them the comprehension questions (which showed earlier) and ask them to answer. Discuss the answer.

• speaking activity

Speaking activity can be done as a follow up activity (after listening activity suggested above). The teacher can divided students into pairs and ask them to response to the video. For example, if the listening activity topic is 'Studying alone of in group', the teacher can ask the students whether they prefer study alone or in group and they should give reasons for their answer. While the students are discussing, the teacher can walk around and listen for their conversation. It is useful for the teacher to make note of the language they used and discuss it later. 

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool helps students to become more cultural competence as the videos in the website shows different people from different cultural background speaking English in their accents. 

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT IT

• Some of the listening activities come with downloadable MP3 tracks, so teacher can download them and can use them in the classroom where the internet is not available

• The listening activities comes with transcript and some of the listening activities can also be printed

• It has variety of topics to choose from, most of them are interesting. Thus students can become more motivated to listen

• It provides students with the purpose for listening as there are comprehension question to be answered afterwards
• It supports autonomous learning, where students can do the listening activity by their own will

• There are videos which show people with various accents speak about a given topic. These spoken English can surely be useful for students to be more prepared in the real world-it is real language!

• And of course because it is FREE!

THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT

• It is not organised. There are lots of listening activities (about 1000++!) and they only being categorized into 5 categories. It is very hard to find your favourite topic-you have to search them one by one. Some of impatient students will just leave the website before they could find their topic.

• The advertisements on the website is pretty annoying. Some of them really disturbing the view of the website!And some of them can distract our focus too. (They even have the 'dating website advertisement'. How do you find it helps in learning?..hmmm)

• As the videos are from different versions, some versions do not offer downloadable MP3 tracks, text views, slideshows, audio notes and quizzes.:-(

STEP BY STEP TO USE ELLLO ENGLISH

Step 1: Go to Elllo English

Step 2: Select what category of listening do you want to 
            hear

Step 3: Choose you preferred listening topic

Step 4: Listen to the video and answer the question

Choose the catogery

If you choose Game category, choose the topic that you want to listen

Here I included an example of the listening video.

I think, it is a great idea that we get to see the person who is speaking as facial expression is one of important things in conversation. I already tried the website and I think you should too.:-)

Just click to learn with CLICKnLEARN

Hello hello!

Have you ever feel bored doing exercise in a piece of paper? Well if you do, maybe you can sometimes try doing it online. There are many good websites that offer good exercises that can cater your level. Thus, in this entry, I will give you some important information about Click n Learn website. Without more time wasting babbling, lets look at the website together!

Yup, just click the mouse to learn!

WHAT IS IT?

It is a website which offers students with lots of exercise in different levels. The exercises are presented in fun and interesting way with colourful images and sounds. What's more interesting is, the website can be used in 4 languages!( English, Francais, Valencia or Espanol). The website is actually develops for Spanish speakers but as they also offer Engkish language, we also can use it.:-)

WHO CAN USE IT?

 The tool is suitable for  students who are:

• beginner and intermediate level of English. The advance level of students might find the exercises are boring.

HOW CAN WE USE IT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

• assist teacher to give clear example and explanation

As the website is full of colour and fun, it might be motivated for the students if teacher can use the example given in the website as example in teaching English. For example, when teaching preposition, teacher can use the visual in the websites to show how the object is situated to students. It might help students to understand it clearly as they can see the object's position. Plus, in some grammar topics, the websites also offer explanation on how to use certain grammar rules

• testing students understanding of a topic

Just to let you know, the exercise in the website is printable! So, you can print it and give them to your students as an extra exercise to them. But remember, DO NOT give them loads of them as it might get your students become lazy (thus, the end up not doing it). Just give some exercises that you think might test whether the got what you have taught for that day. 2 sheets are the maximum number of handout that you can gave!

•  an option for students to practice language at home

Although I am not very sure how many students will do the exercise willingfully at home (because I dont do untold exercise-the one that you do without teacher telling you to do.:p), but you can give a try. The teacher can suggest the website for students to do at home.

