Over recent months, I have been lucky enough to run some courses with teachers and students where I have been able to test out a few ideas. One of the most successful activities was carried out using Google Assistant, software that allows you to interact with a mobile device and ask it questions; you are then provided with voice answers. Google Assistant is a feature of most smartphones, and you can also download it to use on your computer for free.
Asking questions
The activity itself was quite simple, but it ended up being a lot of fun – with lots of language being used. I put the students into groups of three and made sure that at least one student in each group had a smartphone with Google Assistant on it. Their task was to complete a questionnaire as quickly as possible by asking Google Assistant all the questions and writing down the answers.
This activity combines all four skills, as the students have to read the questions, ask them orally to Google Assistant, listen to the answers and then write these down. In most cases, the answers will be straightforward and easy to understand, but you can make the questions trickier if you want to test your students’ listening skills. For low-level students, this activity can be quite a challenge, as they need to pronounce the questions clearly enough for Google Assistant to understand them.
In the box is a set of questions that I have used with my students. Obviously, although I have given the answers here, the answer column would be left blank when doing the activity with the students.
Setting the questions
Of course, you can use different questions from those I have suggested, but first check that Google Assistant can actually answer them. Sometimes it provides links to answers, rather than actually giving the answer. If you are working with a high-level class, you could ask the students to write down the sources or even the year of the data, as this information is normally provided too. So, for example, Google Assistant might say ‘According to …’ or ‘In the year 2017, the population was …’. You can also ask slightly tougher questions, where the students have to be more careful about working out what the answer is. So, for example, the question Who was the UK Prime Minister in 1979? will produce two answers, as there were two prime ministers in that year.
This idea has real relevance in a CLIL context. For example, you could ask a series of questions about a particular person, country, city, etc. I tried an example where
I had ten questions all focused on China and this worked well, though it did take me a bit longer to find ten questions that Google Assistant would answer clearly. For example, I wanted to find out the average height of people in China, but it provided me only with information about people in Shanghai.
Doing this activity has really opened up my eyes to what Google Assistant can provide. I have been using it recently to find all sorts of ‘quick information’ on various leaders of the world and historical events, and it amazes me how often it immediately provides me with an answer.
You can find video help for doing this activity at www.teachertrainingvideos.com/ideas-for-the-classroom/idea-6-developspeaking- and-listening-great-for-clil-too.html Learn more about Google Assistant at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VHde1sWsVaE |
Russell Stannard is the founder of www.teachertrainingvideos.com, which won a British Council ELTons award for technology. He is a freelance teacher and writer and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell: russellstannard@btinternet.com