Abstract:

VoiceThread (VT) is a program that allows students to record their voices as well as to add text and comment on other students’ recordings. It is asynchronous and collaborative in the sense that all members of a group are able to view the written and recorded information and to communicate with each other. According to Houston, et al, VoiceThread has the most potential for aiding classroom conversation and speech in L2 classrooms. [1]. Meskill and Anthony found powerful linguistic features in VoiceThreads such as attention to form, attention to lexis, task - level corralling, saturating, and modeling (pp 64 – 92). [2]. Glick used VT to assess potential student interest in the program and found that most students felt that VT was helpful in their pronunciation when used once a month, in class as a tool in asynchronous presentations. [3].

In the following research, students in a Spanish Intermediate College course were asked to evaluate their oral communication skills before and after ten graded VT assignments. These VT assignments were a preparation for the Final Oral Exam and included production of the Present Subjunctive in 90% of the assignments. Students were asked to compare their oral production in the first Voicethread versus the ninth VoiceThread. This research indicates that 100% of students felt that their pronunciation improved, and 91.3% answered that their understanding of the uses of the Present Subjunctive and were more confident in producing it in speech. Since the goal was to prepare for a Final Oral Exam which required the production of the Present Subjunctive, students grades were analyzed and found that their average grade improved from a C+ (77.5) to an A- (90). In conclusion, VoiceThread seems like a powerful tool to aid students in developing communicative skills when presented as a series of graded assignments with a specific goal.

References:
[1] Houston, L., Trudy Stoddard, & Amanda Coleman (2008). Voice Tools & Virtual Classrooms. Australian Flexible Learning Framework. http://Flexiblelearning.net.au. pp 1-16.
[2] Meskill, C & Natasha Anthony. (2010). Teaching Languages Online. Bristol: Multilingual Matters
[3] Glick, Beatriz García (2012). Using VoiceThread to Generate L2 Speech in the Spanish Classroom: Students’ Perceptions. ICERI2012 Proceedings.