In the TPRS classroom, creating your own listening activities can be super easy. You can utilize this approach to create your own cloze cloze activities or record your own audio of a story.

The process is simple. Every computer has QuickTime player.

1. Open up QuickTime player and select “File” and “New Audio Recording”

2. Press the record button to start recording. If you are on a laptop, this will use your computer’s internal microphone. Press the button again to stop. It will automatically open convert to an audio file, which you can play and re-play.

3. If you wish to save this, simply go to “File” and “Save”or as you click the Red X to close the box, it will prompt you to save it.

That’s it! Super simple! Here are some ways you can use it:

1 ) Record an audio of the class story and have students listen as they follow along with the text. This is great for a) Saving your voice if you have to do it multiple times a day and b) you can upload it and have students who were absent listen to it, or even for kids who want/need extra practice.

(Note: If you create an audio recording of a story that you did not create yourself, such as a TPRS novel, please be aware of copyright. Do not upload this file to your class website, unless it is password protected.)

I recorded an audio of our class story of “Alma” and posted it to Google Classroom.

2) Create a cloze activity of the reading. I took the class story and changed some details as I recorded it. Students had to fill in the blanks with the word from the recording and then had to go back and re-read it to also write the correct information. This allows for extra reps of reading by giving them a task, so it is not just re-reading for the sake of it.

3) Dictation: Have students transcribe what they hear.

If you want a different speaker to read it, such as a native speaker, you can use a site such as RhinoSpike.com to request a native speaker record a text. (You must “earn” credits by recording other peoples’ requests. Or you can ask on a social media if anyone else is willing to help.