PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

The problem that I am trying to solve for my WPP is a problem that many world language teachers face. World Teachers face the problem of oral proficiency in the target language and assessing oral competency. Students usually struggle the most with speaking because they are not always talking in the target language and they are conscious of speaking in the target language with an authentic accent. World language teachers do not have the time to give oral interviews to students for tests because there are so many students in a class. I would like to find resources to increase oral proficiency as well as tools that teachers can use to have students submit assignments orally. I would also like to find resources where students can keep these exercises so they are review student growth. 

I plan to find resources that are web-based and/or applications that help to increase oral proficiency of language learners and help teachers assess oral language skills. I believe that these resources will be beneficial not only for the teacher, but the students as well. Teachers will be able to better assess oral proficiency of students who do not always speak in class in a private matter, students will be able to speak in the target language in a safe environment and the teacher can monitor and evaluate student growth. Finding free and/or cheap apps that are user-friendly will allow teachers to extend language use outside of the classroom, increase the rigor of the course and increase language acquisition.

I have found some tools that are worth investigating during my research thus far. Some tools that I have found to increase oral proficiency VoiceThread, Lingt Language, Rich Internet Language Learning Resources from MSU such as Audio Dropbox and Conversations, Voki, Blabberize and Vocaroo All of these resources are free and there are applications for blabberize and VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a resource that is similar to a powerpoint, but allows users to comment via text, voice, webcam or through phone. This is a good resource because teachers and students can create conversation via the comments or students can answer a question that the teacher poses. Lingt Language is a resource that allows teachers to create online assignments that teachers can embed text, video, voice narration, mp3 files and photos into the assignment and students can respond in text or voice narration. This is a good resource because the assignment gets sent the teacher so it is a more comfortable environment for the students. Audio Dropbox is a resource that allows students to record themselves completing a task and the file gets sent to the teacher. This is also a safe environment and the information gets sent to the teacher right away. Conversations is a tool that allows the teacher to record themselves via voice narration or webcam and they can simulate a conversation with a student. The teacher speaks and then the student will speak. Once the student is finishing answering, the teacher will speak again. Once the assignment is complete, the student will be able to submit the assignment to the teacher. Voki is a resource that allows students to create “small productions” with avatars. Students record or type in the story line and can control the general movements of the characters. The students can then produce the movie and share it with their teacher. Blabberize is a tool where the students can record their voices over a picture and they can make the person or things lips move. This is a good tool because it is fun for the students and they are given creative control by picking the picture that they want to use. Vocaroo is a tool that students can use on their computer that allows them to record themselves and send it to their teacher. This is a widget that teachers can embed into their class site or blog.

One helpful link that I found was about research at Georgia State University:Assessing Student Oral Language Proficiency:Cost-Conscious Tools, Practices & Outcomes on the International Association of Language Learning Technology. The research included learners of Spanish and Japanese. The results indicate that close to half the students were more comfortable speaking in the setting. Students focused more on pronunciation as well as grammar and vocabulary. Over 2/3 ranked speaking as the most important component of language acquisition, which is why it is so important to increase oral fluency and proficiency.  

I currently do not have a full-time teaching job so I will not be able to implement this project to students in the classroom setting. Instead, I will be sharing the resources with friends that went to school to be a world language teacher (some are working and some are not), my cooperating teacher from student teaching as well as the instructional coach from the high school that I worked as a technology intern at. During the timeline of the project, I am planning on creating a wikispace to use as a resource for the teachers. I will create start-up sheets on how to use each of these tools. For the tools that you can create examples, I will create examples. I will write a description of the tool and how it can be used. To measure the success of the project, I will have teachers take a survery using survey monkey. After the project, I will look into creating presentations of me presenting the features of the resource and how to use it. I will also look into upload start-up sheets for other web 2.0 tools that I have found that are good resources for world language teachers as well as the tools that we used in our SIG project from 810.