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool can be used to promote autonomous learning among students. By doing the listening practise at home, students are responsible for their own learning. Autonomy is important in language learning as it more effective and solve the motivation issue (either the students are interested to engaged in the activity or not)

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT IT

• It provides good explanation about how to use grammar rules
• It gives clear example which might really help students to understand certain things in English
• With all those colours, visuals and sound effects, it will definitely attract students' interest to learn
• It is easy to use
• It is FREE!

THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT

• The first thing that I found quite annoying about the website is that the level is based on Spanish students. So for those non- Spanish students, you might find it hard at first to find your level- you might have to try all the level to know where yours are. (I wonder, why don't they just put beginner, intermediate and advance level?Its easier. hmmph)

• The back button. I have an issue with the back button in this website! Firstly, their existence is not consistent  Some of the exercises have it, some don't. Seccondly, once you click the back button, you will have to start the activity all over again! ARGHH! Its very distressful! 

• User has lack of control on the activity they are doing. The exercises are supposed to  be answered according to their sequence and unless you can answer the question correctly, you will stuck at the question FOREVER. If you are in this situation, you can do three things. One way is you can click one back button and go to the explanation to get the correct answer. BUT then, you will have to start the activity all over again. Second way is, you can just click the next button and doing another activity. BUT, you will lost all the marks the previous exercise offered. Third way is you can just leave the website and go watching Youtube (which what I've been doing)

STEP BY STEP TO USE CLICKnLEARN

Step 1: Go to http://clicknlearn.net/

Step 2: Click ENTER SITE and it will open the tool in Flash  
            Version

Step 3: Choose your language

Step 4: Shoot at menu and choose your level (at left 
            handside)

Step 5: Choose the topic you want to do

Step 6: Start learning!

Click ENTER SITE

Shoot at Menu

Choose you level and topic of activity at the left hand site

To give you a better picture on how the activity will look like, I had embedded a video which shows you how to use the website and how the activity look like. Briefly. 

Okay. So, how do you feel about the website? Try it! And leave the comment here. I would love to know how you feel about the website as I am not really like. But, different people has different view. That's all for this entry. Have fun trying it!;-)

Creating fun word cloud with WORDLE

Hye to all!

In this post I would like to introduce another new website (which I just figured it out recently) which called Wordle. As fun as it sounds (isn't the sound is cute?..:)..), the tool itself is very interesting and can be very helpful in teaching language as it allow you to create a word cloud from any text. And the best thing is that you can edit the shape, colour and size of your word cloud. Isn't its interesting?...

the logo looks quite normal,right?
wait until you see what the tool can do.:p

WHAT IS IT?

Wordle is a tool which can generate “word clouds” from any text that we like. This is how it works. When you paste your chosen text into Wordle, it will make a words cloud The cloud gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Then, you can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.Lastly, you can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Its so simple, right?:-)

WHO CAN USE IT?

The tool is suitable for students who:

• beginner, intermediate and advance level of English. The difficulty of the word cloud produced depends on the difficulty of the text and how the teacher use it in the activity.

HOW CAN IT BE USED IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

• pre-reading activity

Teacher choose a suitable text for reading activity and make a word cloud of the text using Wordle. Make copies of both the text and the word cloud. In the classroom, the teacher can give the copies of the word cloud first before given the reading text. Teacher can ask student to study the word cloud and guess what the text is all about. During this activity, teacher can also discuss the difficult word that appeared in the word cloud.

• writing activity

Teacher choose an interesting essay and make a word cloud of the text using Wordle. Make copies of the word cloud. In the classroom, the teacher can give each student a copy of the word cloud and ask them to study it and write an essay using all the words in the word cloud. allow them to continue their essay at home. In the next lesson, give them the real essay (the one you used to make word cloud). Ask them to compare their essay with the real one. Elicit the differences and the similarities. Collect their essay to mark.

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• The tool can be increase students motivation to learn as the tool is interesting and fun to use. students might find themselves happy doing the activity. 
• It helps students with visual intelligence as there words are presented in different form. 

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT IT

• It engages students with text analysis by looking at language and vocabulary in details
• It helps students in getting the gist if the text
•  The power is in our hand- we can create the clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes that suit us well
• It is completely FREE!

THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT

• It needs JAVA Player to sift the text into word cloud. If not, you cannot make one. (I'm quite pissed of with this requirement as it made me unable to create my own cutiey word cloud...hmmph..)

STEP BY STEP USING WORDLE

Step 1: Go to Wordle

Step 2: Click 'Create' at the top of the website

Step 3: Paste your text in the box provided and click GO

Step 4: The tool will sift the text into a word cloud

Step 5: Edit the word cloud the way you like it and you are 
            ready to use it!

colourful word cloud

black and white word cloud

green word cloud?

WOW!..There are so many things to try with this tool! So, What are you waiting for? Try use the tool in your classroom. You can also share your ideas on how you use it in your classroom at the comment below. I'm sure there will be tons of interesting ideas!:-)

Visualize the words using VISUWORDS

Holla!

I have been introduced with a few websites recently so I am all pumped up to try it all. Visuwords is one of them. It is an online graphical dictionary (as written in their website). So, is it as fun as it sounds? Lets check it out!

Am I the only one that thought
Visuwords sound like kinda Indians?hmm..

WHAT IS IT?

It is a tool that help you to search the meaning of the words, the connections between the meanings and their association with the other words and concepts so that you can get the whole picture of the word meaning. The most interesting part (I think it is interesting) is that the way they organize all the meaning and relationship of the words using kinda 'atomic structure-like' shape. ( Below, the right picture is the atomic structure and the left picture is the Visuwords picture. Aren't they look alike?...hmm)

                                       

WHO CAN USE IT?

This tool is suitable for students who:

• intermediate to advance level of English. The students with lower level of English might not understand how the system (the tool) work

HOW CAN IT BE USED IN TEACHING ENGLISH

• activate students' schemata for pre-reading activity

In some reading activity, the teacher might want to use Visuwords to activate students' schemata by showing them some difficult words meaning taken from Visuwords. As the tool explains a word meaning quite good, the students might understand the words better and might even get a picture of what the reading might be about. But please take note that use Visuwords for words that hard to explains so that students can get more benefits of the tool.

THEORY OF LEARNING USING THE TOOL

• So far, I can't think of one. I will update if I find one. (Do help me if you can. Thanks in advance.:p)

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT IT

• It gives lots of information about the words
• Unlike dictionary, it portrays words' meaning in a fun way (with colours, errors and the 'atomic structure' shape- great to impress students
• Besides giving the meaning of words, it provides us with example of the sentence using the words too
• It is free! No membership required to use the tool

THINGS I HATE ABOUT IT

• It is complicated to used- with all the errors showing the relationships that I don't really bother to know, I'm rather used my old thick dictionary to find words'meaning
• If you really want to look for the meaning only, Visuwords might take a lot of your time as it did not show the words meaning clearly, but showing all those relations and antonyms which you not need to know at that time
• It is quite confusing (When I tried it first time, I do find it confusing). With all errors and mix colours, it might not be something that we want to use just to know what a word means in a middle of our reading
• Sometimes, it explains words using a 'high level' words. Its like you have to search for the meaning of the word in the provided meaning ( please ask me about this if you still don't get what I'm trying to say)

STEP BY STEP TO USE VISUWORDS

Step 1: Go to Visuwords

Step 2: Enter the word that you want to know its meaning

Step 3: Press 'Enter' and the tool will generate the map of 
            word meanings and the type of relations those 
            meanings and related concepts have.

Enter a word

A map of the word's meaning appeared

EXTRA INFORMATION YOU NEED TO KNOW

• The various colours represent different types of connections. For examples, “is a kind of”, “is a member of”, “opposes”, etc. All of these connections are shown at the left hand side in the website
• When you move your mouse over a node, you will get more detailed descriptions and sample sentences. You can also drag the nodes and rearrange the image to concentrate on the parts you’re interested in.

Well, as you can expect (maybe some of you can...) I am not really into this tool. I might use it in my teaching if only I do not have any ideas to do my pre-reading activity. If you have any ideas in how to use it in classroom, please feel free share it with me.:-)