The elephant and his friends + Error analysis + Pecha Kucha + Wordle

At the institute where I work, the lessons taught in August were devoted to the topic of animals and their abilites. Since we were preparing for the Open House at the end of that month, the story "The elephant and his friends" was recorded and practise by learners so that during the special lesson they were able to acted it out while listening to their own voices. 

The recording process was quite a challenge for the nine-to-twelve year-old children. Even though they have heard the story a considerable number of times and they knew the vocabulary, many errors were present in  the recording. 

The elephant and his friends (adapted version)

"The elephant and his friends" became more relevant when, as part of our Phonetics IV, we were supposed to present a Pecha Kucha dealing with a topic we liked. While we discussed our possibilities regarding the topic, we tought it would be interesting to analyse the errors young learners have produced while recording the story. Of course, we could make use of the bibliography we had for the subject, which enabled us to identify those errors which should be high priority as well as those which were low priority or even optional attention. 

I had in mind again the story in our subject ECO material design when I wanted to try a tool for generating "word clouds" . We have been working with Web 2.0 tools, Wordle being a case in point. When I first learnt about it, it occured to me that, though it was eye-catching, there was no real purpose for using it. However, I have been reflecting upon the advantages of it and the fact that there is a certain logic behind this cloud generator, probably different from the one I am used to. Now, I believe it may provide a good pre-reading task so that learners start predicting what the text will be about. As well, it gives teachers a clear idea of those words which appear more often, consequently, it may make easier the decision of using a particular material , as we can see clearly whether that vocabulary is the one we want to concentrate on.