The Magic of Voice Thread in the Classroom: Part 2

What are the pedagogical benefits of using Voice Thread in the classroom? How can students benefit from this process of recording themselves? One word: Washback!

Student wearing headphones

Working for Washback

What is Washback?

Washback is either positive or negative, but is “generally defined as the influence of testing on teaching and learning; it is widely held to exist and to be important; but relatively little empirical research has been done to document its exact nature or the mechanisms by which it works” (Bailey 1996 p. 259). Washback is then the term we should use when discussing the influence of assessments on language learning.

Positive v. Negative

All teachers were once students. We had teachers that gave us tests which resulted in a lot of learning and other tests that annoyed us because the information was useless. We have also taken tests that were too easy; we didn’t need to study for these tests. As teachers, we want to give our students tests and assessments that encourage learning outside of the classroom.

Why does VoiceThread cause positive washback?

Now, I admit that I have not done an empirical study to back up my claims, but I did get feedback from my students on multiple occasions. I found that students were spending hours at home recording themselves, listening to themselves, and then recording again. This 1-minute homework assignment took at least 30 minutes to complete.

Students were actually listening to themselves and analyzing their own speech. Due to the nature of the assignment, they were learning to self-edit in a way that was not available in class. They were noticing their mistakes and correcting them.

What did I learn about my students?

In this process, I got to grade my student’s best work, not their spontaneous work, not their stressed work, but their best work. This told me a few things about my students. First, how hard were they trying? I knew their work in class and their work in VoiceThread. Second, what mistakes were they making because they didn’t know they were mistakes? If this was their best work, then I could point to mistakes and teach them something they could have learned incorrectly. Third, should I practice more fluency or pronunciation in class? This would guide me to know if my students needed more accuracy practice or fluency practice.

Bailey, K. M. (1996). Working for washback: A review of the washback concept in language testing. Language Testing, 13(3), 257-279.

*I have not received any financial support from Voice Thread.

The Magic of Voice Thread in the Classroom Part 1

Inevitably, in the speaking classroom you never have enough time to evaluate each student one at a time. You do your best to be everyone’s teacher, but with the distractions it is hard to do a spur of the moment evaluation on every student. Enter: VoiceThread! https://voicethread.com/

VoiceThread is an affordable online program that you should convince your administrators to buy. Given that you have an account, as the teacher, you can make unlimited threads. Your students just need regular free accounts and they can comment on any thread you set up; you only need to send them a link. The website provides a lot of support and lessons for how to use the site.

So once you master using VoiceThread and sharing your link, there are many directions you can go with this technology. Most of the time, I just create a single presentation slide with a question and a nice picture and let my students respond. This will get you pretty far in the VT world, but there are some things you should think about before you launch your first class assignment.

1. Tell your students that they have a time limit.

2. Multiply the number of students you have by your recommended time limit. 20 students X 1 minute for each response = 25-30 minutes of grading time

3. Have a simple rubric: You need to create an easy to use rubric. Decide beforehand what kinds of things you are going to grade. You can do a comprehensive grade, or only grade for a certain target skill like pronunciation.

4. Don’t let them read: Students will try to write out their answer beforehand and then read the answer out loud. While this method has some benefits, this was not my end goal. I wanted students to practice fluency, so I encouraged them not to write their answer.

*I have not received any financial support from Voice Thread.

Why Arabic Speakers Find English Spelling Difficult

Every student has their own set of challenges when learning English, but what can we learn about students with similar language backgrounds? What mistakes can we anticipate? In Second Language Acquisition research, this is called L1 interference. In essence, the effect of the student's first language on the language they are learning (aka: English). As teachers, we can make a few educated guesses about what mistakes will be common for students from a particular language background.

This article by Helen Bowen (links and citations at the end of this post) highlights the issues facing Arabic speakers when they begin to spell in English. This article shows the preconceived notions of teachers surrounding spelling and analyzes spelling errors of students from Oman and the UAE.

How do you spell in Arabic?

Arabic is considered diglossic which means the spoken forms are very different from each other. Arabic spelling is also phonetic and also a “consonantal language” so vowels can be confusing in Arabic. Short vowels are not written in literary Arabic. All of this sets students up for L1 interference when they navigate the world of English spelling.

What assumptions do teachers make?

While most teachers believe that L1 Arabic students are trying to phonetically spell English words, in this study, most students lacked phonetic strategies to spell. 79% of students made errors such as “inversion, incorrect letter choice, and gratuitous inclusion of rogue letters.” The author argues that these sort of mistakes show a lack of phonetic knowledge associated with spelling.

This study also found that among 63 teachers, 94% of them do not teach spelling and error correction is their main method (Bowen, 2008). Also out of the 53 students that filled out Bowen’s questionnaire, 79% confirmed that there were frequent spelling tests, but 91% said the teachers failed to give spelling instruction. The paper points to this teaching deficiency as perpetuating the problem of spelling among Arabic speakers. Additionally tests showed that students were spelling phonetically or visually without metacognition.

Are better readers really better spellers?

Some teachers would argue the old adage that to become a better speller, you must become a better reader; however, studies show this is not the case. Perfetti, Rieben, and Fayol (1997) showed that “reading by itself will not dramatically improve spelling because reading does not practice the full orthographic retrieval process demanded by spelling (p. 30-31). Overall, this article is arguing for an accurate understanding of what is happening when Arabic speakers spell in English and a more direct form of instruction.

Conclusion

Teachers base many of their curriculum choices on assumptions, until those assumptions get challenged over time. This is one of those articles that demystifies why many of my Arab students struggle to spell accurately and it goes beyond simple rationale that teachers throw around. This article promotes understanding and research in a practical way that challenges many teachers' beliefs about why this is a specific challenge for a specific L1 background.

Bowen, Helen. (April 2011). Spelling it out! Accounting for spelling difficulties for Arab learners of English. Foundations for the Future: Focus on Vocabulary

Perfetti, C. A., Rieben, L., & Fayol, M. (Eds.). (1997). Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages. Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

See these videos for more information about differences in Arabic and English: