Loudlit.org

A description of this website:

This website is called ‘loudlit.org’ and it encompasses an anthology of some prestigious and well-known works of literature. This variety gives it a great importance because it allows the teacher to adapt from different materials such as short stories, novels, poetry, historical, and children stories. It can be used in many ways to enhance the learning process and make it more motivating.

Why is it important for language teaching?

There are many reasons that warrant the need for using this website in the classroom:

ü Since this website uses works of literature, it constitutes an invaluable source of authentic texts that are not ‘tampered’ or modified for the sake of teaching. In addition, it provides learners with an opulent source of sophisticated vocabularies that will extend their inventories of these.

ü It carries an added-value characteristic because it simultaneously combines written texts with their correspondent audios. Therefore, students can listen and follow up the texts simultaneously not to mention the high quality of the accompanying records.

ü It can be used to reinforce listening, spelling, punctuation, reading, and even speaking skills.

ü One of its most appealing features is that it corresponds to different student’s needs. Thus, it is also individualized in that each student can use it at his or her own pace by pressing the pause or stop buttons or by moving the audio progression line backward or forward.  

ü It also plays a vital role in increasing students’ motivation for many reasons. First, it creates a sense of anticipation because it is divided into different chapters and each chapter into different pages. Therefore, students will be motivated to finish each page to know how the plot will develop in the next ones. Moreover, it will enhance students’ sense of achievements once they have finished a chapter or a part of a story.

ü One of the most important reasons for using this website in the teaching process as a follow-up activity for students at home. This will increase their autonomy and raise their awareness in using the computer to learn on their own. Teachers can hone this autonomy by making themselves available for learners in order to respond to any kind of inquiries they might encounter along the way.

ü Teachers can also make it more motivating by consulting with students about their favourite story or novel so that they feel as shareholders of this learning process and involved in decision-making in the classroom.

ü  To make it more challenging, teachers can set deadlines for specific chapters each week or month and to spice things up, they can turn it into a speaking activity in which students are divided into groups to discuss what they have read or understood from the stories.

How to be used in a lesson plan:

Ø The teacher can make a copy of a page of any chapter and can delete some of the words so that students can fill them in.

Ø A pre-listening activity involves a brief setting of the story context and having students guess what the words in the spaces might be in pairs. This activity falls within the task-based learning because it engages students’ cognitive skills in the tasks and subsequently they will become more engaged with them.

Ø The next step is the listening one. It allows the learners to check their predictions and make corrections to the ones they had already made.

Ø Then, students can be divided into groups in order to check their solutions together. It is recommended that the teacher create a challenge among students’ groups by giving those points for every correct answer. Each team gets one points for saying the right answer and if they do not succeed, another team wins the chance to answer. Once a purpose is created, learners’ unconscious engagement and enjoyment is automatically activated. Therefore, their cognitive, emotional, and psychological parts of the brain are proactive in achieving the tasks.

Ø Another advantage of such activities is that it can be adjusted to students’ own pace and it takes into consideration different types of learning styles. Moreover, it could be extended to a speaking, or writing activity in that learners are prompted to write a summary of what they have learnt or give a small presentation of what they understood of the stories.

Ø To enhance learners’ autonomy, a teacher can ask students to discuss the content of each story or novel once a week or a month. They could also be given the chance of talk about what they learnt and how they learnt. By doing so, learners can improve their metalinguistic skills, by talking about language learning. In addition, they will reflect and discuss their learning styles with their peers and acquire new ones.

Ø After the teacher had followed all or some of the previous steps, he or she would have maximized the opportunities that students could negotiate meanings, developed their sense of autonomy, and increased their motivation on different cognitive and psychological levels.

Limitations:    

·        Not all students might have speedy access to the internet, so the amount or homework load should be carefully planned.

·        It would be very useful if they could be allowed access to computer or multimedia rooms inside the learning institution if they have not got internet access at home.

·        One of the most important factors that should be borne in mind is good time planning. In other words, it should be clear for a teacher how much time is dedicated for each part of an activity and if it is of central importance to the overall curriculum or of peripheral importance.

·        If teachers do not put such tasks into a purposeful frame, they would be wasting precious time for their learners. As a teacher I would ask myself this question ‘How can I fit this lesson into my students’ syllabus and what skills am I looking for to develop?’

·        Finally, technology could unpredictably fail us. Therefore, it is a good idea that a teacher would check that all the equipments are working properly beforehand. A reserve plan should always be available if a website does not work for no obvious reasons.