3 e-Learning Tools for Foreign Language Classrooms

With the ever-growing advent of new technologies, all of them digital and operating at astonishing speed, the traditional, naturally paced, analog essence of human teachers might at times seem painstakingly slow to some of our students. This puts them at a disadvantage because they rarely feel motivated to remain engaged for long enough to reach the point of insight, that proverbial "aha!" moment which unlocks the worthwhile result of their studying efforts: understanding a topic well enough to then be able to extrapolate it and apply their comprehension to new situations, to solve new problems, or even to find solutions to old problems in new, more efficient ways.

Nevertheless, there are a few e-Learning tools we can use to help them acquire the taste for staying on task longer than what they have grown accustomed to due to their overuse of short-form entertainment on social media.

Here are three that are particularly useful in the foreign languages classroom:

Quizlet:

A revision tool that introduces students to flashcards and then allows them to work in teams to be the first ones to answer a quiz correctly from beginning to end. It also plays cute music that excites students and staves off lethargy.

One of the best features of this platform is the 'match' mode, which students can use to train their speed to associate words in their dominant language and the one they are learning.

An additional, collateral benefit of the tool is that once students have used it successfully for a while, it is easier to prompt them to create their own physical flashcards with paper or cardboard, and to have them study with them in a focused manner, which makes Quizlet a great, novel study medium that helps introduce older, time-tested ones.

Quizizz:

It has a lovely interface, wholesome educational memes, catchy music, and its quiz making functionalities are very well built. Among the innovative changes it introduces there is a letter-by-letter spelling item type, which is useful when creating formative vocabulary experiences.

A newer game mode that allows students to take quizzes in a non-confrontational way, called 'Mastery Peak', is helpful when kids get too anxious about competition, or when they get too frustrated due to the public nature of their results on other learning tools, i.e. when they never reach the podium. When playing 'Mastery Peak', students are relaxed, and the minigames included between stages assist teachers by prolonging the engagement of talented kids who might have breezed through the test, giving us a few minutes to check on those who are struggling and need a bit more time and support.

Another truly helpful feature is the ability to turn each game into a pdf quiz that can be easily printed to use in a more conventional way, whether because the internet is unstable that day or because exam season is coming and you need students to transition to pen and paper demonstrations of learning.

Kahoot:

An absolute favourite of students. Kahoot has many game modes and item types to choose from, and students benefit from this diversity of means to demonstrate their mastery. It also inserts funny, timely, and sometimes inspirational comments between questions, as the students are waiting for the 'verdict' of the question (i.e., for the game to tell them what the right answer was), and during these waiting moments, it is common to hear students using spontaneous metacognitive reasoning to think about their learning, even when just joking with each other about what the system has told them.

Something that Kahoot is brilliant at is being able to alternate between multiple choice, true or false, and word-order questions, all in the same assessment, which makes it ideal as a formative tool in the foreign languages classroom, as it allows the practice of many simultaneous skills in short periods of time, with this quick skill-switching being an important part of linguistic mastery that is hard to achieve with books and pre-rehearsed conversations.

It also gifts teachers with a vast amount of data around student performance per question, measuring response times to the millisecond, as well as providing both a comprehensive analysis of group accomplishment and a downloadable spreadsheet file for teachers to conduct a deeper scrutiny if they need to.