Running Head: VOICETHREAD

VOICETHREAD AS THE PERFECT SOLUTION

JENNY QUIONES UNIVERSIDAD SURCOLOMBIANA

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VoiceThread as the Perfect Solution

Improving the oral ability is not as simple as it seems, it is necessary to work hard. For decades educators of the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Teacher Education Program from Universidad Surcolombiana, have been trying to help students to get a good command of the language, especially in terms of speaking, without much success. From an internal perspective (I was a student of first semester of this program once), Students of the first semester of the EFLteacher education program have several speaking difficulties, more precisely, describing places or objects and they find even more difficult to express their own opinions about controversial topics. Using virtual tools is a wise strategy that may yield better results than traditional strategies when it comes to encourage pupils to produce speech in English more confidently. Early findings (e.g. Bum, 1990; Warschauer, Torbee and Roberts, 1996) highlight the fact that in some cases shy learners are less deterred by appearance and social differences while communicating through virtual tools because these are not as prominent as in face-to-face settings; that is the reason why VoiceThread is a good alternative to solve the problem that learners of first semester from the EFL-Teacher Education Program are having now, since this Web 2.0 free hosted service promotes asynchronous discussion about posted subjects which leapfrogs all other applications because of its inclusiveness and simplicity. Once a photo, video, graphic or document is posted, learners can comment on it by recording audio files or entering text, It is even possible to phone comments to the site, this feature also offers teachers the opportunity to provide enough feedback to the students so that they can improve their oral skills by correcting the mistakes on their contributions, besides they are going to feel the instructor is

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actively present in their learning experience. Additionally, STUDENTS CAN MAKE GRAPHIC NOTATIONS ON THE ITEM OF DISCUSSION WHILE TALKING, thus, this complements their thoughts. The activities that can be performed with VoiceThread go from telling stories, describing personal albums or working with maps to debating controversial topics such as global warming, homosexual marriage, teenage suicide and social networks indeed. All the tasks assigned to work in VoiceThread must be challenging tasks in order to equip pupils with an excellent speaking competence besides making of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) a pleasant and meaningful experience, which is the intended purpose of this paper. According to Van L. (1996) Preconditions for flow experience are a perfect balance between available skills and challenges. Anxiety results from insufficient skills or insufficient challenges and it may happen while communicating through computers, making various exercises; this sort of anxiety is possible to avoid with VoiceThread considering the fact that this tool allows teachers to delegate challenging activities to the pupils. In conclusion, VoiceThread http://www.voicethred.com/ may become a great solution for speaking problems of students in the first semester of the EFL Teacher Education Program IF IT IS PROPERLY USED but it should be complemented with encouraging activities.

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4 References Van L. (1996). Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness Autonomy and Authenticity, 29. cited by Noelle M and Hampel R. (2007) Online communication in language learning and teaching.

Bum, (1990); Warschauer, Torbee and Roberts, (1996). Computer Assisted Language Learning: An introduction. In Fotos, S. (ed.), Multimedia language teaching. Tokyo: Logos International. Retrieved on January 16, 2009, from http://www.ict4lt.org/en/warschauer.html. cited by Noelle M and Hampel R. (2007) Online communication in language learning and teaching.

VoiceThread at Penn State (2013 February 15th) United States. Revised 2013 June 13th from: http://voicethread.psu.edu/