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Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Chapter 1. What Does Moodle Offer Language Teachers?

Imagine the things you do in a school — putting up timetables, presenting syllabuses, having discussions, presenting videos of new materials, organizing tests, collecting marks, providing feedback to students, guiding students to do their own learning, building a library… Moodle can do all these things and much, much more.

Who is this book for?

One of the advantages of a recipe-book approach is that all sorts of people connected to language teaching will find it useful. If you are a teacher, you can dip into it to find a quick solution for an activity you want to create. If you are a course planner, you can review the whole book to build up your own language course. These are some of the people I had in mind when writing:

School language teachers who run at least part of their courses on computers
Private language teachers who want to run their own online language school
Established teachers of English or other languages
New teachers who want clear examples of communicative language teaching and testing in use
Teacher trainers who want to guide teachers in the use of this powerful system
Teachers who have been using Blackboard or another powerful commercial VLE and want to set up their own open source system
Course planners and ICT support staff who want to understand the ICT needs of language teachers better

An important point here is that there's no single way of using Moodle for language teaching. I've come across teachers who use it mainly as a repository of materials and find the indexing facilities of the Database module useful for that. Module, by the way, is Moodle's word for an activity. Other teachers use it to create supplementary quizzes for the work they do in class. They find the gradebook, which provides an overview of all their students' marks, useful. Other teachers make Moodle the base of their course, even though they have face-to-face sessions, because Moodle is a neat way of keeping important course elements in one place and tracking learner use and progress. It's also a good way of preparing for classes and reflecting on them afterwards. Finally, Moodle can be used as a totally online course with no face-to-face meeting at all.

You might find I'm stating the obvious sometimes, but most hints are included because there were minor hiccoughs when teachers trialed the materials. On the other hand, some readers might feel phased by mention of formats they've never heard of, such as XML or WAV. If that's the case, don't worry! These are usually extra bits of information that some teachers will find useful to make their lives easier or improve the Moodle activities. Not understanding them — or not wanting to understand them — won't stop you from creating the activities.

Why another book on Moodle?

So what's the difference between this book and any other book on Moodle? There's an increasingly large number of books about Moodle on the market. General introductions to Moodle, such as "Moodle Teaching Techniques", William Rice, Packt Publishing and "Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development", William Rice, Packt Publishing, go through key Moodle modules methodically and then offer examples. This book takes the opposite approach: it starts with examples based on what you need for your language teaching and shows which bits of Moodle you need to make them. As such, it isn't a comprehensive guide to Moodle, but it aims to provide relevant information for language teachers. There is no one way to organize a language course. It depends on the level and age of students, the language learning goals, and learning style preferences, amongst other things. But most language courses include a focus on the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and also offer support for vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. This book has taken those areas as its starting point.

Moodle's popularity has led to the development of hundreds of add-on modules. The list is available at http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6009. A useful service a book like this can offer is recommending which add-on modules are worth getting. For example, a VLE for language learning without a speak and record facility would be incomplete. I've chosen a simple sound recorder called NanoGong. Why? Because it is supported for Moodle 1.9; it's very easy to install and works well on a variety of browsers. You can also set up Moodle activities without NanoGong, simply by recording directly onto the computer, but you'd lose the advantage of being able to manage your recordings inside Moodle. There's a useful discussion of available recorders at http://metamedia.typepad.com/metamedia/listen-up-audio-in-moodle.html.

Note

Voice recording in future versions of Moodle

It's uncertain whether NanoGong will work with Moodle 2.0, but a similar recording plug-in is being developed for it (see http://docs.moodle.org/en/GSOC/2009). Meanwhile, NanoGong is probably the simplest choice.

As well as providing an overview of core Moodle modules, Chapter 2, Getting Started with Moodle will take you through all the add-on modules you'll need for this book. The reasons for choosing them are the same in each case:

Ease of use
Available support
Suitability for language learning

It is important to remember that add-on modules may not work with future updates of Moodle, but I've chosen ones which look likely to receive continued support. All the examples in this book work with Moodle 1.9.5.

