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8/13/2019 CALL Voicethread

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Running Head: VOICETHREAD2

VoiceThread as the Perfect Solution

Improving the oral ability is not as simple as it seems, it is necessary to work hard. For

decades educators of the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Teacher Education Program from

Universidad Surcolombiana, have been trying to help students to get a good command of the

language, especially in terms of speaking, without much success. From an internal perspective (I

was a student of first semester of this program once), Students of the first semester of the EFL-

teacher education program have several speaking difficulties, more precisely, describing places

or objects and they find even more difficult to express their own opinions about controversial

topics.

Using virtual tools is a wise strategy that may yield better results than traditional

strategies when it comes to encourage pupils to produce speech in English more confidently.

Early findings (e.g. Bum, 1990; Warschauer, Torbee and Roberts, 1996) highlight the fact that in

some cases shy learners are less deterred by appearance and social differences whilecommunicating through virtual tools because these are not as prominent as in face-to-face

settings; that is the reason why VoiceThread is a good alternative to solve the problem that

learners of first semester from the EFL-Teacher Education Program are having now, since this

Web 2.0 free hosted service promotes asynchronous discussion about posted subjects which

leapfrogs all other applications because of its inclusiveness and simplicity. Once a photo, video,

graphic or document is posted, learners can comment on it by recording audio files or entering

text, It is even possible to phone comments to the site, this feature also offers teachers the

opportunity to provide enough feedback to the students so that they can improve their oral skills

by correcting the mistakes on their contributions, besides they are going to feel the instructor is


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actively present in their learning experience. Additionally, STUDENTS CAN MAKE

GRAPHIC NOTATIONS ON THE ITEM OF DISCUSSION WHILE TALKING, thus, this

complements their thoughts. The activities that can be performed with VoiceThread go from

telling stories, describing personal albums or working with maps to debating controversial topics

such as global warming, homosexual marriage, teenage suicide and social networks indeed. All

the tasks assigned to work in VoiceThread must be challenging tasks in order to equip pupils with

an excellent speaking competence besides making of CALL (Computer Assisted Language

Learning) a pleasant and meaningful experience, which is the intended purpose of this paper.

According to Van L. (1996) Preconditions for flow experience are a perfect balance between

available skills and challenges. Anxiety results from insufficient skills or insufficient challenges

and it may happen while communicating through computers, making various exercises; this sort

of anxiety is possible to avoid with VoiceThread considering the fact that this tool allows

teachers to delegate challenging activities to the pupils.

In conclusion, VoiceThread http://www.voicethred.com/may become a great solution for

speaking problems of students in the first semester of the EFL Teacher Education Program IF IT

IS PROPERLY USED but it should be complemented with encouraging activities.


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References

Van L. (1996). Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness Autonomy and Authenticity, 29.cited

by Noelle M and Hampel R. (2007) Online communication in language learning and teaching.

Bum, (1990); Warschauer, Torbee and Roberts, (1996). Computer Assisted Language Learning: Anintroduction. In Fotos, S. (ed.), Multimedia language teaching. Tokyo: Logos International.Retrieved on January 16, 2009, from http://www.ict4lt.org/en/warschauer.html. cited by Noelle Mand Hampel R. (2007) Online communication in language learning and teaching.

VoiceThread at Penn State (2013 February 15th) United States. Revised 2013 June 13th from:http://voicethread.psu.edu/

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