And the Winners of the I Recorded Short Story Contest Are….

9 Junio 2013 — Cristina Cabal

……(fanfare of trumpets) María López ,Montse López and Claudia Seivane in no special order. It has  been a tough decision to make and though my original intention was to give just one prize , I’ve been totally unable to make a fair decision. For this reason, I asked some of my colleagues to help me decide and they faced the same dilemmas as me as  the three of them deserved to win for different reasons . María and Claudia are hard-working  thirteen-year-old students with a promising future in languages  and Montse , though older, was up to her eyes  with exams and still found the time to write a long short story. My thanks to the three of them for trying so hard and to the rest of my students who have also participated with more or less fortune. Many thanks to them all.You all deserve your prize!

Here are the winners and their stories:

Claudia Seivane Otero : Falling in Love in 1955

María López Valdés: Surfer’s Paradise

Montse López Fernández: The yellow Flower

Below these lines are the rest of the participants with their short stories. They all deserve to be published !

Click on the icons to listen to their short stories and to see their names

And Last but not Least…

Lidia’s short story : Hello Ann

Ruben’s short story

Ainhoa’s Short story

Estela’s Short Story : The Small Pirate

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Resources, Speaking, Students' Corner. 2 Comments »

I Recorded Short Story Contest

10 Mayo 2013 — Cristina Cabal

Welcome to our I Recorded Short Story Contest. Open to all my students until May 31st!
Are you willing to try your hand at writing a short story in English and then reading it? This could be your chance to be internationally known; who knows who might be visiting the blog and listening to your stories and , well, you might end up being a well-known writer !!!
Yeah! I know !, Probably too far-fetched ! But ,what is undeniable is that this activity can help you improve writing and pronunciation, and this  is what  really matters!
As in every single contest of some importance , there are RULES. These are mine:

♥Entries must be in English
♥They must be recorded using the online tool Sound Cloud (Tutorial in Spanish , here)
♥Recording should last up to three minutes
♥Stories must be entirely your own work and must be previously unpublished
♥Only one entry per person
♥There is no set theme
♥Closing submission date: 31st May 13
♥Top three prizes to be determined
♥Winner will be announced the first week of June ,online and in this blog
HOW TO SUBMIT A SHORT STORY
♥First, you need to record yourself using SoundCloud.
♥Then , go to the comments section in this post
♥Write your full name
♥Write the name of your short story
♥In the Share box of your recording Copy/paste the link provided by soundcloud (starts with https)

Good luck !! Some pictures that might inspire you ,below!!!

I got this fantastic idea from the wonderful blog -MCargobe’s Blog-Room- written by a colleague from the EOI Valencia, which I highly recommend if you are willing to practise your English. Click here to see her blog.

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Students' Corner, Writing, freeware. 16 Comments »

SoundCloud: need to share a recording?

3 Mayo 2013 — Cristina Cabal

Are you running out of time to test your students’ speaking ability? Are you  a student and looking for an easy-to-use tool to send your teacher your speech? I’ve found the perfect tool for you! It is called SoundCloud and has been around for some time now ,so one can only assume that it is entirely reliable.
Sound Cloud is an amazing site which has a lot of potential for teaching and learning English. What can you do with SoundCloud? You can upload your own audio and you can record yourself. You are then given a unique url and the possibility to embed the audio in your own website or blog.
Why am I so enthusiastic about my students using SoundCloud? Because my students willl be able to send me their recordings and I will be able to correct them by inserting comments about their pronunciation, grammar…. directly into the recording and exactly at the exact second at which the mistake is made.

You need to register but it is completely free up to two hours ; then, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan or delete some of your recordings.

Below I’ve embedded a SoundCloud Recording to tempt you to try this useful tool!

Snow Patrol - You Could Be Happy [HD] by Cristina Cabal
 

 Here’s a tutorial I found on the Internet which clearly explains how to upload and share your recording.

 

and now, for teachers, here’s a chopped tutorial from Princippia Innovación Educativa, about how to insert comments on a Souncloud Recording.

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Resources, Speaking, Tutorial, freeware. 2 Comments »

Listen and Read News in Three levels

1 Mayo 2013 — Cristina Cabal

NewsinEnglish .com is an interesting site that can be very useful for the students as part of their autonomous learning and can also be used by teachers in the classroom.
The stories and news are written in three levels: Level 1 for beginners, Level 2 for intermediate students and Level 3 for more advanced students.
How can it be useful to my students?
♥They can listen and read to improve pronunciation
♥They can just Listen as many times as they feel necessary until they can understand all the words
♥They can Listen , make a summary of the story and then check

How can it be useful to me it?
♥As a Listening Comprehension either providing the questions or asking students to summarise the piece of news
♥To improve writing by giving them the story in level 1 and asking  them to act out as reporters for NewsinEnglish by writing the same story in level 2.

