International Languages practitioners all agree that good oracy skills are the key to success in languages but these are often not secure and even feared by learners. This is why, in April 2023, the Global Futures team in GwE* started to collaborate with Sanako UK and provide Sanako Connect language teaching platform to pilot schools for fully funded for a year.
Note: (*In Wales, Global Futures is a government-funded programme aiming to improve and promote international languages in schools. GwE, the Schools Improvement Service Consortium for North Wales, has committed to provide a high level of support to schools to ensure rich and quality provision for languages.)
The sixteen secondary school participants all leapt at this unique opportunity to develop innovative approaches fit for the 21 century language learners which they would not have been able to fund otherwise. In return, they accessed high quality training sessions, used the technology to best suit their needs and reported on the emerging positive impact on practice and learners’ progress and attitude.
What do the teachers and students say about Sanako Connect?
Their language teachers’ feedback was unanimous: the potential of such a pedagogical tool is indisputable. Once the practice is embedded, both staff and pupils benefit greatly from the technology.
From the teachers’ perspective it has enabled to:
- Make home learning much more valuable to learners, easy to track and assess for teachers
- Engage all learners, including the most reluctant or inhibited
- Set speaking tasks much more frequently and easily
- Raise standards and learners’ aspirations for their achievement in languages
- Give much more personalised and accurate feedback for effective progression
- Save planning and preparation time
Learners have said that they:
- Really welcome the more “private” setting where no one hears them practise
- Love the instant feedback of the pronunciation function as it helps raise their confidence and encourage them to self-study and achieve higher results
- Felt much more engaged and motivated to learn languages, not being afraid to “ have a go” now
- Felt their learning was much more secure: “in control of the language”
GwE Consortia schools are really taking advantage of this new technology
A very popular activity with both students and staff is the pronunciation task with automated grading. This very clever piece of technology allows the teacher to “copy & paste” text to create an unlimited amount of audio pronunciation activities. Students’ then listen to the audio, in any of 16 authentic voice packs, repeat what they hear and will receive instant feedback in the form of “stars” for accuracy – and most students always want to achieve five stars! Students’ performance is collected back to the teacher who can see various data and also hear a recording of the students speaking for manual analysis if needed.
Stephanie Ann Ellis-Williams from GwE says: “Global Futures GwE is proud to be able to continue to provide Sanako Connect licences to schools wishing to further develop their use of technology to enhance their pupils’ language learning experience and achievements.”
“We do believe Sanako Connect is one of the ways we can modernise language learning whilst providing quality and ambitious teaching and learning for our young learners whose world revolves around technology. It is unusual to see a young person today without a mobile device in their hand, so Sanako Connect combines today’s pupil’s expectations with learning a language.”
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