OER 4 Digital and tech for language and learning

4.2 Teachers – Activity 2

Audio resources for language and learning


Audio resources are stimulating for speaking, listening and learning and can also give you a break from lecturing!

Practise your own speaking and pronunciation, and have students practise comprehension, vocabulary, speaking and listening.

Try a speaker

Download spoken poetry, an audio book, a speech, interview or music, and play this through a speaker.

Pause at different points to check students’ understanding or pose questions for them to answer or discuss.

Try a translation tool

This converts one language to another – there are free versions online such as Google translate.

Notice similarities of words in different languages and compare different ways to say the same words or phrases.

If you have access to a projector, demonstrate to students how the tool works and practise vocabulary and phrases in translation.

Try a shared writing activity with the class:

  • Have students dictate the lines of a story or a poem in one language.
  • Process and read out the translation.

Try a text-to-voice tool

This converts written words into computer-generated speech. There are free versions online and many digital devices now have built-in text-to-voice tools.

Text-to-voice is ‘multisensory’. It allows us to see and hear what we read. This can:

  • improve word recognition
  • increase the ability to pay attention and remember information
  • help us correct our own writing
  • improve pronunciation and listening.