Some tips for using this site are given here

Still raining!!! you know how it goes… “When the going gets rough , the rough get going!! or “Every cloud has a silver lining!!”

Posted in Audio. 2 Comments »

Acapela.tv: converting text to speech in a funny way

27 Marzo 2013 — Cristina Cabal

This site is plain fun ! Acapela .tv is a new site that has a lot of potential for the language class.
Choose a real character or a cute cartoon and make him speak. Choose from a range of voices that interpret and read content with meaning and emotion. This text to speech tool is great to do dictations or revise vocabulary among other things.

HOW I’M PLANNING TO USE IT

♥I think it might be funny to divide the class into two groups -the class I have in mind, right now , is a small class of nine students; with larger classes I might need to divide it into three or four groups.

My aim with this activity will be to make sure students revise some vocabulary related to money for their next test. So, the class is divided into two groups. They need to listen to their cartoon speaking, write down the words the character asks them to revise and be able to explain them to the other group. Each character will say the same number of words and you know the rest… don’t you?? A competition , as usual, something that I , a very competitive person, just love.

A nice memory of a former student from Denmark , Patrick, who helped me teach English . Hope you like it, Patrick!

♥My next step will be asking selected students from different courses to do the job. The volunteers will need to go home , register and create a character to revise vocabulary . Obviously, they’ll need to copy the link provided and send it to me so that I can display it when playing the game in class.

What do you think? Will they like it?

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, Games, In the Computer Room, Resources, Students' Corner, Vocabulary, freeware. No Comments »

Need to improve Pronunciation and Listening??

14 Marzo 2013 — Cristina Cabal

Yes, yes … if you want to know , it is still raining in Asturias. No wonder it is always green!! And though visitors ohh and ahhh over our beautiful landscape and mountains these days we, locals, are a bit fed up with the weather. Monday to Wednesday I’ll be taking 42 students on an English Immersion Camp and this weather is going to spoil all the fun… but … it’s no use crying over what you cannot change.

This little site SoundsEnglish can be quite useful for students wishing to improve their Listening  and pronunciation skills .In this site you can get practise at all levels. It has a simple layout and two or three tasks for each listening. To practise pronunciation you can read the tapescript along with the audio.  

Hope it is useful!

Posted in Audio, Listening, Resources. No Comments »

How to Download the Audio File from YouTube

28 Febrero 2013 — Cristina Cabal

A very short post to share  this tool with you.

ListenToYouTube.com is an online application for converting YouTube flash video to MP3 audio. The service is fast, free, and requires no signup. All you need to do is copy-paste the  YouTube URL, and the application will  extract  the MP3, and give you a link to download the audio file.

Posted in Audio, Resources, freeware. No Comments »

Vocaroo: Free Tool to Record and Share Audio

22 Noviembre 2012 — Cristina Cabal

I just love this useful tool to record audio .I love it for many reasons:

♥You don’t need to register and it is free

♥ It is very easy to use

♥You can record yourself or upload a recording

♥ It can be easily shared  or embedded in a blog. It also gives you an url that can be sent via email.

Listen to me saying hello

Audio recording and upload >>

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Resources, freeware. No Comments »

Recordmp3: my favourite online recorder

12 Noviembre 2012 — Cristina Cabal

I am running out of time. The term is coming to an end and I haven’t had many opportunities to listen to you. That’s why our next project is going to be giving an online speech using www.recordmp3.org , which is probably my favourite tool to record audio . Advantages of this simple tool:

1. you don’t need to register

2. You can save your recording

3. it gives  you an url (this is what you will have to send to me)

How to record yourselves

♥ Go to http://www.recordmp3.org/

♥ Allow the recorder access to your computer. See picture below

♥Click Record. Click Start Over if you have made mistakes

♥Save your recording on your computer (just in case)

♥Send me the url you get. Choose the Click to Copy option and send me an email with the url you have just copied.

Good luck!

Posted in Audio, Create your own stuff, Resources, Speaking. No Comments »

Grammar Snacks Videos

19 Septiembre 2012 — Cristina Cabal

Grammar Snacks  is a great site from the British Council  to watch videos about grammar shown in a natural way.

The videos offer the grammar in context with subtitles and although the videos might be a bit too long for an elementary student , it gives them the chance to read along and improve pronunciation. So, as the idiom goes, you kill two birds ( or maybe three) with the same stone. After watching the video there’s a clear  grammatical explanation about when and how the grammar is used and some attractive interactive exercises.

So far, the site offers videos on the following :

♥Comparatives and Superlatives

♥There is/are  and It

♥This, these , that, those

♥The Present Continuous

♥The past Simple: regular and irregular verbs

♥To Be: Present and Past

♥Countable and Uncountable

♥Have Got

♥Present Simple

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Posted in Audio, Grammar, Listening. No Comments »
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