Have you ever found an exercise or activity that EFL students just can’t get enough of? Well, here is one of those gems. So hand out the headsets and send your learners online to Listen and Write!

Why am I so jazzed about this site? And what makes it so seductive for students? For one, the exercises use real, authentic material. Second, there is something for everyone. Beginning through advanced English learners can find exercises aimed at their current levels of proficiency, from Level 2 (very low) to Level 21 (very high). If an exercise is too difficult, the student simply moves down a level or two.

Students further adjust the difficulty of each exercise by toggling between Sentence and Word modes of dictation. In Sentence mode, the student must get the entire sentence correct before advancing to the next one, while Word mode is set up as a cloze, which adds words in context. A really neat feature is that the program will not let the student enter misspelled words — to advance to the next stage, all words must be spelled correctly. In a sense this adds a game-like element that heightens motivation and tends to keep students on task until they complete the exercise.

Finally, teachers can create and upload original content to the site, including audio files, for students to practice. I’m still working through this procedure, which is not quite as intuitive as everything else, and hope to master it soon.

If you haven’t already, try Listen and Write with your students. I think you’ll agree it’s one tool you definitely want to keep.

As a teacher who uses technology in my classes, I try to keep up to date with new learning tools as they become available. But this is no easy task! Everyday, it seems that some new, wonderful tool appears out of nowhere and competes for your attention.

A good way to learn what other teachers have found useful is to join one of several excellent Yahoo groups. One such group I subscribe to is called Learning with Computers, and two of its members have just launched an online workshop that looks at several tools for making online quizzes and activities. One of these, Quia Web ($49/year), has been around for some time and just keeps getting better each year. But I am unfamiliar with two others, ProProfs and Script-O (both free), and have just started dabbling with them to see what they can do. So far, ProProfs seems to have the edge in terms of bells and whistles. Give them a shot!

How about you? What online tools have you used successfully to create interesting activities for your students?

ToonDoo is a fun, free online tool that lets anyone create and publish their own comic strip. Above is my first attempt at making one — not bad for someone who can’t draw! One lesson I learned is to make the text larger for better legibility after the entire image is shrunk to fit on a web page. Mine is a bit difficult to read without a magnifying glass!

Question: How would you use this tool to promote learning in an EFL/ESL setting? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.