A different way to work with speaking skills

Getting our students to talk in the target language is sometimes a hard task. Here are some tools that we can use to boost our students' motivation and which, hopefully, will engage them in some meaningful talking. I took these ideas from Shelly Terrell's webinar: teaching with speaking tools and apps. 

Blabberize

Blabberize is a very user friendly tool. You upload an image and in three very simple steps you can make it talk (i.e. make it move its mouth). That's it, no registration or payment required. You can upload an audio or record your voice in the moment, too. I tried it and loved it. Here's a caption of my trial:

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a tool used mainly for recording. It requires registration and the good thing about it is you can record up to 120 minutes! For free! You can also share your recordings and listen to other's. I really didn't feel like saying anything in particular, so I recorded myself playing something simple on my charango. It's the intro to a song called Huayno del Diablo. Here it is:

Goanimate

Goanimate.com is a webpage where you can create your own video. Registration is required, but it's free. There is a "plus" version for which you have to pay, but the free one offers plenty of options to choose from. Thus, you get to choose the characters, the settings, the props, the sounds and, here comes the best part: you can record your own voice. Thus, you can have students speak in the target language. 

I explored the tool and tried it out. Here's a picture of the creation process:

You can see that on the left you have the options: list of characters, props, effects, etc.

I made a video with a grammar point in mind: "will" for spontaneous decisions. After having taught and practised this point I could ask students to brainstorm situations in which they would have to make a spontaneous decision, for example, a friend shows up in your house out of the blue. The great thing about this tool, is that it offers very creative settings and characters. Thus, students may get inspired and think of very unusual situations. This is the one I created:

A strange meeting by laucascone on GoAnimate

Quite bizarre, right? But making it was fun, so I'm guessing students will probably feel enthusiastic too. 

We could think of many ways of integrating these three tools. For example, students could first sit down in groups and think of situations in which they would have to make spontaneous decisions. They can use the regular pen and paper to write the dialogues. They could then record and listen to themselves on soundcloud. They could work on intonation, expression, pronunciation, chunking, etc. To take things to a different level, they could use Goanimate. When students have a look at all the settings and characters available, they might probably feel like changing the original idea. And that would be ok. Finally, after having made the video, a further step would be to ask students to imagine a little bit about these characters' lives. They could then upload a picture of them to Blabberize and have them talk about a particular topic, for example, where they live, what they like doing, their personalities, etc.