About this activity
Twelve recording tasks that put the judging in the student's hands: record ten target words, listen back and mark each right or wrong; record five sentences and count your errors; record a one-minute story about your day; record the same ten words again — did your score go up; rate yourself one to five before listening, then after, and see whether they match. That last card is the most useful one on the board.
How to use it in a session
Have the student mark their own recording before you say anything. Your judgement is information; theirs is the skill, and the gap between the two is what carryover work is actually about. The before-and-after rating card exposes that gap directly, and students are usually surprised by it. Fifteen minutes covers a recording, a self-score and a comparison.
What to listen for
Watch the accuracy of the self-scoring rather than the accuracy of the speech. A student whose self-marking matches yours has the perception needed to self-correct outside the room; one who marks every attempt correct does not, and that is the finding. Notice whether the conversational recording is scored as harshly as the word list — most students are lenient with themselves in connected speech.
Carrying it home
A phone is all that is needed. Recording one minute of talking and listening back, without any adult judgement attached, is the highest-value home practice at this stage.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Third through sixth, where students can listen back and judge their own productions.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all twelve tasks are free to use with no account.
- Why does self-scoring matter more than accuracy?
- Because outside the room nobody is scoring. A student who can hear their own errors can correct them anywhere; one who cannot is dependent on a listener who is not there.