Speaking+practice

My initial motivation for finding a way to record student voices in class came from feeling responsible for doing oral assessments and feeling incompetent at the task of conducting private interviews with students or even observing pairs in conversation during class. It was a challenge to manage the rest of the room full of students, have a conversation, and simultaneously take mental or written notes on which to base a score. I know that some language teachers are very good at this. I'm not. And I wasn't and am not a trained oral proficiency assessment interviewer.

I decided that for me it might work better to have a way to collect recorded samples of student speech to review later and more than once if necessary. I began to look for ways to collect speaking samples from a whole class at the same time. I started dreaming of having a way to provide visual and audio prompts on a computer screen for students to respond to. I recognized that if I were going to assess speaking this way, I would also have to provide opportunities for students to practice recording their voices and become accustomed, if not comfortable, talking to a computer and speaking into a microphone.

I also knew that I needed to find free or cheap ways to carry out my project, because I had no personal or school budget to support it.

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