Meet The Speakers: John Arnold

26/04/2018 - 23:25

Room 317
13:50-14:30
40-minute workshop

Visualising Speaking for Students

John Arnold

Analysing a student's speaking task is often a difficult task because it is done on the spot and feedback is based only on what the teacher hears in a split second. Using a variety of tech tools, teachers can now visualise speaking for students, offering better feedback and scoring opportunities. Bring a laptop or tablet to test it!

John Arnold’s Bio

Teacher
Thomas More University College, Mechelen-Antwerpen
Belgium

John is a teacher at Thomas More University College Mechelen-Antwerpen. He works in various departments and degree programmes, including the International Communication and Media Bachelor. He has been a teacher for over 35 years, teaching in America, Romania and Belgium. He is the current president of BELTA.

Why have you chosen this topic for your presentation?

I have always struggled with scoring speaking tasks effectively. After many years of searching for the right tools, the tool I will demonstrate allows me to truly help my students speak more accurately and fluently.

What do you want participants to take away from your presentation?

An understanding of how the tool demonstrated works and the positive effect it has had on my students - especially my international students.

Summary of presentation

The presentation opens with a review of past techniques I've used to evaluate speaking tasks, including recording them (audio only and video/audio) and why both of these techniques have not been extremely useful. At this point, I will demonstrate one tool I have been using for speaking tasks (especially oral exams) called Extempore.

Next I will discuss the solution I have been utilising this year in my class - especially in my Writing & Presentation Skills class. This solution uses the website SwiftScribe. The website takes an audio or video recording and transcribes it. This transcription is used by my students and I to build better accuracy and fluency.