David Berresford is an English Language Tutor and a Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) member at the ELTC and he has recently co-developed software to support second language learners, pronto!

David first started using EdTech in his classroom over 10 years ago, when he began teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Some of the initial tools he started using were Kahoot and Quizlet, which were rather new at the time and were game-changing as they could allow learners to do quizzes and activities in the classroom in real-time using their personal devices. 

It was this real-time element, providing learners with immediate responses, results and feedback all through their mobiles, which really fascinated him and provided inspiration for an idea which, nearly 10 years later, would develop into Prontoclass, an EdTech tool formed in 2024, specialising in games and activities for language learners in a live classroom setting. 

Taboo is a game where a chosen student will have to describe a word to their classmates without using the ‘taboo’ words on a banned list. I use this game a lot when I want my learners to review certain vocabulary from the week connected to a unit or a language point. It develops their vocabulary range as they have to think of creative ways to describe a word they’ve recently learnt. For their teammates, it develops their listening skills as they have to listen to what’s being described and shout out an answer. Using Prontoclass, a teacher can set up an online version of this which will randomly select students to be the describer and send them a word to describe to their teammates via their mobile phone.

Hotseat is another one of my favourite games, due to the frantic nature and fast pace. The setup is simple, the class is divided into 2 teams. Each round a random student will be picked to be in the ‘hotseat’, which is traditionally a seat at the front of the class. Their teammates will then be sent a word and will have to describe it to them. The student in the hotseat who shouts out the answer first will be awarded a point. After the first round, 2 new students will be selected to be in the hotseat. This can be played digitally via Prontoclass, where students will be sent the keywords to be described to their mobiles.

The final game available on Prontoclass is Jumble, a game where students have to work together to arrange a piece of text, ranging from sentences to paragraphs. Traditionally, this would have involved hours of cutting up paper strips, organising them into teams for students to then put them back in the correct order.  A great game, but very time consuming! Now with Prontoclass, the teacher no longer needs to cut up paper as they can be separated digitally and sent to student’s phones in a jumbled order. In teams, students must work together to put them in the correct order to form a logically flowing sentence, or paragraph. Each student will receive a different piece of the puzzle, so they must work together and look at each other’s devices.