Sometimes I've recommended an alternative to the core modules, simply because they are better for language teaching. For example, Moodle has core Blog and Wiki modules, but they don't work with NanoGong, the recording tool, whereas the Open University versions named OUblog and OUwiki do work.

Assessment

There are also some aspects of assessment in Moodle which have a specific language-teaching slant in this book:

Moodle allows you to provide detailed feedback to your students on specific areas of language performance. So you can give separate marks on areas such as grammar, fluency, and pronunciation, for example. You do this by setting up rating scales for each type of activity. In Moodle speak, categories for assessment are called Outcomes (see Chapter 2, Getting Started with Moodle for more information).
Moodle also allows us to create marking scales which relate specifically to language work. One example of this would be the use of the language achievement evaluation scales set by the Council of Europe's Common European Framework. (http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp). We can customize scales to suit our school or institution.
Many Moodle activities can be assessed. All the marks can be collected in an online gradebook. Moodle also provides some basic statistics which teachers can use to see how well their tests are working, and to improve them if necessary.
There is also an add-on ordering task for the Quiz module. This lets students practice ordering the words in a sentence, sentences in a paragraph, and paragraphs in a text, and putting a sequence of events in chronological order.

Making Moodle look good

The success of any activity also depends on how good it looks. Chapter 11, Formatting and Enhancing Your Moodle Materials takes a look at some basic things you can do to make your Moodle site look better and, therefore, more attractive to your students.

Communicative Language Teaching

The book is firmly rooted in a communicative approach to language learning. It therefore tries to make the student the center of the learning experience wherever possible. It looks at ways of encouraging interaction, making materials engaging and effective, and of encouraging reflection and self-improvement on the part of the language learner and the teacher.

A PDF by Jack Richards (http://tinyurl.com/cltarticle) gives a good overview of the status quo of various approaches to communicative language teaching.

In the article "Understanding and Implementing the Clt (Communicative Language Teaching) Paradigm", George M. Jacobs and Thomas S. C. Farrell, RELC Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1, 5-30 (2003), the authors highlight some of the key features of CLT. As the following table shows, Moodle accommodates these features well.

Key features of CLT (based on Jack Richards, 2006, and Jacobs and Farrell, 2003)	Moodle features which support CLT
Learner autonomy: Giving learners greater choice over their own learning, both in terms of the content of learning and processes they might employ. The use of small groups is one example of this, as well as the use of self-assessment.	Customization of learners' home pages if My Moodle is turned on Using questionnaires and polls (Choice module) to allow learners to influence curriculum Use of wikis for learners to determine processes Group and groupings feature for dividing students
The social nature of learning: Learning is not an individual, private activity, but a social one that depends upon interaction with others.	Interaction is built into Chat, Forum, and Wiki modules. Assignment and Workshop modules allow collaborative writing.
Curricular integration: The connection between different strands of the curriculum is emphasized, so that English is not seen as a stand-alone subject but is linked to other subjects in the curriculum. Text-based learning reflects this approach, and seeks to develop fluency in text types that can be used across the curriculum. Project work in language teaching also requires students to explore issues outside of the language classroom.	HTML pages with hyperlinks and webquests are good examples of how Moodle can be linked to the outside world.
Focus on meaning: Meaning is viewed as the driving force of learning. Content-based teaching reflects this view, and seeks to make the exploration of meaning through content the core of language learning activities.	It's easy to incorporate authentic spoken and written texts into Moodle and activities based on them.
Diversity: Learners learn in different ways and have different strengths. Teaching needs to take these differences into account, rather than try to force students into a single mold. In language teaching, this has led to an emphasis on developing students' use and awareness of learning strategies.	Learners can go at different speeds. Learners can be grouped according to interests, level, and needs. Teachers can help learners use the glossary to build their own records. The Journal module allows learners and teachers to reflect on learning processes and make changes as a result.
Thinking skills: Language should serve as a means of developing higher-order thinking skills, also known as critical and creative thinking. In language teaching, this means that students do not learn language for its own sake but in order to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that go beyond the language classroom.	Wide range of tasks is possible. Chapter 6, Reading Activities shows how Bloom's taxonomy can be used to foster higher-order thinking tasks. The Webquest module is a good place to develop critical evaluation skills.
Alternative assessment: New forms of assessment are needed to replace traditional multiple-choice and other items that test lower-order skills. Multiple forms of assessment (for example, observation, interviews, journals, portfolios) can be used to build a comprehensive picture of what students can do in a second language.	Moodle offers traditional tests as well as journals and add-on portfolios.
Teachers as co-learners: The teacher is viewed as a facilitator who is constantly trying out different alternatives; that is, learning through doing. In language teaching, this has led to an interest in action research and other forms of classroom investigation.	The Workshop and Questionnaire modules make it easy to get learner feedback. Teachers can also monitor the popularity of different activities by tracking student use.

