In partnership with LanguageClass
Teaching professionals today wear many hats and juggle a multitude of tasks. From student recruitment to lesson planning, class management, marking assignments, and administrative tasks like handling payments and schedules. This diverse workload paired with the occasional language barrier means it is essential for language teachers to streamline their tasks so they can do their best teaching.
Fortunately, language teachers can leverage different teaching tools to address these challenges. Popular platforms like Zoom and Canvas have made education more accessible and improved student learning outcomes. In addition, innovative platforms like LanguageClass are being developed to address the unique class management needs of language educators.
What is LanguageClass?
LanguageClass is a learning management platform tailored specifically for online teachers to help create and manage group language classes at school and remotely. It’s designed to empower educators to connect people to languages, culture, and each other.
Tips to Effectively Teach Languages Online
In this article, we will explore how LanguageClass can help language teachers manage their diverse responsibilities and deliver enriching online learning experiences for their students.
Delivering Interactive Online Lessons
Compared to in-person classes, online classes give teachers the flexibility to customize their schedules and workspace. However, online instructors may experience a lack of social interaction, fewer networking opportunities, and difficulties managing potential distractions for their students.
With features such as video conferencing, file sharing, and instant messaging, LanguageClass is a place where language teachers and language learners come together to exchange knowledge and ideas virtually. Teachers can get creative and engage students with built-in learning tools including an interactive whiteboard equipped with drawing and text tools. Additionally, the virtual classroom encourages participation via the raise hand feature, and fosters community through an in-platform reward system. No matter where you are in the world, LanguageClass brings your classroom to life.
Assigning and Grading Assignments
Learning a new language requires constant practice and regular feedback to reinforce what students have learned. For language teachers, this feedback often comes in the form of assignments that encourage students to practice the content they learned outside of regular class time.
While beneficial for students, grading assignments can be time-consuming, especially in larger classes. This is where LanguageClass’s automated grading system provides significant benefits. These auto-graded assignments provide students with instant feedback on their speaking and dictation assignments, along with an analysis highlighting their strengths and areas for improvement.
Here are some assignments included in LanguageClass:
Speaking Practice
Teachers can select a sentence or a paragraph for students to read aloud. The LanguageClass system will then score and correct the student’s audio recording.
Dictation
Teachers can upload audio or text for students to review and answer. The system will automatically compare, correct, and grade student responses.
Encourage Independent Learning
While well-structured lessons and supportive resources are crucial for language instruction, it is equally important to promote a culture of independent learning. LanguageClass comes with a range of built-in language learning tools that allow students to practice languages and get real-time feedback. Let’s take a look at these tools:
Translation
Translate any text to your native language at the tap of a button. You can set the default translation in the settings located on the profile tab.
Correction
Corrections allow teachers and students to help each other learn by correcting mistakes, suggesting more natural expressions, and explaining specific grammar rules. Corrections let you edit what the other person wrote and add notes and helpful pointers. Corrections can also be saved to favorites and tagged for easy search and reference in the future.
AI Grammar
AI Grammar helps students navigate grammar rules using artificial intelligence. The model is trained on huge, multilingual datasets of text and analyzes both individual words and sentences to ensure they are free of grammatical errors
Speak
Not all languages are phonetic or read like they are spelled. The speak function takes out that complexity, so students know exactly how to pronounce a word.
Transliteration
This function is specific to character-based languages that do not use the Latin alphabet, such as Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. Transliteration spells out how to pronounce these words to help students overcome the initial hurdles of learning a new writing system.
Managing Multiple Students
Managing a group of students with different individual learning needs is another challenge faced by language teachers. Things can become even more difficult when there are multiple classes. This is where LanguageClass groups can simplify how teachers manage classes and communicate with individual students who require additional guidance.
Teachers can create group chats, and interact with students through class notifications, announcements, messages, and calls on the LanguageClass platform. Teachers can also review applications, assign administrators, and set quiet hours for further control over their groups. Furthermore, there is a shared calendar accessible to both teachers and students, to easily view upcoming classes.
These tools allow teachers to effortlessly manage multiple classes and communications. Minimizing time spent on administrative tasks, so instructors can focus on their primary task of teaching.
Analyzing Teaching Data
Collecting data is essential for language teachers to gain a deeper understanding of their student’s progress. Additionally, analyzing this data and making necessary adjustments to teaching methods are crucial for achieving teaching excellence.
LanguageClass offers valuable insights by tracking your teaching progress, including the number of students and classes as well as student attendance and behavior. This data enables teachers to identify patterns and trends in student performance, and adapt content and teaching style to set students up for success.
LanguageClass: An Ideal Choice for Language Teachers
LanguageClass makes it easy to seamlessly organize, deliver, and assess language classes for time-pressed teachers. Its range of features, including video conferencing, group chats, assignment corrections, and specific language-learning tools such as translation, correction, and speak provide language teachers with a platform that they can grow with and ultimately help their students grasp the nuances of the language.
Streamline your teaching workflow and create your first class in seconds on LanguageClass.