34 Great Ways to Teach English with Technology

I love using technology in my lessons since I think that technology makes teaching and listening a more delightful experience.

We can’t continue teaching as we were in the 80’s or 90’s.

Times have changed and we have to change our methods too regardless of the audience you are teaching

When technology integration in the classroom is seamless and thoughtful, students not only become more engaged, they begin to take more control over their own learning, too. 

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Where to Find Resources and Tools?

There are many resources that you can use to teach your lessons, sometimes those tools have been created for English language learners and sometimes they haven’t.

Finding resources and tools depends on your creativity as a teacher.

For example:

A week ago, I used apps that create fake apps conversations and told my students to create conversations about a particular topic using a specific tense.

Were Fake Chat conversations apps created to teach English?

Absolutely not but you can use those apps to make a lesson more engaging.

Teaching With Technology

Remember that technology is not a magic wand that will solve all of your problems.

You still need to know how to teach a lesson. You need to know about teaching methodologies.

The more that you know about a topic, the better. These are some resources that you can help you learn how to teach regardless of the resources you use:

• How to Teach English with Technology
• How to Teach Listening
• Principles of Language Teaching and Learning

Now let’s explore some tools which can help us teach more engaging classes.

33 Tools to Teach English with Technology

Learning how to Teach English with Technology is more than using a laptop and a projector to display some powerpoint slides, so here are the best Tools to Teach English with Technology that you can use to make classes more engaging.

1. Quizlet

Quizlet is an online learning tool that lets you create flashcards, short tests and spelling Quizzes, you can take vocabulary lists everywhere or create one accoding to your language teaching needs.

• Quizlet reads the word and definition to the student out loud and that’s how student can learn the pronunciation of the words.

• Quizlet makes learning fun because students can play several games to reinforce the  learning of new vocabulary.

• Quizlet helps student to prepare students for the spelling bee contest, you can easily import excel spreadsheets and start practicing right aways

• Quizlet helps students practice and test their vocabulary size, they can pick the set and  even include the words that they consider more difficult.

• Quizlet helps students to become independent learners because there are thousands of quizlet sets created by other users.

• You can create Quizlet so students can prepare themselves for tests. I usually do that hoping that the use of the smartphone can help them focus more.

#2 Kahoot

Kahoot is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn, with Kahoot you can create your own quizzes and analyze the score at the end.

#3 Quizziz

Quizziz makes it super-easy to create great quizzes in no time.

#4 ClassMarker

ClassMarker: ClassMarker’s secure, professional web-based Testing service is an easy-to-use, customizable online Test maker for business, training & educational assessment with Tests & Quizzes graded instantly saving you hours of paperwork

#5 Whatsapp Web

Whatsapp Web: This app was created to enhance communication, you can use it to send all kinds of information to students, you also can use it as a forum in specific moments.

 You can also send dialogues so students go around the classroom talking to others.

#6 Google Forms

Google Forms: You can create surveys and quizzes that students can answer from their phone browsers and you will see all the results in a spreadsheet

#7 Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms: You can create surveys and quizzes that students can answer from their phone browsers and you will see all the results in a spreadsheet

#8 Your StocK Music Player

Your Phone Stock Music Player: Sometimes you want smart people to create that app that will do everything for you but the truth is that you have to play with what you have, when you have a whatsapp group you can send tracks so students listen and answer questions.

In my experience, I have seen that learners like listening tasks when they have to control over the listening stage.

#9 Collage Maker App

Your Collage Maker App: You can tell your students to describe a picture or make conversation around a collage you sent via whatsapp.

Another idea is that you tell them to make a collage with the vocabulary you just introduced.

#10 Phone Audio Recorder

Your Phone audio recorder: Use those things that most people don’t use, tell students to record a conversation  or to answer questions orally  and send them to you via whatsapp

#11 GoConqr

GoConqr is a personal learning environment that allows students & teachers to create, discover and share learning resources.

There is an app, Check it out

#12 WordSalad

WordSalad is an app for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. It lets you tweak the word clouds by changing colors, fonts and words orientation.

The app detects the language your text is in, does some magic and draws a pretty picture.

Once you have finished crafting your word cloud you can export it on your device or share it with your friends.

#13 Quill

Quill Help your students advance from fragmented and run-on sentences to complex and well-structured sentences with Quill Connect.

Using the evidence-based strategy of sentence combining, students combine multiple ideas into a single sentence.

They then receive instant feedback designed to help them improve the clarity and precision of their sentences.

#14 CrossWord Labs

Crossword Labs is a very nice website to create your own crosswords, don’t expect others to do them for you.

