Ms. Joy Strempack’s Chinese I students use Skype to practice oral language skills.
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Hello. Thank you so much for this article. This is very helpful to me because I can now practice Chinese through skype. I have also tried some lessons by skype with a native speaker from http://preply.com/en/chinese-by-skype and it was also worth trying.
Very true. We’ve had better success when we had high quality webcam and external microphone available. Even then, we were at the mercy of a good connection.
When using Skype you can expect anything (mainly if accessing it from a school connection). Therefore, flexibility is key. If you try it and it is slow that day, it is important to know how to react and change gears to another exercise. This way the period is not gone just trying to figure out how to solve the problem. I loved this Skype session with the teacher’s mom. It personalizes the conference, students really enjoy that. It makes the learning experience even more valuable for them.
Thanks, Sarai. Based on your experience with France this year, would you try it again?
I need to incorporate this idea into my classroom next year. It would be great for my students to have an opportunity of talking to some professional – a filmmaker, a TV reporter, a movie director… or even to conduct a simple interview through Skype. Yes, this is a brilliant idea!
Skype is a good idea and best of all, it’s free.
I know! The only thing you should be probably worried about is a good quality connection. I haven’t used Skype for a while, but I remember having all sorts of issues in the past.