Digitizing the Text (Poem): An Interesting Way to Improve Listening and Speaking Skills

Abstract

Digitization, e-content, technology-aided learning and digital teaching have all captured the educational scene of the 21st century. The present generation is more into tweets and social networking. the teachers face a lot of challenges as the classroom of today has changed drastically with students equipped with a lot more information than ever before. Now opportunities to convert traditional print texts into multisensory, appealing documents are greater. Information highway is flooded with recitation of poems in the voice of the native speakers and even by the poets themselves. The poem can also be digitized in the voice of the learner for teaching purposes thereby making the classroom experience more exciting for learners and teachers. The aim of this paper is to show that the text can be made alive by effectively putting audio, image, graphics and text together and turning these into an i-movie. Once the poem has been explained thoroughly in class, then as a post-activity, learners can be encouraged to digitize a poem with the help of technology in pairs or in groups. Classroom presentations by learners of these movies help in improving their LSRW skills. In a way, asking learners to recite, record and re-create a poem in their own voice is like encouraging them to learn by doing and creatively put together IT-enabled resources.