GwE Consortia, North Wales Good MFL & Welsh Oracy Skills
International Languages practitioners all agree that good oracy skills are the key to success in languages but these are often not secure and even feared by learners.
This is why, in April 2023, our Global Futures team in GwE * started to collaborate with Sanako UK and provide Sanako Connect Online technology to pilot schools for fully funded for a year.
Stephanie Ann Ellis-Williams (GwE Consortia) Continues
The sixteen secondary school participants all leapt at this unique opportunity to develop innovative approaches fit for the 21st century language learners which they would not have been able to fund otherwise. In return, they accessed high quality training sessions, used the technology to best suit their needs and reported on emerging positive impact on practice and learners’ progress and attitude.
The teachers’ feedback was unanimous: the potential of such a pedagogical tool is indisputable. Once the practice is embedded, both staff and pupils benefit greatly from the technology.
- Make home learning much more valuable to learners, easy to track and assess for teachers.
- Engage all learners, including the most reluctant or inhibited
- Set speaking tasks much more frequently and easily
- Raise standards and learners’ aspirations for their achievement in languages
- Give much more personalised and accurate feedback for effective progression
- Save planning and preparation time
Learners have said they
- Really welcome the more “private” setting where no one hears them practise
- Love the instant feedback of the pronunciation function as it helps raise their confidence and encourage them to self-study and achieve higher results
- Felt much more engaged and motivated to learn languages, not being afraid to “ have a go” now
- Felt their learning was much more secure: “in control of the language”
GwE Consortia Schools are really taking advantage of MFL technology
A very popular activities with both students and staff is the AI Enhanced Pronunciation Testing System. This very clever piece of technology allows the teacher to “copy & paste” text to create audio pronunciation activities, this can also be done with the ChatGPT element within Sanako Connect
Students' then listen to the audio, in any of 16 authentic voice packs, repeat what they hear and will receive instant feedback in the form of “stars” for accuracy, they always want to achieve five stars. Students performance is collected back to the teacher who can see various data, as in the image above, and also hear a recording of the students speaking for analysis.
Amongst the many other MFL activities within Sanako Connect, teachers also love to create their own specific activities very quickly, although Sanako Connect comes with full WJEC & GCSE content packs. To do this teachers simply click on the import data icon.
They would then simply upload an excel spreadsheet which would create up many exercise types within 30 seconds so the teacher can share with students. These include, Flashcard activities (as shown above), Vocabulary Activities, Gap Fill activities, Question & Answer activities, Matching Pairs activities and of course the very popular Pronunciation activities. In each case student’s performance is automatically marked for the teacher saving valuable time and money.
Global Futures GwE is proud to be able to continue to provide Sanako Connect licences to schools wishing to further develop their use of technology to enhance their pupils’ language learning experience and achievements.
We do believe Sanako Connect is one of the ways we can modernise language learning whilst providing quality and ambitious teaching and learning for our young learners whose world revolves around technology.
Note: (*In Wales, Global Futures is a government-funded programme aiming to improve and promote international languages in schools. GwE, the Schools Improvement Service Consortium for North Wales, has committed to provide a high level of support to schools to ensure rich and quality provision for languages. )
For more information please contact us on ukenquiries@sanako.com or visit www.sanako.co.uk