Duolingo for JHS Students in Japan

Pretty good, as long as you can avoid the pitfalls

Duolingo classrooms

Last year I recommended Duolingo to one of my students: a junior high school boy who had been struggling with English.

He got really into it, doing a lesson a day or so for the last six months. His score on the last school test of the year? 96%.

I’ve played with Duolingo to review my French, German, and Spanish skills, and to have a go at Swedish, but they also have a teacher dashboard where you can track student progress.

You can set up classes (see the image at the top of the post) and see class and student progress:

Class progress

Student progress

Best of all, it’s free and optimized for smarphones and tablets. You can also use it on a computer, but I think the mobile version is better (less typing).

Beginners and low-level students can start at the beginning, and more experienced students can take the level test and skip the easier lessons.

For students who don’t have their own smartphones, I ask them to install it on their parent’s and borrow it for English practice.

Not everyone is doing the optional homework, but the ones who are seem to be enjoying it.

I have run into two big problems so far:

1) some students click on ‘let’s get started’ instead of ‘log in’ and end up making new accounts that I can’t track. I haven’t quite figured out how to fix that one yet.

2) some students have found that their account is set to Spanish. As they don’t read Spanish they weren’t able to fix the settings. Fortunately I do read Spanish, so was able to do it for them.

Other than those two problems, I really recommend Duolingo for junior high school and above. It’s a fun and different way to get more English input and practice.

Anyone else using Duolingo? How are you finding it?

iTDI Making ELT Videos Course

 

making-elt-videos-2

I’m taking an iTDI course for the first time, with the enthusiastic Vicky Hollet, about making ELT videos.

making-elt-videos

 

We had the first session last night (22:00 Japan time) and I think it’s going to be a good fit for me. I have special permission to share the first session.

Check it out here and you can still join the course for the next three sessions if you like it. Possibly the best thing about the course is having access to Vicky, her collaborator Jay, and the other course participants, There’s a private community for asking questions, asking for feedback, etc.

If all goes well I should be making more videos going forward.

Three things

A new type of post for you today: the roundup.

shopping list

 

I had a short op-ed piece on language teaching published in the TESL Ontario magazine, Contact. It’s on p.51 and the index is clickable 🙂

Last week saw the beginning of a new project: Retire Japan. It’s a website, blog, and Facebook page that provides information about saving, investing, and ultimately retiring in Japan for long-term residents. I’ll be doing all my financial writing over there from now on, so please like the FB page or subscribe to the newsletter if you are interested.

My university is looking for university teachers to contribute a chapter to a book aimed at new university faculty and offering advice about work/life balance, getting off to a good start at university, etc. If you are interested in writing around 4 A4 pages in English or Japanese for this project please drop me a line.

Oxford Day 2013 video, slides, and writeup

I was extremely lucky to be invited to speak at the first Oxford Day in Japan this month.

oxford day workshop

I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed the whole thing. 188 teachers attended, and there were nine presentations (five time slots). The venue was a very comfortable meeting space in Shibuya, and the provided coffee and sandwiches were excellent.

Most importantly for me, I had a fantastic group of teachers in my presentation who were very forgiving and asked me a bunch of questions at the end. Here is a copy of my slides in .pdf format and the video of the presentation is below:

131123 Maximising Input (slides in .pdf format)

If you have any questions please let me know in the comments, or send me an email to sendaiben@gmail.com.

Oxford Day 2013

I’m really pleased to be part of Oxford Day 2013, to be held in Tokyo on November 23rd.

oxford day 2013

You can see more information here.

My workshop is from 13:00 to 14:00:

Maximising input through extensive reading and listening resources (Room 2)
Teachers and learners all know that the way to get better at English is to get a lot of input (through extensive reading and listening) and practice (through speaking and writing). The hard part is actually doing that day in, day out. One important factor is whether learners can find content at their level that interests them. This 60-minute workshop will introduce a variety of resources, both online and off, suitable for all levels, as well as how to best introduce them to learners in a way that encourages and motivates.

It really is a great lineup, it’s free, and you even get a complimentary lunch 😉

Register here, and I hope to see you there.

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