Age and level of students

Moodle can work for learners of all ages. The examples in this book show how young learners, adolescents, and adults can use Moodle. Clearly, you will need to adapt the example activities for your particular students. Make sure they have the content and tasks that they are likely to enjoy and find useful.

If you are creating tasks for pre-adolescents, you might find it useful to use this book in conjunction with Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds: Beginner's Guide, Mary Cooch, Packt Publishing, which offers some useful guidelines on things to look out for with this age group.

It is important when working with learners of all ages that you have:

Learning pathways
Instructions
Materials
Duration of activities
Cognitive complexity of tasks

As for language level, it's possible to create simple low-level tasks, or quite difficult ones.

You'll need to consider whether the whole site is written in the target language. This is probably only appropriate for higher level learners. It may be more effective for lower level learners if you frame the activities in a language they understand better.

You can include the option for learners to change the language for the headings and help files, though help files are not available in all languages. You may need to check with your Moodle administrator that the appropriate language pack is installed. By clicking on the language selector in the top right-hand corner of the screen, users can change to the language of their choice. Contact your Moodle administrator if the languages you want are not there.

Add-on modules are unlikely to have help files and instructions for all languages. If you find that help files are not available in a language you need, you could write to the authors via the moodle.org website, or write them yourself. One of the great things about this open source software is that you can make your own contributions to it. Your Moodle administrator should be able to help you install your new files.

You can also edit existing help files by going to Site Administration | Language | Language editing.

What languages can you teach using Moodle?

All the examples in this book are of ESOL (English as a Second or Other Language). However, Moodle can by used to teach a vast variety of languages. All the instructions in this book are in English, but for lower-level learners you may wish to consider changing the base language to the students' first language (L1) and providing instructions in the L1, too.

The official Moodle site offers several support sections for non-English language use:

http://moodle.org/course/ is a directory of Moodle forums in many languages
http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=31 is a forum for language teaching
http://download.moodle.org/lang16/ provides a range of language packs, which you'll need to change instructions and labels to other languages

Suggested approach to using the book

The introduction to each chapter gives an overview of the whole chapter. So it's worth reading first.

Several reviewers have suggested that a good way to approach the activities in each chapter is to skim through the whole activity first to get a feel for it and then to create the activity step by step in your Moodle course.

Try to make yourself familiar with Chapter 2, Getting Started with Moodle. There is frequent reference to it throughout the book. It contains key information on setting up Moodle modules and add-on modules, using extra programs, combining Moodle with other programs, and advice on things such as uploading images and other files or embedding audio and video in Moodle. Happy Moodling!

Key benefits

A recipe book for creating language activities using Moodle 1.9

Get the most out of Moodle 1.9's features to create enjoyable, useful language learning activities

Create an online language learning centre that includes reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary, and grammar activities

Enhance your activities to make them visually attractive, and make the most of audio and video activities

Description

That word Moodle keeps cropping up all over the place ñ it's in the newspapers, on other teachers' tongues, in more and more articles. Do you want to find out more about it yourself and learn how to create all sorts of fun and useful online language activities with it? Your search ends right here. This book demystifies Moodle and provides you with answers to your queries. It helps you create engaging online language learning activities using the Moodle platform. It has suggestions and fully working examples for adapting classroom activities to the Virtual Learning Environment. This book breaks down the core components of a typical language syllabus ñ speaking, pronunciation, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and assessment ñ and shows you how to use Moodle 1.9 to create complete, usable activities that practise them. Each chapter starts with activities that are easier to set up and progresses to more complex ones. Nevertheless, it's a recipe book so each activity is independent. We start off with a brief introduction to Moodle so that you're ready to deal with those specific syllabus topics, and conclude with building extended activities that combine all syllabus elements, making your course attractive and effective. Building activities based on the models in this book, you will develop the confidence to set up your own Moodle site with impressive results.

