Italian podcast: fairy tales for children

Walter Donegà comes from Alto Adige Südtirol in Italy, he is not a language teacher but what he offers in his blog can be very useful for Italian language teachers!

Thanks to his passion for technology and computer science he has recorded 7 fairy tales for children and has burnt them into a cd for his daughter: she loved them and that’s why Walter decided to share his beautiful work with us! You can access the mp3 files directly from his Weblog and/or subscribe to them via feed, for some of the stories transcripts are also available.

Walter’s podcast is cetainly technically very well made and I will use his fairy tales with immigrant children studying in primary school in Italy, it’s a wonderful resource and I’m sure that teachers of Italian all around the world could take advantage of it.

Thanks Walter   :-)

Integrating “43 Trio” in a language course: first reflections

Some days ago I signed in and tried for the first time 43 Things, 43 Places and 43 People: I soon realized how powerful their use could be for students of English but I have the impression that they could be more useful if used with young learners. I have to investigate more and most of all I should try them in class to have a more precise idea. I honestly found 43 places the most fruitful tool soon followed by 43 People: there are many options to stimulate students to write and express themselves, let’s have a look at the images below (the first it’s a screenshot from 34 Places, the second from 34 People):   

 

 

All those different inputs let students practice various textual genres (descriptive, narrative, argomentative) and for what concern grammar and lexicon they are motivated to enhance their vocabulary (e.g. adjective to describe, slang expression to comment or reply etc) and use different tenses to tell their stories.  I tnink  teachers should give proper instructions to students in order to make this tool act as a productive resource and it will be useful to provide students with a meaningful path to follow without planning too rigid rules (to let creativity spread out); students will be expected to enjoy the experience and “play” with their interlocutors using comments and cheers.