Voki - create your avatar and feel confident to speak

Introduction

(click play button and watch my avatar speaking)

    Using Voki to create your personalised avatar is a great fun. You can edit face, change clothes and background and even use cartoon and animal characters. And do not forget to let it express yourself - by recording or uploading your own voice or just typing the text, choosing an accent you like then making it speak. Click the link and have a go: http://www.voki.com

Voki in L2 teaching and learning

    For L2 learners who feel too shy to speak, one way to let them speak could be to have them create their own avatar and record their voice. In doing so, students may feel less pressure and have more freedom to express whatever they like. What is more engaging is that by creating different characters like animals, monsters, politicians, etc., students can try out different personalities by using exaggerated intonation, stress and pitch, which they will probably not do in real life.

Implementation

    Voki can be used to carry out interactive speaking and listening activities. Create a website and have students post their self introductions (or other topics you assigned to them), so that they will be able to listen and comment on each others or even guess who they really are (if they were asked to hide their names beforehand). The good here is not only that they will get motivated to check out works by their peers and feel more relaxed to do speaking practice, but that in order to comment on each others works, they must listen carefully and by doing so they will also realise the importance to have articulate utterances.

Voki is free to use. For more information about more upgraded functions by Voki classroom and Voki presenter (which are not free), go to the website: http://www.voki.com/pricing.php

Russell Stannard's training video about how to use Voki: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/audio-podcasting/voki.html