Hey all, Chris here again. Today I would like to talk a bit about a fun way of doing oral evaluations in your language courses that shakes things up from just doing partner interviews or role-plays. By expanding the range of possible formats for oral evaluations to include technology it can actually create a better overall experience for the students and hopefully allow them to show off their language skills more.
By not having oral evaluations in front of the rest of the class or having a pair/group of students perform the evaluation task just in front of the teacher you can lower student anxiety levels and allow them to feel more comfortable if they can do the evaluation in a setting of their choosing. Phone quizzes have of course been around for quite some time but I wanted to make a special mention and encourage teachers to try using Skype and similar formats like Google hangouts/chat to do online oral evaluations. These can of course include video as well.
For these types of quizzes I find it best to give students a prompt ahead of time and they will need to prepare their dialogue. This will often involve generating a set of specific questions in order to get the information they need from you. In order to stimulate more spontaneous speech you can add in surprise questions or statements of your own for the students. Skype and Google chat/hangouts or similar online options can allow for group chats with video. This format can also allow the teacher to quickly share any supplementary materials with the students that they need in order to successfully complete the quiz.
A further benefit of this format is that you can move the quizzes outside of the regularly scheduled class time which allows you to recoup some of that precious time for more language practice in class. You can have students sign up at various times during the day and on non-class days.
Some possible topics include:
- Calling in to a restaurant, hotel, or store to make reservations, ask for prices, item availability
- Calling a travel agency
- Contacting a potential roommate/Answer a roommate/renter ad
- Setting up a job interview/conducting an online interview
- Students are journalists trying to interview someone for a story
- Friends calling each other to discuss evening/weekend plans
If you have any ideas or topics to share, please leave a comment below!
Let us know what you think! Connect with us @C_LaCross
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