by Yuri Yarin, English Language Centre, School of Languages, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Students often have difficulty identifying difference in style, register and conventions when writing formal and informal texts for communication. Due to this lack of context, students can often feel lost in live communication, which does not provide them with much feedback. H5P is a multi-media tool that can provide learners with immediate individualized feedback in the form of an interactive lesson. This interactive lesson utilizes images, audio, and text as media along with interactive questions. This content is held inside the H5P Interactive Book content type, which allows a lesson to be broken up into Pages. This activity can be used as flipped classroom material, during the lesson or as homework. The complete H5P file can be downloaded at the end of this article.
Students will be able to:
- Notice and differentiate language suitable for e-mail and instant messaging
- Use language to fit the structure of e-mail and instant messaging
- Use language to indicate appropriate etiquette for e-mail or instant messaging
Activity length
30 minutes
Technology used
Course area
EAP
Level
CEFR B1-B2
Target skill(s)
Writing for communication
Set-ups:
- The teacher needs to have the H5P uploaded to a Moodle (LMO at XJTLU) page (See Image 1).
- The teacher needs to have the link to the MOODLE page ready to distribute to students.
Image 1
(All images in the article can be clicked to enlarge.)
Hardware:
- Students need to have a working mobile phone, laptop or PC with Internet connection.
- Students are advised to use headphones to listen to audio recordings.
The Menu
The menu on the left side will allow them to navigate between parts of the lesson. The little circles will indicate when they have an activity pending to complete. (Image 2)
Audio and Images
Most pages contain audio recordings with explanations of the content. The students will need to listen to the audio and notice the images to understand the content. (Image 3)
Interactions
Each page will have interactions, students will be provided with instructions. The interactions will provide students with immediate feedback on their answers.
Image 2
Image 3
Step 2: Assign the Task
- As pre-activity – Students can be assigned the task for homework at a preceding lesson with follow-up material.
- During the Class – Students can be assigned this activity during class in which case students may need to use headphones to listen to the audio. The follow-up activity can proceed afterwards.
- Homework (post lesson) – Students can be assigned this activity as additional practice of material utilized in class.
Step 3: Follow-up Activities
The intention of this lesson is to raise awareness and explain how to utilize language. It is implied that further practice with feedback will be required as a follow-up activity.
Caveats and alternatives:
While H5P is an intuitive and easy-to-learn tool it mostly supports individual work. The aim of an H5P lesson is to supplement paper worksheets or textbook tasks. H5P lessons can be individual and structured or involve interaction between learners and include free-practice tasks. What content is used and how the lesson is planned depends on the creativity of the teacher or content creator.
This H5P file can be downloaded and utilized as is or modified or adapted to suit the teacher’s preference including: content, questions, options, feedback, as needed.
Additional information:
- H5P Content Guides
- Multi-Media Learning
H5P is a system that utilizes web components (web sites) to combine multi-media. For more information about optimizing multi-media lessons see Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multi-Media Learning.
- Text-to-Speech
Nowadays there are tools that can convert text to speech to create stand-alone audio or video narration, such as Textmagic.
- Generative AI
Audio text can be written manually or generated using ChatGPT.
- Image Creation
Images with instructions and design can be created with PowerPoint (Save JPEG to produce images)
- Task-Based E-Learning
The lesson utilized task-based learning principles for learning. Hence, techniques were used that attempt to emulate parts of the process of the intended learning outcomes.
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