Speaking tools

Chat robots could be good tools for students to practice speaking. These could easily be done by homework or also class time. Some useful sites for chat robot includes Alicebot, Fake Captain Kirk, and Voki.
For example, 'Alicebot' site includes chatbox with a robot computer program called Alice. If students go to this site and click 'chat with Alice', students will see the robot Alice and a blank which says 'you say:'. Here, students can freely ask questions to 'Alice' and practice some English forms and vocabularies with her. Students will be 'human' and when they ask her questions, Alice will reply. It is automatic replies but students can have fun. She is not real but it feels like real because some of her questions are funny and some serious. These days, students are really into computer games and like doing something with the internet, this resource could be an excellent tool for students to practice both reading, writing, and speaking. Because the answers Alice provides are the same for all 'humans', the teacher can give homework such as 'find out Alice's interests or hobby' by make them use certain forms they learned during class.

For 'Fake Captian Kirk', the same things reply. Good aspect of this site is that students can hear Captain Kirk's reply through headphones. Also, his character seems like from the space, so many boys would probably enjoy talking to him about their curious questions about the outer space. Many teenage boys are fascinated by outer space.

For 'Voki', students can create their own character, and it is always fun to make your own imagination character. After making one, students can type in the blank some sentence they want to hear from, their own character will say outloud for them. For speaking practice, it will be fun because they get to hear from their own creative image and not some automatic voice mail.