Second Reflection

The American students in my class greatly benefitted from the online listening test I proposed in my previous assignment. Therefore, to make full use of technology in the class, I will apply the test to oral teaching also.

When I studied English in high school, I used a re-read machine. This device required us to read the passages in the book aloud, and perfect our accent and intonation. Repeating this process many times helped me greatly with my fluency and grasp of conversational English.

When I was in college, my professor introduced us to a program called ‘Sitman’. I found this helped me far more than the re-read machine. One can copy-paste a sentence or a passage into this program, which would then read it out for you. Additionally, one can also upload an mp3 file, and the program would allow you slow the audio down to your preference, for easier understanding.

A fellow student of mine mentioned another program that she had previously used. When she read passages on the computer screen, the colour of the word would change to indicate that she had pronounced the word incorrectly. Your grade would be based on your overall pronunciation. In order to receive the perfect score, you would have to read the passage repeatedly, until it is read without any errors. This program sounds even more useful to me.

These are just some programs that can be used for language learning, and I endeavour to make use of them in class.