Using Voice Thread for Your Language Class

The two Voice Thread tasks that I participated were these.

Yu Xie’s Language and Culture Classroom

Zhilli Yao’s Talk about Movies

I believe Voice Thread (VT) can be great discussion tools that interests learners. The purpose of using VT can be to reduce class time devoted to hear all different stories of the students. Suppose you are sitting in a classroom of 30 students. You can not physically let your students tell their own stories. By using VT, you can manage your class time effectively while you make sure that everyone has an equal chance to express their opinion or ideas. One of the effective methods that can be used to measure the others’ understanding is asking to illustrate the understanding or giving examples.

In that sense, the task in Yu Xie’s Language and Culture Classroom was very interesting because she asked everyone give examples based on their understanding about how cultural connotation can vary in terms of symbolic image of animals. By giving my own opinion with the examples, I could elaborate my understanding on the concepts of ‘connotation’ while I become better aware of many examples of cultural connotations about animals.

 

 Another advantage of VT is that your answer can be more personalized. Online discussions using your typing produce the same format of answers – another text. But when you make comments using voice recording, all answer is unique since no two people have same voice. Using this advantage, Zhlli Yao asked the students to comment about the movie that they saw. Expressing personal experience is one of the most distinct features of Communicative Language Teaching.