Grammar Queen

I picked up a feed a few days ago about xtranormal, a site that allows you to create animations using text to speech software (despite my good intentions I forgot to note whose blog pointed me in this direction: so thanks and apologies!) This site is really easy and fun to use and can cope with several languages and accents. My first experiment is aimed at getting my Year 10s to remember the basic rules and a few key forms of the perfect tense. I asked the group to write some questions and answers about forming the tense, and then typed their dialogue into the site. It is great fun choosing the camera angles, gestures and facial expressions. In episode two the French tutor demonstrates some of the verbs, and I'm going to invite my students to script episode 3, where our learner takes her first uncertain steps in the perfect. I think then I might invite students to invent another character our French learner can meet. The resulting videos can be posted on youtube, embedded in your blog or simply searched on xtranormal's site, which offers the usual possibilities of ratings, comments and remixes. Try it now while they are offering free credits.