What you will learn

Look at a variety of activities that help students to learn words, review and recycle vocabulary, and learn different ways of keeping vocabulary records.

Help students get better at their speaking ability using the add-on nanogong recorder, which illustrates activities that look at pronunciation, intonation, fluency, stress, and discussions.

Create a wide range of activities for presenting grammar, practising its use, and keeping grammar records.

Embed flash audio players and YouTube video on your Moodle to make language learning more fun.

Encourage students to read and interact with texts using Moodle and learn an activity on extended reading.

Set up collaborative writing tasks and tasks with different types of feedback to help students to structure sentences to create longer texts, build short stories using key vocabulary, and more.

Make your materials look more engaging and attractive by enhancing their visual design.

Consider the importance of roles, groups, and outcomes as well as the add-ons to make the most of Moodle for language teaching.

Create activities that help students learn and practise to write effectively online.

Set up useful listening activities using student-made recordings, forum discussions and authentic texts, which motivate students to listen.

Help students to interact with listening texts through tasks such as matching, gap-fill, text prediction, and ordering events.

Benefit from Moodle s gradebook statistics to improve your own language tests.

Make your students language learning experience more effective by checking the quality of the text, images, and audio and learn the importance of clear navigation paths.

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Know-Your-Client Solutions SL Jan 26, 2013

Teaching languages online it helps you to understand how moodle works and implement it. I think after working with this book you have enough understanding of moodle functions in order to explore additional options if you wish.

Amazon Verified review

Amazon Customer Feb 01, 2010

As an EFL and German teacher who moonlights as a Moodle administrator, I found this book to be extremely helpful. The regular Moodle bible "Using Moodle", while good left lots of blank spaces. This book fills in the blanks and gives the teacher a great number of ideas. I can highly recommend this book and not just to language teachers.

Tamara M. Powell Jan 11, 2010

Review of Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Learning by Jeff Stanford, Packt Publishing, 2009I can start with what is not superb about this book: if you don't teach language or language acquisition, this book is probably not for you, although you could likely get something out of it.As someone who, for the past five years, has had a job that involves assisting faculty in using instructional technology, I've read a lot of books about software and how to use it. Some of those books were lifesavers, but most of them were not. I expected Stanford's book to be one of the better ones because I had met him at EDUCA in 2009, and he had great things to share in his presentation on using Moodle for second language teaching. As I began reading Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching, I realized that Stanford doesn't hit his audience with all he knows during his presentations, and for good reason. It would overwhelm.Most of the instructional technology books I read require that I make the leap from "how x works" to "how to use x in the electronic classroom." Stanford's book makes that leap for the reader. This book approaches using Moodle from the perspective of a language instructor. Stanford delineates the educational theories he uses, and he assists the reader in putting together structured, organized, effective teaching tools rooted in the communicative approach to language learning. This book is very different from, say, a book on how to use Moodle. This book only covers how to use Moodle to teach a second language. That is, there are instructions regarding setting up a Moodle site, making the site effective for teaching, using different tools in Moodle, etc., but all directions are geared toward creating a Moodle space for teaching a second language.The directions are clearly presented and illustrated, and tips or tricks are included so that readers don't have to learn from their own trials and errors. I appreciated the author's going the extra mile, so to speak, to assist the readers in using Moodle effectively. I have often encountered instructional technology books that provide information regarding how to do x but fail to mention that x is glitchy on y machines so download the free z add in, and here's the trick to installing that, and you'll be fine. Stanford covers tricks and tips like that, as well. It is clear that the author is expert at using Moodle, knows the pitfalls as well as the advantages, and makes recommendations to assist readers so that they don't have to learn from their own mistakes. His examples are timely and interesting, and he shares great materials that readers can easily replicate in their own classrooms. He shares the html code for basic tasks and recommends various audio and video tools that work well in Moodle. The sample activities he provides are broken down into vocabulary, speaking, grammar, reading, writing, and listening--56 activities in all, with additional activities in later chapters. He even incorporates a section on making your Moodle site look good.I will keep this book on my desk, and I'm sure I'll be recommending it to fellow language teachers. In a nutshell, if you use Moodle, and if you teach language acquisition, you will benefit from this book. To learn more about this book visit [..].If you'd like to look at chapter 8 on "Listening Activities," check it out here:[...].

