Ziyu's blog

When teaching high school students, due to the pressure of the college entrance examination, students may save a lot of time for learning English, including memorizing words and studying grammar. For instance, when they are in a line or taking the subway, they often need a mobile English tool. The app BBC Learning English is a good choice. First of all, students can choose what they want to learn: grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation, it has a great deal of autonomy.  This is a pure website,   it filters out many contents that have nothing to do with learning English learning. The real speaking speed enables students to naturally acquire language through input. There is no need for teachers to prepare any materials at all. The content on the website is highly structured and comes with subtitles, vocabulary lists and exercises. It is suitable for both guidance use and independent learning by students, it can meet the individual needs of everyone. However，the content o...

When I was still in high school, my teacher would play TED talk videos for us, trying to encourage us to study hard with those inspiring and passionate words.   They have rich content, with different kinds  of   topics .   They can be  used in an English classroom   as listening practice materials , they can also  stimulate students' critical thinking and desire for expression . Through this class, I know TED Ed, which is focused on education, more than just spe e ch. Every video comes with tests, open-ended questions, and students also can discuss with each others on it, it makes the teaching activities more interactive. There are different kinds of subjects offered, and students can choose what they are interested in,   a s the saying goes, “Interest is the best teacher”.  TED   Ed  enhances students’ memory and comprehension through video, audio, subtitles, and interactive areas. I will   lead  the high school stud...

As is well known,   ChatGPT  has a very powerful information processing capability.   When students lack an English-speaking environment, I will encourage them to  use it  to practice their oral English . When engaging in conversations with others in real life, some low oral proficiency  learners  often feel anxious and shy.   Having a conversation with AI has perfectly solved this problem, eliminating the awkwardness caused by pauses, unfamiliar words, and forgetting in real life . It can also cover various topics, ranging from daily life to economics and art, etc.,  it can  enabling students to acquire a more comprehensive vocabulary.   By processing the content of the conversation, AI can also assist students in correcting their accents and grammatical errors in sentences.   When  the contact is over, it can record your conversation with it in text form, which is convenient for students to review   the dialogu...

I have noticed that many Chinese students, including myself in the past, think that the pronunciation of oral English is extremely challenging. It may not be so difficult to make others know your meaning clearly in simple English. However, it is undeniable that fluent spoken English and correct pronunciation are a great social card for every second-language speaker. In this class, I learned about a useful website-- YouGlish. First of all, I think “Youblish" is an interesting name, because in China, due to cultural differences and the lack of proficiency in spoken language, what many people utter is often referred to as "Chinglish", and the materials on it is collected from YouTube, so it named "YouGlish". On this website, you only need to input any word that you wonder the correct pronunciation, it will search from millions of videos on YouTube, you can know its pronunciation in different contexts, and also understand its most common collocations by referring t...

 In this class, our group chose the Padlet. I think it is a very efficient tool for English teachers and learners. Padlet is an online collaborative page, it  allows students to upload various texts  and pictures, they can also upload some links. It is a shared page, everyone can add their own opinion on it. We used the Padlet to discuss the Learning Technologies in the ELT Classroom,  each part of the map is typed by our group mates.   I think the most significant advantage of this tool is that it is logically clear and it can updae everyone's viewpoints in real time. On the map, you can see who uploaded these ideas. If you are finding some similar tools, especially those available in China, I will recommend you the Xmind.  Here is a map I created for my written discourse class. You can see the clear classification and some pictures in it,  and it is easy to show the connection between different parts of them. By the way, you can add a comment under e...

Hello everyone, I am a TESOL student from the University of Warwick. I am very interested in trying out different teaching tools. Today I want to share you the usage of Voki. Voki is a very interesting website. All you need to do is just upload your text or audio, then select the character and voice you like, and it can generate the teaching animation automatically. I used it to create a simple video. The link is in  My Video . You can choose different lovely characters: And there are different kinds of accents: Just type what you want to say or upload an audio: Click the "save" and you can get a video. This tool is very easy to operate. If you want your class to look more interesting, you should adopt this way. I find that in my class, some students are  very shy, especially when they are engaged in oral conversations. By using voki, they can bind themselves to the character and use a little cat or dog to replace their own....