LEARN ENGLISH FOR THE SAKE OF LEO :)

     Hello, everyone!

     In this post, I am going to introduce a mobile app for language learning. As you know, we are equipped with many technological devices in this century like computers, mobile phones. Although they have some disadvantageous in terms of health, they also have many advantageous. They generally enable us to access the information easily and learn fast. There are many mobile apps in your mobile phones. The most common types of these apps are the ones for learning a foreign language. Today people look for some apps which help them to learn a language everywhere and everytime and they also want these apps to be funny. I will introduce a great mobile app to you for learning English. It's name is "Lingualeo" It is a personal online service that helps people master foreign languages.

     THE PROCESS

     I thought that I would have difficulty in finding a different app for learning English at the beginning  because many apps for learning a language in mobiles are similar. I asked for some help from my roommate. She suggested this app and mentioned about it. Then I began to think it would be appropriate for my task. Firstly I searched it on the internet and had some ideas about it. It appealed to me, later I downloaded it on my phone to learn more about it. It is for both all children and adults who are able to use a mobile phone. It is a really funny app because learning a foreign language in this app is like playing a game. There is a character called "Leo". The more you learn the language and make a good progress in the language, the more saturation Leo has. In other words, it is like feeding an animal by learning a language.

     

HOW CAN YOU USE IT?
   
     You can download it and sign up for it freely however it has some in-app purchases. You can also use your facebook account to sign up. You choose your proficiency level and begin to discover it. According to your level, it includes grammar courses.  It has also lots of trainings for reading skills like restoring texts and in this way, you can develop your speed reading and understanding. It provides many vocabulary games and exercises to learn new words and memorize them. If you want to improve your speaking, there are also many materials for you to use in the "collections" section. For example, you can listen TED Talks with subtitles. You may have materials for everday speech and business speech. It also charges you with some tasks like "brainstorm" training, completing lesson in the course, studying a text or a video.

 
      To sum up, I think this app is very useful for learning a foreign language. You can learn a foreign language in a funny way. I recommend this app to you. While other apps for learning a language does not force you to make a progress in the process, this app does. You may feel you have to make a progress in order to saturate Leo while using it. :)

MAKING LEARNING ENTERTAINING BY USING DIGITAL STORYTELLING

     Hi, everyone!

     Our new task is to create a Digital Storytelling Project. Firstly I want to mention about what it is. Digital Storytelling means a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their story. It entered our lives with technology and became a useful device for education. Today, Teachers can incorporate digital storytelling into their instruction to make learning entertaining and make their students engage in learning activities. I shared this task with my partner Buse Nur Bozkurt. We had some options for the project. We chose to create a fictional story, because we believed we could also improve our creativity in this way. We used Storymaker to create our story because it facilitates lots of opportunities in terms of using different colours and varied images.

     We wanted to create a story which may be beneficial to learners in terms of learning how to use an English pattern in a sentence. We wrote a short story. We created the characters and the scenes in the website, and then we added our voices into the story. Finally we made them combine by the means of Movie Maker.

     The story's name is "Julia's Secret Ability". It is about 2 minutes. It's main character is a girl called "Julia". She tries to discover her abilities in the story. We wrote the story for primary and secondary students. The story has some purposes. It aims to teach students how to use "can/can't" in a sentence. It also aims to make students have an implication from the story about life. 

      In the process, we had some difficulties. For example, we wanted to make characters move but we couldn't. In addition to this, we had a difficulty in vocalizing it because we had to find a silent place to vocalize it. Luckily we could overcome this problem and vocalize it but it took some because we thought that we shouldn't make a mistake about pronounciation and also we should use the right tone of our voices so that we can grab learner's attention. Therefore we had to record our voices again and again.

     Although we had some difficulties in the process, we were happy at the end of the process because we learned to use a device which may make us advantageous in our professional lives in the future. I think Digital Storytelling is beneficial to both teachers and students. It enables teacher to grab students' attention more easily and enables students to improve their writing, reading, listening and speaking skills and it also enhances creativity.

     This is our story. I hope you will enjoy it :)

NO PANIC, YES ENGLISH

     Hi everyone!
     In this post, I'm going to give my opinions about a website. I visited it and made an evaluation about it in terms of learning english.
     In today's world, learning english gains more and more importance, because it has become a global language as you know and therefore learning is necessary all over the world. For example; if you want to travel the world, and learn about other cultures, if you look for a good job or want to get a degree in your job, or if you want to be educated abroad, English must be in your pocket :)  You can say that: But how? How can I learn it? Don't be panic! You have lots of opportunities which technology offers you. However the point to be panic is how you can choose the right one. There are some criteria like accuracy, currency, content and functionality. I have searched and visited many websites related to learning English and chose one of them to evaluate for you. It is Learn English Free. It is a free online portal website suited for adolescents and adults learning english. It is a voluntary organisation and helps people to learn British English since 1999 for the love of English. Now it is time to evaluate it according to our criteria. :) 
     

      It consists of  7 sections. They are Learn English, grammar, vocabulary, improve, resources, chat and fun sections. In "Learn English" section, you can learn about the website and its background. In the "Grammar" section, it bombards you syntactic patterns and the grammar rules of English. It teaches the rules with both written texts and pictures. It includes many examples and exercises in order to strengthen your learning English.
         

     
      In "Vocabulary" section, there are many topics ranked alphabetically and you can learn lots of words about the topic which interests you. You can see the pictures related to the words and have dialogues, games and tests to understand how you use the words in a sentence or communicative situations. In the "Improve" section,  you have some clues about how to motivate yourself for learning, how you understand which learning strategy is the best for you and how to improve your learning skills, In the "Resources" section, you are provided with films, games, magazines, dictionaries, english radios, the news english. When you are bored with being bombarded by the rules and the vocabulary, you can apply these and practice your english in a funny way. If you say that I have learned all grammar rules and the vocabulary  but still I have difficulty in using them in communicative situations, you can also use "chat" section and make contacts with other people from different cultures online to communicate in English or  may have conversational practices on Skype, In this way, you may also meet new people and broaden your horizons. "Fun section" also enables you to practice your english with exercises like dictation, memorization, gap filling, sorting and matching. The site also provides English jokes, songs and poems for you. These are all very useful activities for learning English.

     We do not have a certain date to make sure if the site is constantly updated, but we can understand it is updated when we enter the website and look at news in English, films or magazines, because they are up to date.

     We can sure that the information in the site is accurate. The resources are reliable and the exercises are created by ESL English teachers (Lynne, Pryfllwyd and Amatsu) and many volunteers all over the world. You can also see their profiles if you want and do other exercises which are created by them.
     When I look at the grammar rules and exercises provided in the website, I couldn't find any errors and I think that they were created by professional teachers and also volunteers must have a high proficiency in english. 
     Additionally, images and videos in the website have high quality. They are varied and colorful and thus they may get learners' attention easily and make them more motivated to learn.
     As far as I have examined, this website does not include harmful things or propagandas to direct learners. It is a safe website. Its aim is just make learners love learning english. In my opinion, English learners may benefit from this website to learn and improve their English. It offers them lots of opportunities and gives lots of tips for improving their English. Now, it is time to decide for you. If you want to become a good learner, don't be panic, Just use this website! :)