Alex Ballarin Apr 07, 2013

Compré este libro para Geanina, una profesora de inglés que ha estado usando Moodle y quería ir más allá en el uso específico orientado a la docencia de idiomas.Su opinión es muy positiva, destaca que está muy bien estructurado acorde a los tipos de actividades que se realizan en la enseñanza del inglés, y que más allá de la explicación sobre los tipos de Actividades de Moodle, contiene recomendaciones "do's and dont's" y reflexiones sobre el uso de estas actividades que le han ayudado a desarrollar cursos más complejos y con más garantías de éxito.Alex Ballarin / Cynertia Consulting

Don Hinkelman Jul 15, 2010

I am an EFL teacher, program administrator, and co-moderator of the Moodle for Language Teaching Community. Six reviewers on this site have given a highly critical but positive review of Jeff Stanford's book. In over ten chapter-by-chapter reviews, we provide a detailed analysis of each activity in this massive encyclopedia of knowledge of Moodle in foreign language teaching. A downloadable, electronic version of the book is available from the publisher, Packt Books. If you are interested to read over 15,000 total words of commentary, I refer you to the forums on moodle dot org (registration required). Look for the "course" called "Moodle for Language Teaching".Here is an except from one of the reviews:"Released in November 2009, Jeff Stanford has produced a herculean, 500-plus page handbook for applying the Moodle open source LMS to the specific needs of foreign language teaching. Given the pervasive use of online LMSs in teaching today, any language teacher needs to be aware of the options available for enhancing the online components of teaching and learning in their `blend' of face-to-face and web-based activities. Though anyone can suggest omissions to the book, it is actually hard to argue that any more needs to be added to this already comprehensive edition. In addition to the ten chapters provided in the print and pdf-file versions of the book, two additional chapters, Chapter 11: and Chapter 12: are available for download at the Packt website. Furthermore, Chapter 8, on listening skills, is available from the publisher for free download as a sample to encourage readers to purchase the book. The full Table of Contents is viewable as well.""One of the qualities of this book, is the recipe-book structure that it sticks to throughout the chapters. This has been pointed out by earlier reviews (see Miguel Guhlin and Mary Cooch for example). By recipe-book, I mean the book walks a teacher through, step-by-step, how to accomplish various objectives, often with detailed screenshots. What is the best structure of a book on language learning? The outline of this book suggests it favors a skills approach (four chapters on speaking, reading, writing and listening) supported by a knowledge approach (2 chapters on vocabulary and grammar) and class management approach (3 chapters on setup, assessment, and extensions). I like this because these categories are familiar to most language teachers and thus will be easiest for them to locate information. It assumes you will browse, like a reference book, rather than read start-to-finish. It does not offer a complete course or curriculum, instead of resists promoting one method, offering more generic tools that all can use. For this reason, reviewing the table of contents is essential first reading as it will guide your browsing. Unfortunately, I found the table of contents somewhat difficult to read due to formatting or font selection. In future editions, formatting across the book needs attention so it is both easy and a pleasure on the eyes."

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching: Engaging online language learning activities using the Moodle platform

What do you get with Print?

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Chapter 1. What Does Moodle Offer Language Teachers?

What is Moodle?

Assumptions

Who is this book for?

Why another book on Moodle?

Note

Assessment

Making Moodle look good

Communicative Language Teaching

Age and level of students

What languages can you teach using Moodle?

Suggested approach to using the book

Page 1 of 6

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