Teaching Languages with Deck.Toys

Deck.Toys is an interactive, powerful and fun platform to teach Languages, whether in English, Mandarin, French, Spanish or German! We will show you some amazing tips to engage your language students effectively. Best of all, most of these features are available for free!

Tip #1: Turn your Vocabulary List into Mini-Games

Study Set Games allows you to automagically transform your study sets, i.e. terms and definitions of your vocabulary list, into fun mini-games, with a click of a button. The list of games you can play are:

• Crossword
• Flashcards
• Maze
• Memory
• Word Wheel
• Rockets
• Sort Me
• Word Attack
• Word Search
• Draw n Guess
• Match
• Lines
• Game Show
• Pairs
• Choices
• Jigsaw
• Sequence

You can make several study set games on the same study set or vocabulary to create variety in your lesson, whilst allowing your students to repeat the learning in different and fun ways! This promotes mastery of understanding the key points of your lesson.

Tip #2: Use the MCQ, Drag-n-Drop and Lock Slide Apps to create Challenges

In the Slide Activities, you can insert 3 amazing Slide Apps to make it a little more challenging for your students. They are:

1. MCQ Slide App
2. Drag n Drop Slide App
3. Lock Slide App

They are designed such that students must get the answer correct before proceeding to the next activity. Answers are self-validated, so no marking is necessary! Click on the links to see how to configure these Slide Apps inside your Slide Activities.

Tip #3: Use the Voice Slide App in Slide Activities

Voice Slide App allows your students to record up to 30 seconds of audio in a Slide Activity. This is really useful for teachers to hear the student pronounce words or give a short oral presentation. The voice clip will be sent to you in real-time, and you can give feedback to your students immediately too. Make it even more creative by combining the Voice Slide App with another Slide App like the Draw or Text Slide App.

Tip #4: Enable Immersive Reader in Slide Activities

Deck.Toys has in-built Immersive Reader capabilities in the Signposts and Slide Activity. Immersive Reader is an inclusive tool that implements proven techniques to improve reading for people, regardless of their age or ability. This includes children with dyslexia, ADHD, emerging readers, and non-native speakers. 

Key features are focus mode, immersive reading, reading aloud, font spacing and short lines, and focusing attention through highlighting specific lines of text, and visualizing word meanings through illustrations. 

Immersive Reader can improve reading comprehension and increase fluency for any of the 60+ languages supported for language learners. It can help build confidence for emerging readers learning to read at higher levels.

There is also the capability of translating the original text input, into 60+ other languages. Get more info on the settings here.

Tip #5: Configure Text-to-Speech in all Study Sets

All our Study Set Games have Text-to-Speech capabilities which is great for read aloud accommodations! Supported Text-to-Speech languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Malay / Indonesian. Change the preferred language in the drop-down list in the Study Set. 

This example shows the term in Spanish, and the Spanish accents shortcut list at the bottom.

Tip #6: Upload your own Audio Clips

If you wish to customize the pronunciations instead of relying on the Text-to-Speech function, or if you have teaching content other than the supported languages, consider converting to the Pro Plan where you can upload your own Audio Clip in Slide Activities and your own voice clips in Study Sets.

Tip #7: Be inspired by other Language Decks in the Deck Gallery

You do not need to make all your lessons from scratch! Browse through the Deck Gallery to find thousands of pre-made decks, ranging from simple lessons to more elaborate escape rooms. Best of all – it’s free for all users! 

Use the filters on the left of the screen to narrow your search down. Here is an example filtered to Chinese language decks. 

If the Language you are teaching is not in the list, type it directly into the search box, e.g. German will bring you to the available decks in that language.

Here are some Language decks from the Deck Gallery to get you started:

English: Figurative Language by Nancy Marie Essary: https://deck.toys/a/7yKLA0Kd_

German: Präpositionen by Jimena Licitra: https://deck.toys/a/7yg0miTbK

Spanish: Adjective Island by Julie Trzaska: https://deck.toys/a/QkBxizOXF

French: Food and Drinks by Penny Hensler: https://deck.toys/a/QJ3u3gxcU

Chinese: Monkey King by Hong Xiaoqin: https://deck.toys/a/XkTTsOcRK

Sharing is Caring

If you have made a deck that you would love to share with your fellow teachers but a little shy to upload to the public Deck Gallery, you can use the ‘Share with Link’ function. Read more here: https://help.deck.toys/article/60-how-do-i-share-my-deck

You could also join thousands of other teachers in our Facebook community to share lesson creation ideas for your students: https://www.facebook.com/groups/decktoys

Let us know if you have any ideas to make your language teaching amazing as well. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram!

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Find out more about why Deck.Toys is all about Learning Paths for Lesson Adventures!

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