Students can solve them online.

#15 Socrative

Socrative is your app for fun and effective classroom engagement. Get instant insight into student learning with easy-to-create quizzes, polls, exit tickets and more! Check out the features below to choose the Socrative account that’s right for you.

#16 Plickers

Plickers This is something I have to give a try one of those days, Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices

#17 StoryBird

Story Bird: Simple tools help you build books in minutes. Let the art inspire and surprise you as you write.

#18 Powtoon

Powtoon: Make animated explainers for free with PowToon; PowToon – Make cool animated explainer videos; GetPowToon and make animated presentations.

#19 Pixtoon

Pixtoon: The world’s most popular and easy to use comic and storyboard creator.

Based on creativity, you can teach English through comics, definitely a nice way for students to become

#20 Memrise

Memrise make learning languages and vocab so full of joy and life, you’ll laugh out loud. Create your own courses of rich, multimedia flashcards.

21: My Free Bingo Cards

My Free Bingo Cards have the best Bingo Card Generator in the world, popular Number Bingo Games to print or play online, and a growing selection of beautiful bingo cards for all occasions.

All ther bingo cards can be customized by changing the title, words and even the colour and background.

#22 Duolingo

Duolingo for Schools brings the world’s most popular language-learning platform to your classroom.

It is 100% and free and it can complement your classes

#23 Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a shiny new service for sending voice messages across the interwebs.

Sometimes You can’t listen to all of your students because of time constraints so why not sending them to Vocaroo so they can record an audio and send it to you?

#24 Flippity

Flippity: Easily turn a Google™ Spreadsheet into a Set of Online Flashcards and Other Cool Stuff such as:

1. Online Flashcards
2. Trivia Game Show
3. Random Name Picker
4. Memory Match Game
5. Word Search
6. Spelling Word Manager
7. Crossword Puzzle
8. Bingo Game

#25 Quik

Quik creates awesome videos with just a few taps.

Students can choose your favorite photos and video clips to create an awesome video that they can show in class.

#26 Edmodo

Edmodo is a global education network that helps connect all learners with the people and resources needed to reach their full potential.

If your institution doesn’t have a website to help students interact with each other, you should give Edmodo a try.

#27 Instagram

Instagram:  You can easily use instagram to make students practice out of class.

You can create an account for educational purposes, publish some photos about a particular topic and ask students to comment on them.

You can also upload short video clips explaining a particular aspects of language.

#28 Youtube

Youtube has proven again and again to be really helpful to teach language.

You can send a video before class so they watch it and get ready for what they are going to study.

You can also use videos in class for presentation and practice time.

#29 Padlet

Padlet collaborate better and are more productive with Padlet. 

You can make beautiful boards, documents, and web pages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to.

I have used this web app in face-to-face and online classes, I like to monitor students as they are writing stuff.

#30 Voki

Voki is a fun tool that students can use for homework, classwork or projects. 

You can Customize their appearance and what they say, and share with others!

This app is very useful when you want to do something creative around the speaking abilities that students are trying to develop

#31 Mentimeter

With Mentimeter you can make your audience feel involved by enabling them to contribute to presentations with their smartphones and show the results live.

Add polls, word clouds, Q&As, slides and more to your presentations and create an interactive experience for your audience.

I have used this to teach online classes and I think polls can generate interesting conversations especially when you are teaching intermediate levels.

#32 Word it Out

Another creative way to teach English with technology is using word clouds to teach vocabulary.

WordItOut lets you transform your text into word clouds. You can then save and share them, so everybody can find and enjoy them.

Wordles can also be used to introduce a topic, you can create a wordle around the any topic you want

These are also useful for freer production tasks.

#33 Fake Chat Conversations Apps

There are many fake chat conversation apps that you can use to teach English so choose the one that you feel more comfortable with.

I think that Fake Chat Conversations app can be really helpful when you want to make sure that students understood the topic.

Let’s say that you just taught them about Greetings and Introductions and you want to make sure that they understood the lesson.

You can ask them to create Fake Chat conversations that they can submit using a Dropbox Link.

Interested in Learning More?

These are some very helpful articles about teaching reading

• 3 Stages for Teaching Reading
• 15 Examples of Pre-Reading Activities
• 10 Examples of While-Reading Activities
• 13 Examples of Post-Reading Activities

These are some articles that can help you teach listen more effectively

• The 3 Stages of a Listening Lesson 
• 12 Types of Pre-Listening Activities
• 12 Examples of While-Listening Activities
• 10 Types of Post-Listening Activities