Week 6: Creating your own Materials for the Classroom.

After Reading the articles “Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills” and “Using Original Video and Sound Effects to Teach English” I have acquired new knowledge on the way that CALL can be used to teach specific skills in a second or foreign language. Moreover,  using an original video recording and sound effect to teach English is an excellent idea when we want to integrate videos into lessons, but we don't find them for a specific topic or the material we find is not the most appropriate for our class.    

  

The article show us the idea of recording yourself or make a video about something by yourself, it sounds very challenging, but at the same time it is the opportunity to try something new and that I would like implement in my classes. Something interesting about this is that it is possible to use the same video to teach different topics and practice different skills like vocabulary, grammar, and listening. It is important to say that creating material for the different skills is kind of difficult, but using this methodology we can do and get what we need for our classes.

Furthermore, in the article I read about the advantages and disadvantages of the integration of CALL for speaking skills. CALL provides motivation to students and it has a variety of resouerces to use. In addition, language teachers and learners are provided with an authentic and stimulating conversational environment. For example, broadcasting, video or audio conferencing over the network, discussion forums, etc. However, computer programs for speaking or pronunciation do not always imitate a human voice very well and they are unable to produce or understand natural language or have a real verbal interaction. Using a recording voice is very important because you are helping your students, but at the same time teacher are learning new things to integrate new materials in the classroom.