Using a virtual platform to help students improve their pronunciation

Tucumán

Jornada; Segundas Jornadas de Actualización para Profesores de Inglés; 2010

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT)

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are generating great changes in the field of education, and in the teaching and learning processes. As educators, we should take full advantage of the tools at hand. Whether we want it or not, technology is already a reality in the classroom and we should be prepared to take advantage of all the possibilities that it offers, especially to ESL teachers, since English is the dominating language in the Internet. In this text, we describe how the virtual platform Moodle is being used to complement Pronunciation Practice classes. This platform is extremely useful for teachers because it has been exclusively designed for educational purposes and it is based on a constructivist learning theory. Our study focuses on how English Pronunciation teachers of the School of Languages from the National University of Cordoba, make use of the variety of tools that this virtual platform offers. We suggest a range of activities for most of the topics which are part of the syllabus. We give students the possibility of listening, reading, and transcribing texts online and then checking with the key. If they wish, they can record themselves reading or retelling a story. They can also have access to dictionaries, newspapers, radios, songs, videos, TV shows, tests, and glossaries. We have also included a survey so as to receive feedback from the users of the platform. This information will constitute the bases for later changes and improvements.