by Yao Wang, English Language Centre, School of Languages, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Twee is a website where a variety of AI powered tools can be found for creating activities for language classes, especially for creating questions for any video, audio or text, generating dialogues, stories, or articles on any topic and for any level, and developing targeted vocabulary exercises tailored to specific learning objectives.
Compared to Chat-GPT, teachers only need to select the configured tools from Twee for different activities (e.g., warming up, post-discussion, vocabulary exercises), without needing to design or worry about crafting the prompts. Additionally, for ESP teachers, it’s more time-saving and straightforward to generate listening or reading materials on specific topics using Twee (e.g., business, art, math or engineering) than having to adapt them from journal articles.
This activity will use the example of an EAP lesson on the topic of ‘Big Data and Data Security’ for 2nd year business students. After this lesson, the students will be able:
- to learn and practice vocabulary on data security.
- to talk about the importance of data protection.
- to improve the skills of reading and listening for details.
This article will demonstrate how to prepare the lesson and generate materials for: warming up activities, vocabulary exercises, reading texts, and reading and listening comprehension activities with the tools available on Twee.
Activity length
50 minutes
Technology used
Course area
EAP material preparation for a listening &reading lesson on “Big Data”
Level
CEFR B1-B2
Target skill(s)
Teaching material creation
Set-ups:
Step 1:
Register an account with your email address, then log in (Image 1). [Note: There are limitations for free accounts: 5 runs/day for Text Tools; 3 runs/day for Media Tools; 5 minutes input for media].
Step 2:
Click ‘Tools’ to get the complete tool list for different activities (Image 2). Select the category of activities to find the tools you need quickly in the following steps.
Image 1 (All images in the article can be clicked to enlarge.)
Image 2
Procedure:
Step 1: Create discussion questions for warm-up activity
Click ‘Speaking’ from the drop-down list as shown in Image 2 to find the tool ‘Find the Discussion Questions’. Input the topic and select the expected level of CEFR or grade. Fill in ‘Target vocabulary’ if there are words that the teacher wants students to use or practice in the discussion (optional), and press ‘Do the magic’ (Image 3) to generate the discussion questions, which can be edited and copied to clipboard by using the tools in the right-hand corner (Image 4).
Images or websites on this topic can be also uploaded instead of text-based topics to generate discussion questions. According to my user experience, the questions generated match the chosen level well and can be used by 2nd year students effectively.
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Step 2: Generate essential vocabulary on ‘Big data and data security’ for talking/writing about the topic in the future.
Go back to the page of ‘Tools’. Select ‘Vocabulary’ (Image 2) to find ‘Essential Vocabulary on the Topic’. Use ‘Part of speech’ and ‘Level’ to narrow down the scope of the vocabulary (Image 5).
For this lesson, I combined and adapted the results generated based on two level ranges: B1-B2 (Image 6) and A1-A2 (Image 7), to make a new vocabulary list (Image 8), as there might be overlaps and uncommon lexis in the original lists.
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Step 3: Generate gap-filling exercises with the target vocabulary.
Select the tool ‘Create a list of sentences with your vocabulary’ and paste the target words/phrases. Then fill in the topic for the sentence context and choose the appropriate level (Image 9). A list of complete sentences using the target vocabulary will be created (Image 10).
At the bottom of the results on this web page, a series of tools can be chosen for creating different vocabulary practices with these sentences. One way to continue is to choose the tool ‘Fill in the gap’ (Image 11) to get the gap-filling exercises with answers (Image 12).
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Step 4: Create a reading text with the vocabulary learned and reading comprehension questions.
Go back to ‘Tools’ and select ‘Reading’. Use ‘Create a text on a certain topic’. This tool helps teachers to create tailored reading texts by inputting a topic, vocabulary list, level, genre, and length range (Image 13).
According to my experience of using this tool for 2 years, the reading texts generated are mostly appropriate (e.g. Image 14).
A series of tools that can be utilized for the post-reading activities are presented below the generated text (Image 15). Use the tool ‘ABCD questions’ and ‘open questions’ to create exercises with answers after selecting the appropriate level (Image 16 and 17).
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Step 5: Create listening comprehension questions with a video called ‘What is big data?’.
Go back to ‘Tools’ and select ‘Listening’. Use the tool ‘Audio & Video Question Creator’. Upload the video file in MP4 format or with a YouTube link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK4aGzeBPkk), and choose the question type (open questions in this lesson), level and language to generate questions with answers (Image 18 and 19).
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Caveats and alternatives:
- Different post-comprehension question types (True/False, creating titles or summaries) based on the listening and reading materials can be generated by other tools on Twee.
- There are also many useful tools for creating materials for speaking and writing activities (such as discussion questions, and writing prompts), as well as grammar practice.
After creating the sentences for gap-filling questions on a certain topic, always check whether the correct meaning of the target word is used in the generated sentences as there might be some words that have multiple meanings which could lead to potential misinterpretation by the AI.
Additional information:
- The worksheet of this lesson generated by tools on Twee can be downloaded below for reference.
- Listening video material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK4aGzeBPkk
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