Web SpeakApps

Il progetto SpeakApps ha raggiunto anche le coste del sud d’Italia attraverso un workshop tenutosi il 22 ottobre nel “Liceo Linguistico Europeo” di Bitonto, un paese in provincia di Bari. I partecipanti, di tutte le età, includevano insegnanti di scuole elementari, medie e superiori, in prevalenza professori di spagnolo e inglese, ma non sono mancati insegnanti di sostegno per ragazzi disabili. Il workshop è stato sin dall’inizio molto interattivo. È iniziato con una sessione di brainstorming in cui si è riflettuto sull’insegnamento delle abilità orali nelle scuole e nelle università italiane partendo dall’esperienza degli stessi insegnanti coinvolti. … Continue Reading

As part of the dissemination programme of the SpeakApps project, Jackie Robbins visited the University of Cyprus Language Centre this week to give two workshops to the enthusiastic foreign language teaching team there. In addition to teachers of English, teachers of Greek, Turkish, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian also attended. The participants took part in activities using the SpeakApps tools Langblog and Tandem, spent time considering task design for oral production and oral interaction tasks in these tools and how to incorporate them into their own teaching context. They also created tasks of their own in the … Continue Reading

On 13 June, SpeakApps was one of the projects featured at Spin UOC, an event aimed to promote the transference of UOC’s knowledge and expertise into its surrounding environment. Due to UOC’s involvement in the project — together with the universities of Groningen, Jyväskylä, Dublin City and Jagiellonian ― and the successful results achieved, the organizers invited SpeakApps to be part of the event. Check the video of the presentation below, which follows the Pecha Kucha style to explain briefly what is SpeakApps and what services it may offer. Enjoy it!

The SpeakApps project reached to its end within the Lifelong Programme frame. It has been two years of hard work with many challenges on the way but, it’s been worth it!! To this point, we are proud to assert that Speak Apps is:

• 3 online tools in 6 european languages.
• 1 working environment.
• 1 growing repository of tasks for practicing a foreign language.
• Over 30 teacher training sessions.
• More than 60 pilot experiences for testing SpeakApps tools with real students.
• 20 institutions that support the project.
• A huge community that interact through the @SpeakApps twitter account (almost 200 followers), the … Continue Reading
  

The SpeakApps Open Educational Resources (OER) repository counts with over 200 activities to encourage oral practice among foreign language students. Resources are available for any of the SpeakApps languages, and since the repository is collaboratively built, comments and feedback are welcome.
Want to know about OER in the blink of an eye? Check its main features in the short video below.

To celebrate this holidays season, we are offering you the recorded version of David Singleton‘s lecture Life rather than age: alternative perspectives on ultimate L2 attainment. Professor of Applied Linguistics at Trinity College Dublin, Singleton was our guest speaker inthe SpeakApps event to celebrate the European Day of Languages. Hope you will enjoy it!

Thinking about promoting spoken language among your students? Videochat is one of the tools developed by SpeakApps which consists of an easy-to-use videoconferencing system designed for the specific needs of small groups work -up to six people-, allowing also messaging and video recording.

You can get more information about how Videochat works in the short video below.

Try out the videochat tool in the demo version ubicated in the SpeakApps Moodle platform!

Traditionally, an oral presentation has played a significant role as part of a language course, perhaps because of its dual role in integrating learning with assessment. In fact, it is often one third of a course that students spend on listening to one another’s presentations. This may be due to the fact that presentation skills have been considered to be important elements for use in demonstrating student expertise as well as student ability in commenting on peer presentations.

In this particular context, the course in question is a six-week course in Swedish. The course is … Continue Reading

Langblog is another of the online free tools developed by Speakapps to promote oral production among language students. In this case, it allows to easily record audio and video blog posts that automatically are available online to be commented either by the teacher or by fellow classmates.

You can find more information about how Langblog works in the short video below.

Along with other SpeakApps tools, Langblog will be available to be experienced by those attending the local workshops offered on 26 September in all partner universities to celebrate the European Day of Languages. … Continue Reading