Elllo: The best website to find thousands of different listening activities.

What is Elllo?

Elllo is a website that provides free reading, listening and vocabulary activities made by native and non-native speakers of English. These audio or audiovisual recordings present real English with diverse accents, and also activities related to these recordings. Teachers can use this tool for different levels from pre-intermediate to advanced. It provides thousands of listening material which can be downloaded and saved into your computer. The recordings are also in the form of monologues, dialogues (between two or more people from various countries), games, videos or news.

You can find Elllo by following this link:

elllo.org

How to use Elllo? 

First, you will find a list with the latest and previous contributions to this site. You can either choose one of them and explore or you can also look for some specific features by selecting one from the list named as 'sort by' in the left side of the home page.

Second, it gives you the possibility to make your search even more accurate and easier by selecting any of the features displayed such as, topic, country, media and level in the right side of your screen.

Then, for example, if you want to raise awareness on  different accents of people from a certain country you would have all the listening recordings which have been done for speakers from that country, after, you can choose the topic and level of the listening you want to use.  

Third, the audiovisual recording (http://www.elllo.org/video/M101/M120English.htm)  that you have chosen will display as follows:

In the picture above you can see the video ready to be played and in the right side you have the possibility to see the 'transcript' of the audio or you can hide it if you want and also there is a 'video quiz' to answer after listening to the recording.

There are many ways you can use Elllo, you just need some time to explore it and find out what best suits your needs.

Why is Elllo relevant to language learning?

• Elllo gives teachers the possibility to use it in class and also they can encourage their students to use and practice their listening and reading skills. 

• Students can practice their reading comprehension sub-skill, too.

• Students can have access and benefit by the use of authentic materials. For instance, they can listen to how a language is actually spoken, with hesitations, pauses, repairs, etc. which may be difficult at first but they can be exposed to it, face these real challenges be aware of, and finally, cope with them.

• Students also get more engaged and motivated with the use of authentic materials. Mainly because these materials can link students with the world, beyond the classroom.

• It trains students' listening skill because they can be exposed to different accents of native and non-native speakers of English.

What limitations can you see with the use of Elllo?

• The website is selective. It is not designed for all learners' levels.

• Some of the recordings are not as authentic as others. It seems that some of them are adapted.

• It might be time consuming to look for what you really want. You have to take some time and investigate it.

Dvolver: The greatest moviemaker

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a great tool to make free movies online. You can create your own movie by choosing the background and sky images, selecting the plot, character(s), adding speech bubbles to create your own dialogues for every character in every scene, and selecting the background music. It is an easy online tool  to use for language learning and teaching. 

You can find Dvolver in the following link:

dvolver.com

How to use Dvolver?

You can watch this video to learn how to use Dvolver:

Why is Dvolver relevant to language learning?

• It is a motivating and interesting website for students because they can create their own animated movies and feel more engage with the lesson.

• It gives teachers a new way to present contents. Therefore, students would also feel more motivated.

• Teachers can create suitable dialogues according to students' proficiency in the language, the content they are learning, grammar and vocabulary aspects as well.

• Students are free to create any scene using the different elements available for them. In this way they are developing their creativity.

• It is suitable for all ages because it has a range of different characters.

• It encourages both individual and collaborative work.

• This tool also enhances the development of critical thinking through evaluating information, reasoning, thinking and assessing information in a more comprehensible way. For instance, when students have to create dialogues they have to decide the content, vocabulary, grammar, etc. in order to link the conversation, and connect the series of scenes together in a well organised way, in other words, follow the flow of it. 

  

How might you use Dvolver in class/outside the class?

1. Within the classroom

Teachers can present any new teaching point more interestingly to the students by using Dvolver. For example, teachers would like to present through the communicative approach the function of 'introducing themselves', therefore, teachers can create a  dialogue including the specific function, vocabulary and grammar required to present it. This example would be embedded as a real dialogue to show you how you can use it and the content that you can add in the animated movie. Then, teachers can ask them to work in pairs and create a dialogue in which they would introduce themselves.

     2.  Outside the classroom

• By following the example from above, teachers can ask the students to send the movie they made during the class and they can assess them formatively to check the progress of their work and also to give them some feedback in the next class.

What limitations can you see with the use of Dvolver? 

• There are limited number of words for the sentences you intend to incorporate, limited scenes, characters which are pre-determined and limited in number, too. 

• Students and teachers are not able to listen to the conversation. Therefore, they can only read it. However, if a student is proficiently better in the listening and not in the reading skill, they would face some difficulties because the tool would favor one skill over the other.

The next movie would show you a simple example on how you can use Dvolver in the classroom: