© 2020 by Iowa State University.

Module 3 Speaking and Technology Lecture Transcript for the AE E-

Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S.
government and administered by FHI 360. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution
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Using Educational Technology in the English Language Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlE2-ekUHe82SfQyUBTwbPi6llhIOMFCv

Technology for Teaching Speaking

Carol A. Chapelle

Iowa State University

Part 1
Slide 1: Technology for Teaching Speaking. In this module, we explore how
technology can help and support the teaching of speaking.

Slide 2: In this Lecture. We will first hear professor Carol Chapelle discuss the
connection between technology and talk today. We’ll then meet our expert on
speaking, Prof. John Levis, from Iowa State University. Professor Chapelle will ask Prof. Carol Chapelle

professor Levis why speaking is important for students, and what teachers need "Professor Carol Chapelle"
to know about speaking. She will also ask him for advice that he has for teachers. by Iowa State University is
licensed under CC BY 4.0
Finally, we will look at how technology can help the teaching of speaking.

Slide 3: The Technology-Talk Connection. New technologies have provided new ways for people to
connect with each other, and part of the connection is maintained through oral language. These
technologies also give teachers new opportunities for engaging students in oral conversation as well as
pronunciation practice. We’ll start by looking at two examples of the new opportunities for speaking
practice that we find on the Internet: Pronunciation tools and opportunities to connect.

Slide 4: Pronunciation Tools: YouGlish. YouGlish is a website that you can find on the Internet that allows
students to type in something that they would like say but don’t know how to pronounce. They can type
it in and the website will find some examples of video where people are saying that exact expression. So
for example if a student types in “How’s it going?” YouGlish will respond with a video where “How’s it
going?” appears in the stream of speech. This is a very sophisticated kind of context-embedded text-to-
speech technology. Students often know how something looks on the page, but in order to actually use a
word or an expression in their own speech, they need some help. They need the computer to provide
them with an example of how to pronounce the expression. These examples for students, regardless of
where they live, are abundant.

Slide 5: Opportunities to Connect. The Internet also, amazingly, provides lots of opportunities for
speakers to connect with one another in different locations. So just like the telephone was an amazing
tool of the past, the Internet with applications like Skype, is the amazing application of the current day.

1
Students can not only speak to each other, but they can see each other in a kind of face-to-face
communication via distance.

Part 2
Slide 6: Meet our Expert on Oral Communication. It’s time to meet our expert
on oral communication, Prof. John Levis. Prof. Levis researches oral
communication in English. He has taught English speaking at the University of
Illinois, where he learned effective methods for teaching speaking. He studied a
lot about how spoken language works and the role of speakers’ accents in their
pronunciation anf their intelligibility. I asked Prof. Levis how he became Prof. John Levis
interested in oral language, and this is what he said: "Prof. John Levis" by
Iowa State University is
Slide 7: Meet our Expert on Oral Communication. Professor Chapelle: How did licensed under CC BY 4.0
you become interested in speaking?

Professor Levis: When I was doing my master’s degree I got interested. I started my master’s degree in
TESL after being a supermarket manager for a while. I went to the University of Illinois, and my first
semester, I took two classes. One was in English phonology and morphology for ESL teachers, and the
other was a teaching practicum. In both of those classes, spoken language and pronunciation in particular
were really important, and from that point on, I just was interested in that much more than most other
areas. I also liked teaching methods, and I was able to later teach pronunciation with Wayne Dickerson,
who was a professor at the University of Illinois. And I was able to be the teaching assistant for Pearl
Goodman, who taught the practicum. So in my time during my graduate work in Illinois, I worked in both
pronunciation and in teaching methodology.

Slide 8: Meet our Expert on Oral Communication. Prof. Levis emphasized that the study of phonology
and morphology can help teachers teach speaking. By “phonology,” he meant the study of the sound
system of a language and how the sounds work together. Sounds work differently in different languages
and so the phonology can be a very difficult aspect of language learning. By “morphology,” he meant the
study of the smallest units of meaning in language, including their sounds. For example in English the past
tense “ed” is a morpheme. It has the meaning of “past.”

But in order for students to actually use the past tense in their speaking it’s very useful to recognize that
the “ed” spelling form that we put on words in writing actually has different sounds. For example, I say,
“walked” where the sound is a “t” at the end: “walked” walk[t]. I say, “guessed” guess[t], where again it
sounds like a “t” at the end: “guessed” guess[t]. But when I say, “played” play[d], it sounds like a “d” or
“studied” studi[d]. So that “ed” sound isn’t really the sound, the “ed” is the spelling.

And the sound really depends on the phonological environment in which the morpheme is placed. By
phonological environment I mean which sounds are right next to the “ed” morpheme. In the first two
cases the sounds that are next the “ed” are both called voiceless consonants. The “k” in English is a
voiceless consonant and so is the “sss” sound. The words “played” and “studied” in contrast end in voiced
sounds. So where the voiced sounds are at the end of the verb the morpheme has the “d” sound. This is
just one example of a very important aspect of English language morphology that is better understood if
we can look at the phonology.
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Slide 9: Meet our Expert on Oral Communication. Prof. Levis said that he learned how to teach speaking
in a “practicum” class in graduate school. It was the practicum in language teaching. That’s a class where
the students do practice teaching with guidance from the professor. Prof. Levis received a lot of guidance
on how to teach the sounds of English, and the students loved to learn! There’s a lot to learn about the
English sound system and it’s not something that you pick up naturally. It’s a study that you need to do
very intensively in order to understand how sounds in English work.

Part 3
Slide 10: Why Speaking is Important. I asked Prof. Levis to tell us why he thinks that speaking is such an
important skill for English learners to develop. He said that people need to be able to talk to get things
done, and to maintain social relationships. These uses of oral language can be accomplished through
speaking face-to-face or at a distance over the Internet.

Slide 11: Why Speaking is Important. Professor Chapelle: Why is it important for English learners to
develop their speaking skills?
Professor Levis: Speaking is the basis of oral language. If you learn a foreign language and you can’t speak,
like when I learned Korean and I came out not being able to speak at all, it feels like a failure. If you ever
travel and you want to use the language, you need to be able to communicate in some way orally, and
that means understanding what other people are saying to you and also being able to communicate with
them. Then, the other part of oral communication for me is pronunciation. Pronunciation is really the face
of language. It’s the thing you first notice. Even if someone speaks well, you notice whether they are
speaking like you or not like you, and you make all kinds of judgments about people because of that, and
so, pronunciation is essential for any kind of interpersonal communication. Maybe you can text now and
have Google translate it, but it seems a little bit clumsy in terms of communicating.

Slide 12: Why Speaking is Important. Prof. Levis pointed out that speaking is the basis of oral language.
Also, people get things done every day by speaking. People establish and maintain relationships with
others by speaking. And people notice the pronunciation of the people they are communicating with. Our
speaking does something to mark who we are, it expresses our identity in everyday face-to-face
communication.

Slide 13: What Teachers Should Know. I asked Prof. Levis what teachers need to know about speaking.
He emphasized that there are two dimensions of speaking: fluency and accuracy. Teachers need to teach
each one of these dimensions. Let’s listen.

Slide 14: What Teachers Should Know. Professor Chapelle: What is the most important thing for teachers
to understand about teaching speaking?

Professor Levis: When we’re talking about speaking, there’s always a kind of tension between being fluent
and being accurate. Sometimes, you can be very fluent, like in greetings, and you don’t have to worry
very much. There are other times that accuracy gets in there, and you wonder, “Am I saying this wrong?
Am I using the wrong word? Am I using the right word? Am I getting my message across?” In a second
language, that’s always the issue—this kind of tension between fluency and accuracy.

3
With pronunciation, you also add in questions of accent, and what we know is that accent is not terribly
important in terms of whether people understand you or not, but it is what people often notice. From a
pronunciation point of view, it matters more whether you are comprehensible, whether you’re easily
understood. This gets into all kinds of issues of what kinds of things in your pronunciation might make you
less easy or more easy to understand, and these all work together in teaching speaking.

Part 4
Slide 15: What Teachers Should Know. The two dimensions of speaking--fluency and accuracy--work
together to make good, clear, comprehensible speech. But it seems when we are teaching and when
students are learning how to speak, those two dimensions of speaking really work against each other.
When students are speaking accurately, they are often very slow and hesitant. They are stopping to think.
Their speech isn’t automatic and fluent. So when accuracy is up, fluency can go down. In contrast, when
students are talking to each other, they’re talking casually and the words are just flowing, the accuracy
isn’t always what we would like it to be. So these two dimensions both need to be developed but it seems
pretty clear that for learners, they cannot really focus on both simultaneously all the time.

Slide 16: What Teachers Should Know. Prof. Levis emphasized that teachers need to develop speaking
gradually by teaching for both fluency and accuracy. He also emphasized that accents are normal. There
are many varieties of English in the world today, and many of these varieties are non-native varieties of
English.

Slide 17: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Levis has already given us some important insights into oral
communication. I also asked him specifically for some ideas about how to teach speaking. He came back
to the ideas of fluency and accuracy, but there’s more. Let’s listen.

Slide 18: Advice for Teachers. Professor Chapelle: What advice would you give to teachers wanting to
help their students develop speaking skills?
Professor Levis: To teach speaking, you have to always teach for both elements: for fluency and for
accuracy. Learners of a language need to just feel comfortable producing language and not worrying so
much about whether it’s right or wrong. But at some point, they also need to work on places where
accuracy matters. These two things should be separated.

Another thing that teachers need to know about teaching speaking is that they need to understand the
nature of progress: that often, students might not be able to do what they want them to do right away.
Their brains know what they want to do, but their mouths and their automaticity (how automatically they
can produce things) don’t follow. This is normal, and it will come to a point where it becomes more
automatic.

Last, I think in speaking or in pronunciation, learners of any age can improve. It’s not a hopeless thing.
Sometimes, I think adult learners think that they’re just never going to be able to do it, but what we know
is that anybody can improve. It’s like any other skill. You just need to do it.

Part 5
Slide 19: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Levis suggested that teachers should teach fluency and accuracy in
separate tasks. He also pointed out that there’s a need to be patient because automaticity comes with
4
practice little by little. By automaticity, he means the ability to speak fluently by accessing language that’s
also correct. This happens little by little over time.

Slide 20: Advice for Teachers. When we think about speaking tasks we might look at a design, something
like a cycle, where the speaking task focus during the gradual process of developing oral communication
skills would change with each task. Students might start with a planning task, where they’re thinking about
what they’re going to talk about; they might be searching for information to use in speaking. They might
use some of the communication tools that we looked at that would allow them get help with
pronunciation. So all of this is planning, and planning has been found to be useful for helping students to
develop their accuracy.

The next task might be an accuracy-focused task where the student is required to present something. In
this task, there’s time for rehearsal of the presentation, and the accuracy is important in the evaluation
of the speaking task. At that point, the student is ready to have error correction because the focus is on
accuracy. So the speaking might be interrupted to correct errors as the task moves to include error
correction. From there the students might have developed some new language skills and some new
language knowledge, and they might be ready for a fluency-oriented task. A fluency-oriented task would
allow the students to speak freely without stopping and correcting errors, without focus on accuracy. In
a fluency-based task the focus is on the meaning of what’s being said exclusively and the students are
pushed simply to maintain their fluency so that they can keep talking. This cycle can be used with different
types of tasks through the development of the speaking process. As students move to be able to talk about
one topic and then another topic, they work through tasks that focus alternatively on planning, accuracy,
error correction and fluency.

Slide 21: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Levis emphasized that accented speech is not considered a problem
in teaching speaking. So, teaching should really focus on comprehensibility: can the student be
understood? When teachers correct errors, there are lots of errors to choose from and so teachers should
focus on those that are actually a problem for comprehensibility without trying to reach a goal of native-
like pronunciation. The goal for speaking instruction should be comprehensibility rather than native-like
pronunciation.

Slide 22: How can Technology Help? How can technology help? Well, there are lots of technologies that
are available to help with oral language. And we talked about some of those last time. But specifically as
we focus on speaking, there are tools for listening to the pronunciation of words and connected speech.
There are audio chat tools for collaborative work. For example, discussion of a topic before presenting as
a group. There are tools for creating presentations. There are sites with good pronunciation help and
conversation partners. There are conversation groups that can be formed on a common interest and
within the class, within language learner sites on the web, or within fanfiction sites.

Slide 23: Tools for Listening to Pronunciation. Let’s see how one teacher uses tools for listening to teach
pronunciation in the classroom.

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Part 6
URL for the next segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFn9CZ-zfSE

Transcript of “How to check pronunciation of words and connected speech” by Huong Le

Hi! Today I want to show you how I make use of technologies to prepare pronunciation of new words for
my oral presentation as an assignment in my speaking class.

In this presentation assignment, I am required to choose and present about an interesting person to my
whole class, and I also need to add my own view about that person, for example, explaining why I think
that person is interesting and whether or not I agree with the person about one of the critical issues that
he is talking about.

And here is the resource that

I choose for the content of
my presentation. This is a
section on Americans in the
Voice of America website.
And as you can see here
“People in America.” This is
an article about Evan Lutz.
He is CEO and founder of
Hungry Harvest which is a
business collecting and
selling “ugly” produce or
fruits and vegetables that An article in the "People in America" section on the VOA website

most food companies would “Evan Lutz: Giving Unused Produce a Purpose with Hungry Harvest” by VoA Learning English. This content is
throw away. The resource, as copyrighted, and cannot be adapted in any way, or distributed after the end of this course. It is not Public
Domain or Creative Commons-licensed, and therefore not for public use. Please do not save a copy for your
you can see here, has video personal use, and do not use it after the course ends.
interviews with the person,
so I can learn more about him, and then an article going with it, and it has a lot of information about this
person.

So one of the important steps to prepare for this presentation is that I need to check pronunciation of
new words or phrases that I either don’t know or I’m not sure about. So here is how I do that.

In this note, I outline the presentation. And I also add new words and expressions that I don’t know in
the article so that I can check their meanings and pronunciations. I also note down words or expressions
that I am not sure about how to pronounce them for checking. For example, this one, I know how to
pronounce this word as a verb, but I don’t know how to pronounce it as a noun.

So here is how I can get help with checking pronunciation of these words and expressions. Let’s take one
of the words in my speaking note here for example, this phrase. And I often check the pronunciation of a
new word in different resources in order to acquire it effectively.

6
The first resource that I
usually use is an online
dictionary. An online
dictionary often has the
audio showing how to
pronounce a word. My
favorite online dictionary is
Merriam-Webster. And here
as you can see, I’m typing in
the whole phrase, but no
result is found. So I have to
type in each word in the
phrase individually. So for
example, I’m typing in the
word “produce.” and then I
also want to look for the
phonetic transcription, and
the audio of the word as a
noun. As you can see here, Search the word using the Merriam Webster online dictionary
this is a verb. So I need to
This work is a derivative of "produce" by Merriam-Webster. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI
go down. And here is the 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
word as a noun. And then I
look at the phonetic
transcription and play the
audio.

My second place to check

the pronunciation of a word
or a phrase is Google
Translate

Searching the phrase using Google Translate

This work is a derivative of "fresh produce" by Google Translate. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by
FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

(https://translate.google.com/).

And as you can see, I am typing the phrase, and then clicking on the audio for its pronunciation. From
the two resources that I’ve shown you, there are several limitations in their ways of showing me the
pronunciation of a word. First, the dictionary doesn’t allow you to look for pronunciation of the whole
phrase; you have to type individual words in that phrase instead. Second, the pronunciation of the

7
words in these two resources are often either in male or female voice without a clear indication of
which accent, and they are recorded in isolated speech but not in a connected speech in a real context.

And as a language learner, I

really want to see how it is
produced by different people in
real life contexts; I’m also
particularly interested in
learning how it is pronounced
in the American accent as well.
So here is how I search for that.
I go to Youglish.com. As you
have learned from the lecture,
the website was designed by
Dan Barhen, and is based on
YouTube. There’s a huge mass
of content available on
YouTube. Some YouTube videos
include transcripts. And
YouGlish will let you search
those transcripts. You only need Searching the phrase using YouGlish
to type a word, press Enter, and This work is a derivative of "How to pronounce ‘fresh produce’ in English (1 out of 141)" by
you get a video where someone YouGlish. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher
Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
is saying that word. The video
will automatically start from the relevant sentence, so there’s no need to look for the right place.

So as you can see here, I’m typing the whole phrase in the box, then I choose the U.S, and then I hit
‘Enter’ or I can either click “Say it.” And as you can see here, I’ve got 141 speech samples containing that
word. I will play one for you to see.

I can control the video here by either playing it, pausing it, replaying it, or going back by 5 seconds. Also,
if I want to see more examples of the word being pronounced in other contexts, I can also simply click
the big arrow button to go the next video result. So this is a really nice interface for browsing examples
or real-life speech. It’s really cool. And if I want to save the examples or the search results for my record,
I can also save them by clicking on this ‘Save’ button here. And it will ask me to sign in or create a new
account on this website.

Part 7
Slide 24: Audio Chat for Collaborative Work. Students can also use technology tools for collaborative
work through speaking. Let’s see how one teacher uses those tools in the classroom.

8
 Part 8
URL to this segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc4O1N7pydE

Hi! This is Sock Wun. In this segment, Lea and I are

Using Skype with a webcam and without a webcam
This work is a derivative of "Untitled" by Skype. This derivative is
licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher
Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
students who are working together to prepare a
presentation on someone interesting we found on
the Voice of America website. We’ll be using Skype
to collaborate. One useful feature on Skype is that
you can use it with or without a webcam. As we’ll
demonstrate in this video, if you don’t have a
webcam, you can still use Skype for speaking
without video. I will be the student with a webcam,
and Lea will be the student without a webcam.
Sock Wun: Hi Lea!
Lea: Hi Sock Wun! Are you ready to get started on our
presentation?

Sock Wun: Yes! Should we start by creating an outline of what we want to present on?

Lea: That sounds like a great idea! We can use the chat function on Skype to do that. There’s a button
on the right side of your screen that looks like a speech bubble. Click on that to open the chat.

Sock Wun: Let’s create our outline here. We chose to talk about Evan Lutz, right?

Lea: Yeah, that’s right. First, we need an

introduction, then some body paragraphs,
then a conclusion.

Sock Wun: Does this look good?

Lea: Yeah, I think that looks great!

Sock Wun: As I was reading the article, I came

across this word. How do I pronounce it? I’ll
copy it from the article and paste it into the
chat.

Lea: I’m not sure how to pronounce that word
either. Why don’t we make a list of words we’re
not sure of and then look them up on YouGlish
later?
Creating presentation outline using Chat function on Skype
This work is a derivative of "Untitled" by Skype. This derivative is
licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher
Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

9
Sock Wun: That’s a great idea!

Lea: I have to go now, but I think this was a good start

on our presentation.

Sock Wun: I agree! We’ll talk soon about making the

slides. Have a good day!

Lea: Thanks! You too!

As you can see from the demonstration, the audio and

text capabilities on Skype make it a great tool for
collaboration. You can have discussions verbally as you
would in person, but you still have the option to type.
Skype also allows for multiple people to be in the same
video call at the same time, so in terms of tools for
collaboration, Skype is definitely one that is worth
exploring.
Compiling vocabulary list using Chat function on Skype
This work is a derivative of "Untitled" by Skype. This
derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in
the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S.
Department of State.

Part 9
Slide 25: Tools for Creating Presentations. There are also great tools for creating presentations that allow
students to present in oral English with professional visuals.

Part 10
URL to this segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUz-gUuaK0o
Lea Johannsen: Hello everyone, this is Lea. In this video, I will be showing you two different methods
for creating narrated presentations. Narrated presentations are a way for students to submit a spoken
presentation without actually having to be physically present in the classroom. They also allow students
to plan exactly what they are going to
say before presenting, because they
can read from a script as they record
their narration.

The first method for creating a

narrated presentation is to use
PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a
commonly used Microsoft product that
allows you to create your own
slideshows. Once you have created
the slideshow for your presentation, as
I have here, you can use the insert
Microsoft PowerPoint
audio feature to add narration to each
slide. The exact button you need to "Using Microsoft PowerPoint" by Lea Johannsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0
press will be different from the one

10
here if you’re using the PC version of PowerPoint, but the process is similar. Simply press Media, then
Record Audio.

Audio recording interface

"Recording sound on Microsoft PowerPoint" by Lea Johannsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

What will pop up now is the audio recording interface. I can click the red button to start recording, then
speak whatever narration I want to include in my slide. Once I hit Save, the audio will be inserted into
my slide with a little speaker icon.

Insert media interface

"Inserting media" by Lea Johannsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Clicking on the icon, then clicking on Format Audio allows me to choose some different features for this
audio file. I can make the little speaker icon disappear when the audio is playing, and I can also choose
whether I want the audio to play automatically or to start when I click the button.

11
 Media playback options

"Media playback options" by Lea Johannsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

So PowerPoint is one option for a narrated presentation. Another option is to create what’s called a
“Screencast”. The video that you’re watching right now is what would be called a screencast, since I’m
showing you what’s on my screen as I deliver narration. In order to create a screencast, you can use a
variety of different screencasting tools. There are free products that you can find on the web, or there
are more complex tools like Camtasia that you need to purchase in order to use.

Google search results for screencasting software

This work is a derivative of "Search results for screencasting software" by Google. This derivative is licensed under
CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360 for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

The easiest way to make a screencast is if you are using a Mac computer. Mac computers automatically
come with a software called Quicktime. After opening Quicktime, you simply choose “New Screen

12
Recording” and follow the instructions on screen. Once you’ve finished narrating over the images on
your computer screen, simply hit the Stop button, and Quicktime creates a video for you.

Camtasia website

This work is a derivative of "Camtasia" by TechSmith. This derivative is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by FHI 360
for use in the AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Quicktime player options

"Media playback options" by Lea Johannsen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

These two options, PowerPoint and Quicktime, are both really simple tools you can use to create a
narrated presentation. I encourage you to experiment with them if you have the chance.

Part 11
Slide 26: Technology for Teaching Speaking. This concludes our module on Technology for Teaching
Speaking. We thank professor Chapelle and her colleagues for this presentation, and hope that you have
seen some ideas that are new and possibly useful for your teaching and for your future projects.

13