Fun study tools with quizlet

Get free flashcards, games, and quizzes

1. What is it?

Quizlet offers a wealth of tools for teachers and learners who are looking for fun tasks for class or homework.  With piles of free flashcards, games, and quizzes, you will improve your students' skills and build confidence through practice.

2. Why Quizlet?

It provides a wide range of study tools and enables you to enhance your creativity by designing your own activities because it is an authoring tool. It provides ready-made tasks that can be implemented, and Students can also download the app on their smart phones and study everywhere. For example, there are various available activities that can help young learners to memorize a large number of words for free. They can improve their pronunciation and spelling skills by practicing with the audio. Quizlet will motivate your learners to engage in game-like tasks in an autonomous learning environment.

3. It enhances Second Language learning

This tool is relevant for Language learning in all contexts including for English as a second Language learners. Teachers in low-resource classrooms where there is a limited access to internet can resort to computer labs or to mobile learning. Most students in my classes have smart phones or can use the computers room to practice with Quizlet. They can work in pairs to complete the tasks and teachers can use the data projector for feedback. Evaluating each student's progress and helping them individually to overcome their weaknesses is a real challenge in large and heterogeneous classroom. With this tool, teachers can thus design and post different tasks on the class blog in order to give learners the opportunity to practice their English outside the classroom. In doing so, they will bring a fun touch on form-focused lessons and enable students to learn and have fun.

4. Some limitations

Even though Quizlet can foster learners' autonomy and motivation to engage in tasks, it does not encourage meaningful interaction in the target language, particularly for students who use it outside the classroom. Game-like tasks are attractive for kids but they do not always enable them to interact with their peers though they are learner centered.

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Fun tool for teachers and learners

Voki: Select and customize your own avatar

1. What's VOKI?

Voki is a fun educational and technology tool for teachers and learners. It is authorable so teachers can demonstrate their creativity and adapt it to their learners's needs and context. Your learners can choose and customize their own avatar by choosing different features and by adding a voice and sound effects. voki users can record their own voice or type in their text to make their avatar speak.

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2. Is it relevant for all teaching contexts?

Teachers in large and heterogeneous classes can use Voki to stimulate their students' interest and motivate them to do homework, classwork or projects. It enables them to enhance their speaking and writing skills while having fun, but also to share their final product with a real audience. Voki can also be used as a classroom tool to foster autonomous learning because it enables shy students to air their ideas and develop their creativity. There are different advantages for using fun tools in the EFL classroom. They engage learners in meaningful interactions, break the routine of long boring teacher-centered classes, encourage communication and collaboration, and develop creativity.

3. My experience with Voki

I personally use Voki to encourage my young learners to engage in writing tasks. Writing is generally perceived as a boring activity, however, using Voki triggered their inhibited desire to complete homework because they were eager to share their product with the whole class. This tool 'offers digital contexts and communication' (Walker et al, 2013: 17) and is a great opportunity for your learners to practice fluency and pronunciation by recording and listening to their own voice.

4. Adopt and adapt voki for your learners

 Meanwhile, like any other technological tool, Voki has its limitations as regards to its adaptability in certain learning environments. Second language teachers in contexts similar to mine (Senegal) should consider the access to internet and to computers for all learners. An alternative to that would be splitting classes into bigger groups, and making sure that all participants have equal chances to interact and contribute. Teachers should also be alert against plagiarism, as lazy learners might be tempted to copy and paste texts from the internet. Lack of control during tasks may also lead students to use it for other purposes. 

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