ELT Tech Tools Blog: Kahoot

A Call for 'MALL'

Source: http://itunesu.bluevalleyk12.org

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL)

Mobile phones are the most common technology we can find everywhere. Recently, ELT research started to investigate possible roles mobiles can play in language learning and how to deploy them to meet teachers and learners needs. There has been uncertainty about what is meant by "Mobile Learning" because the arguments were about which mobility is meant, is it the mobility of the devices or of the learners? (Hockly, 2012). However, for ELT, MALL is clearly addressing the device. It started when the British Council began launching some apps to assist language learners, then publication companies started to include applications in their materials' packages. Today's tool is basically a website but now has its own 'app' although you can still use the website.

Kahoot, a mobile tool your students will admire

Kahoot is a game based website designed to be created and controlled by one person (a teacher) from a computer and players (students) who login from their smartphones. The most common game you can use on Kahoot is called Quiz. Quiz is basically a multiple choice game with four options which can be reduced to two and can't exceed four. Teachers will need a classroom screen big enough to enable all students to see it otherwise it won't work because all the display will be on the main screen. Also, classroom speakers should be loud enough. Students will be able to see ONLY colours with shapes representing the options. The following tutorial video shows how to work with Kahoot.

                                                              Source: https://www.youtube.com

Some thoughts about using Kahoot

Kahoot works best for definitions, therefore you may use it to recycle vocabulary. Lots of ideas can be used here to create useful quizzes such as using synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, word groups and derivatives. With higher levels, you can try fixed expressions and collocations and with beginners you can check spelling and homonyms. A good strategy to make sure that students have learned the vocabulary is to recycle the same quiz at least once, with a good time gap and then compare the results. This technique gives an insight of students' progress which helps you to make good decisions about your own practice and teaching styles. For example, I teach an ESP course to a large class. Their main course is business English and their material is based on terms. The following picture demonstrates a sample of vocabulary quiz.

In addition to vocabulary, you can create grammar related quizzes. These can be about tenses, clauses, articles, etc. If you are to use a grammar quiz, you can guarantee better results by:

1. Sentence completion . . This question type hits directly on your learning outcomes and is useful for activities such as parts of speech, patterns and prepositions.

2. Vocabulary link . . To achieve a communicative goal while learning grammar, try to embed material vocabulary in your quiz.

3. A grammar trip . . My suggestion here is a full grammar lesson based on Kahoot. Say you are teaching adding 'ed' to verbs and the spelling rules related to them. You can design a quiz of fifteen questions, ten normal sentences where students work out the rules while playing, and five form-related questions to check that they understood the rules.

One more stop

Finally, to use Kahoot we should consider that both classroom and students meet the hardware and software requirements. ALL students must have smartphones with access to the internet and teachers must have big monitors and speakers. To some teachers, designing a Kahoot activity needs time that they can't offer. Actually it is a sort of material and test writing. So, loaded teachers may find it challenging to spare some time to create quizzes.

Kahoot fails to address all the outcomes, so you should be aware of when and why to use it. For instance, you cannot use Kahoot to practice a listening or pronunciation and, consequently,  will need another software. Being aware of all these pitfalls, you can now try it yourself and tell us how it worked in your classroom.