Talk to Google – An Online Pronunciation Activity 

A TIP FOR ONLINE ENGLISH TEACHERS WITH LARGE CLASSROOMS

There’s one question that still has me thinking…

In a recent webinar about improving online student engagement, one of the attendees asked a question that I’m still thinking about:

How to I give feedback to students, when I’m teaching a class of 100 or more?

I gave a few suggestions, including:

• Have students submit assignments before class begins, and then choose 5 excerpts from student submissions to talk about with the class.
• Use an LMS (Learning Management System like Thinkific, Teachable, or Moodle), where you can give direct feedback to students there.
• Use polling when asking a question, so you can validate that all students are participating, and so they get instant feedback about whether their answer was correct.

I also want to share with you one of my favorite pronunciation activities. It’s an activity that provides a ton of feedback for your students automatically.

I call this activity “Talk to Google” (or Alexa or Siri)

All students need for this activity is:

• Access to Google.com (or a smart phone), set to English settings
• A microphone

All you need for this activity is:

• A list of questions and specific answers that are Google-able. Do not give this list of questions and answers to the students before the activity
• Polling set up in your virtual classroom so that you can receive student responses. You will need to populate the poll with the correct answer for each question, along with 3 wrong answers for each question.

Step-by-step instructions

Start the activity off by “talking” with your smart phone. Make sure the volume is turned up, and phone is near your microphone.

Teacher: Hey Siri/Alexa/Okay Google, how are you today?

Virtual Assistant: (Wait for a response.)

Teacher: Say hello to everyone.

Virtual Assistant: Hello.

Give students the instructions for the activity. 

1. Everyone please open up a browser to Google.com. Make sure it’s Google.com, and not your country’s local Google, so that settings are in English.
2. Point out the microphone on the right side of the search bar, and ask everyone to test it to make sure it works.
3. Explain to them that this is a pronunciation practice activity. They are going to be asking Google a series of questions, and will hopefully get the right answer, based on how clearly you speak into the microphone.
4. Tell them that they should only speak into the microphone to search, and NOT just type it in the search bar. (Unless you want to flip this lesson into a listening/writing exercise and not a speaking one.)
5. Demonstrate to the class an example question. Show your screen as it types out what you’re saying in the search box. 

• Example question: How many people live in Berlin, Germany?
• If you’re working with a virtual assistant who speaks back to you like Siri or Alexa (instead of Google.com), the virtual assistant will speak back to you. Make sure the class can hear it.
• If you’re working on Google.com, make sure they see that the correct answer appears on the screen.

Say one question at a time out loud

Say it very clearly so that everyone can understand. You may need to say it more than once for your students. Display the question on the screen as well.

Give students time

Let them ask Google the question and get the answer. Make sure you and all your students are on mute so there is no background noise.

Have students choose the correct answer

Create a poll so your students can answer once Google understands them correctly and gives them the right answer.

This may take several tries for some students. That’s okay! Let them learn from each time Google doesn’t understand them. Let them fail at it so they can succeed. A lot of trial and error takes place with this exercise, and you need to encourage your students by telling them that it’s a hard exercise. The important thing is to not give up.

You may want to put a time limit of about two minutes on each question so that students who still haven’t gotten the answer at this point don’t get overwhelmed.

DON’T keep score of who got the right answer. The goal is for them to keep persisting until Google understands them, rather than push them to cheat and just type in the question to get the answer.

List of Questions

You are welcome to create all kinds of questions for your students to ask Google. Just make sure they are questions that have a clear answer. You also want to make sure that no one in the class would know the answer unless they asked Google. For example, DON’T ask, “What’s the capital of France?” because everyone knows that it’s Paris. Be sure to use a variety of English sounds so that your students are getting practice with all the sounds of English.

Here are some questions that I’ve used with my classes. Feel free to use them!

• What is the capital of Alabama?
• Who is the president of Cameroon?
• What is the capital of New Jersey?
• How many people live in Sudan?
• How many days are there until Christmas?
• What is the temperature in London, England right now?
• What sport is played by the most people?
• How long is the Nile River in kilometers?
• How far is it to Chicago in miles?
• When do the New York Yankees play next?
• Who won the last World Series?
• What is the square root of 123,201?
• What is the square root of 21,609?
• When is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday?
• When is Lebron James’ birthday?
• What time does Taco Bell open in Spring Hill, Tennessee?
• How long is the movie “Gone With the Wind” from 1939?
• Who is the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers?
• What is 421 x 364?
• What is the phone number for CVS in Franklin, Kentucky?
• Who painted “Starry Night”?
• What time is it in Aukland, New Zealand?
• In what year did Martin Luther King, Jr. die?
• How many words are in the English language?

Why I Love This Activity

Virtual assistants don’t lie

When you speak clearly to them, they understand you. When you don’t, they can’t. It’s a straightforward activity that gives students instant feedback.

Accent awareness

Most non-native speakers of a language are aware that they have an “accent”, but they may not be aware how strong it is or how much it affects the listener’s ability to understand them. This helps overly proud students to be aware of their weaknesses, and encourages insecure students when they pronounce something correctly.

Feedback isn’t emotional

Language learners often feel self-conscious asking a fluent English speaker to tell them what’s hard to understand, and can feel embarrassed when they find out that they are saying something “incorrectly”. Because of these reasons, a virtual assistant is a great help to bringing clarity about students’ exact pronunciation trouble spots. A virtual assistant is not being personal when it can’t understand you. It’s a logical operating system that records exactly what it hears. Therefore, feedback is not emotional or socially awkward. It’s direct and tailor-made for the speaker.

Feedback is instant and plentiful

Language teachers may not have the time to give direct feedback to every student. That’s why outsourcing some of that work to the virtual assistant is helpful and efficient.

Works for any level of learner

This activity can work for any level of English learner, depending on how you scale up or scale down your questions. For beginners, you won’t use any consonant clusters in the words, or any sounds that give your students particular problems. For advanced students, give questions to them with challenging sounds.

Is Google (or Siri or Alexa) perfect? No, certainly not. Especially not with some proper nouns or acronyms. However, I have found those tools to be 99% accurate when I am speaking clearly. Just avoid complex proper nouns if the virtual assistant is having issues with them.  Make sure you test all of the questions yourself so you can avoid that issue.    

Let me know

Once you do this activity in your class, let me know how it goes! For my students, it’s usually one of the most memorable exercises we do all semester. There is a lot of laughter and a lot of learning that takes place.

Until next time, Happy teaching!
Andrea

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