Students speak more when using Extempore A little over a year ago, I blogged about the results of a survey on the role of Extempore in boosting confidence to speak among advanced learners of Spanish. Three quarters of the students reported feeling more confident to speak in the target language after a semester of regular[…]
I’ve been wanting to write about the crucial role of spoken output in language learning for a while. While exposure to the target language – especially in the form of comprehensible oral input – is definitely the sine qua non of language acquisition, I would argue that output is as indispensable as input. If you[…]
Have you witnessed a time when ALL your students were actively participating in the target language in a whole class discussion? Unless you teach highly motivated graduate students in small classes, I’m afraid the experience of a successful whole class discussion is not very frequent. And by successful I mean that the discussion could be[…]
If you have attended a demo on how to use Extempore for speaking practice in your foreign language classroom, you have probably met one of the three co-founders who are teachers (and who currently keep teaching because they love it!). You may be wondering what led us to conceive of, design, and embark in the[…]
Recently, we run a quick (and highly unscientific, we admit…) Twitter survey. We were trying to confirm something that our customers tell us all the time: that computer labs are very rarely used. They are expensive, they take up space… yet they are so cumbersome to book, they require so much time and oversight to obtain[…]
No one can deny that technology plays an important part in our teaching practices these days. The new generation of students, the so-called “digital natives”, usually welcome state-of-the-art lessons that integrate technology with great enthusiasm, as it is a great motivation booster. Yet, when we come to think about what makes an effective language lesson[...]
Posted on 2020-03-03 by Thomas Murr
Nowadays technological developments have affected our lives, how we communicate, how we learn and, of course, our way of teaching. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find a language class that does not use some technological support. Computer assisted language learning has changed the practice of teaching (Chapelle & Voss, 2016). Technology in Language[...]
Posted on 2020-02-10 by Thomas Murr
Here is a great activity for reading comprehension, listening and speaking. It can be for any level of instruction and for almost any topic… and it allows for some artistic creativity in the classroom as well. Ok, so there is a little prep… make sure you have blank pieces of paper, colored pencils and/or markers. [...]
Posted on 2019-11-18 by Thomas Murr
