The NEW GCSE: It's all RETRIEVAL. PART 3 PASSIVE structured Practice using AI

This blopost Part 3 is all about Retrieval of vocabulary and structures in the Structured Practice of our learning journey. When I think of Structured Practice after the Modelling stage, I think of receptive and productive practice. Receptive Structed Practice consists of students getting exposed to the vocabulary and structures we have modelled in the previous stage in a listening and reading format, but still not expecting students to produce language themselves. Productive Structed Practice will consist of tasks expecting students to produce language in an oral or written format with scaffolds, mainly, through the use of translation from English into target language or by the use of prompts that will encourage students to practice the language we want to focus on. 

Passive Structured Practice

At this stage, it can be really difficult not to end up doing the same types of tasks over and over again. Similarly, it can be very timed consuming creating new listening and reading material to base our activities/tasks on. 

That's why the use of Artificial Intelligence can be vital at this stage as it will allow us to create multiple texts, on given vocabulary, to be exploited in the classroom. It is also important to make it clear that any listening and reading tasks should not be based, purely, on reading/listening test comprehension questions, but these should be an opportunity to work with the language (meaning and form) to help students to embed new structures into their long term memory, reading/listening for learning not testing.

Using Twee to create multiple texts 

Twee is a free website that allows teachers to create a text based on specific vocabulary/structures and subsequent different types of questions, which we can easily modify, such as Fill in the gaps, Multiple Choice answers etc.. 

However, the best asset of Twee is to be able to create the texts in different formats: for example, in the format of a funny dialogue or funny story.  The key is to allow students to have access to the vocabulary we want them to embed in many different ways. Twee will also allow you to create activities based on Youtube videos, for Alevel students, vocabulary, or writing tasks. Once the texts are created, we can choose to use Twee activities or create our own ones, based on "form" as well as meaning. Some activities that we can create with the given texts are:

• Asking students to identify specific words/expressions/tenses or grammatical points in the text.
• Asking students to translate parts of the texts.
• If several texts are created, Twee will allow us to create Narrow Reading activities easily: comparing the differences between 2 or more texts. 
• Asking students to infer meaning from specific words/structures in the text. 
• Asking students to turn the text from present to past or future tenses.
• Asking students to focus on collocations of words, seeing words in context and create own sentences. 

Of course, the texts we create can also be used in the Fluency Stage as model texts on what students could write themselves! 

Using Diffit to spice up your texts

Once we created a text with Twee, we can use Diffit to format it and transfer it into Slides/ PowerPoint but also into Forms. I love the latter possibility. Diffit, will create questions based on a given text, that was created with Twee and will turn it directly into a Forms activity. Once in Forms, we can modify the questions by focusing, again, on form, specific meanings etc.. but within a Form activity.  I think this is great in order to retrieve the vocabulary we want students learn, aka, transfer to their long term memory, over and over again, in different formats: as a worksheet, in Slides/PPT and Forms.

Using Vocaraoo to personalise listening tasks

Once we have our texts created by Twee (we can also use Claude or ChatGPT) we can turn a text into sentences and exploit them as listening material by recording our voices with Vocaroo. Vocaroo is an old friend but it does the job! It will allow you to record your voice and share your recorded audiofile directly, with a unique URL (which expires within 3 months), or download your audio into a MP3 file to be used over and over again on different activities:

• Dictation/fill in the gaps dictation/ fill in the gaps without the gaps dictation.
• Transcription type of tasks: write down exactly what you hear in English or Target language.
• Correct the mistakes in given translations from an audio.
• Matching halves of sentences
• Putting sentences in order making up a full paragraph, which students can then translate or work from a reading point of view. 

To make the experience more real, I ask my students to bring headphones to our lessons, so they can carry out these activities individually at their own pace. This works wonders at KS3 too!

Using Vidnoz to create video/listening material with avatars

This is my favourite site. In the past I have used Synthesia for this type of activities but in September I came across Vidnoz, which is so much easier to use. Vidnoz allows us to create a video, within 5 minutes, with a chosen avatar from the site. We can choose a video template, an avatar, the language we want to practise, the voice and finally we can just copy and paste the texts we created with Twee to be turned into audio. We can decide the speed we want our avatar to talk and a MP4 video will be created within 5 minutes. You are allowed to use 3 minutes per day for free, which I think it is enough as videos, should not exceed the 2 minute length, to avoid fatigue. Once created, we can download it or we can upload it into our own Youtube channel to share more easily.  Once you have the audio/video material, it is great to carry out, again, lots of audio tasks:

• Fill in the gaps
• Transcriptions of the whole video
• Rearranging the transcript in the correct order
• Spotting all the verbs in a particular tense 

Using Google Earth to spice up reading tasks

Another app that can really help us to do reading/translation tasks with a twist, is Google Earth. Why not ask students to go on a virtual journey around Madrid, Paris, Barcelona or Berlin showing them the main landmarks while we ask them to translate specific texts/sentences? Again, this is a fantastic way to retrieve vocabulary in an interactive way! Once you create your project, by choosing your landmarks, your pictures and editing the content (the text you want students to translate, work on) you can share it as a slide show. Students will be taken to the specific landmarks, they can complete the tasks and have a walk around Barcelona, Paris or Berlin!

Passive structured practice is key to establish a very good foundation for students to be able to use the language. It should not be rushed and AI is great to help us create interactive material swiftly and interactively.