What's New at Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab

Website Information

What's New

Website Changes, Additions, and Ongoing Projects:

Visitors often want to know what I am currently working on to improve my Websites listed here:

With many new things going on, it is difficult to point you to all of them, but I often am spending a lot of time making current listening activities even better by adding new features. Here is a short list:

Ongoing Website Projects:

I announce all of my new listening and video activities on my Facebook page, so please consider becoming a fan so you find out what I am currently developing on my sites.

> > New Listening/Video Activities [Ongoing]: I am always working on new listening and video activities. This process involves coming up with ideas, writing scripts, recording and editing sound/video files, developing language-learning tasks, and creating the Web pages. Creating just one complete listening activity with all its components involves a lot of steps and time.

> > Portable Media Playback [Through 2012]: Reconfiguring my media files so that they can be played on more portable devices such as the iPad and iPhone via your service provider's network or a wireless connection. The audio files cannot be download for offline use.

> > Grammar Exercises [Currently in the evaluation stages]: Experimenting with grammar exercises and quizzes that can reinforce, recycle, and supplement the content found in the listening activities. Read more about this project HERE.

> > > Media File Updates [Through 2012]: Adding an exciting new flash audio format to many of the listening activities on my site which will be easier to use for many users. You can read more about this on my Media Players page. This project will be ongoing until it is completed.

> > Post-Listening Activities [Through 2012]: Revising many of the Post-Listening Exercises to encourage more application and recycling of the language skills presented in each listening activity (i.e., a focus on putting the listening skills into speaking practice for additional learning). The newer exercises encourage greater use of critically-thinking skills, including analyzing information in the form of an Internet-based task (see example HERE).

> Linking my Post-Listening Exercises to my blog at http://esl-lab.blogspot.com, which encourages students to share their own ideas on related topics (see example on credit cards HERE).

> > Online Investigations Tasks [Through 2012]: Realizing that students need opportunities to use their language skills to improve critical thinking, I am adding tasks that students can do using the Internet that require them to look up and analyze information and then make informative conclusions based on what they find. Such activities try to reflect they types of real-life tasks we encounter in our daily lives.

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