TEF News post: Recording your Skype lessons

By Yumi on November 26 2018

Hi everyone,

As some of you may already know, Skype has a great new function--you can record Skype calls.

Recording your lessons can help you to review and practice in many ways. For instance:

  • Listening practice;
  • Pronunciation/intonation practice;
  • Learning certain gestures;
  • Checking your own body language, facial expressions and frequency of eye contact; and
  • Checking your own intonation (e.g. the descending tone) or how often you use empty fillers such as “uh” or “um”.

For some of these, it might even be more useful to record parts of the lesson instead of the whole lesson. A good example would be for the pronunciation of a certain sound, so you can see and hear the sound being made.

As you can see in the image above, all you need to do is click the video button on the bottom-right corner of your Skype screen, and it will start recording your lesson. Both you and your teacher will see the video in your Skype chat box once you have finished recording.

In many parts of the world, the law requires permission of the person you are recording. Please respect this by asking before you record the lesson.

Here are a few guidelines:

  • Ask your teacher first if it’s okay with them to record the lesson (e.g. “Can I record this lesson?” or “Would it be okay if I recorded this lesson?”).
  • Please do not record the lesson if your teacher says no.
  • Please do not share the video content with anyone else or on other media sources.

We understand how useful it can be to record your lessons for review. We fully support you in achieving your English goals. However, we’d like to respect and protect the privacy of everyone at The English Farm—students and teachers alike.

Thank you all for your understanding and cooperation. Have a fun and productive lesson!

Warm regards,
Yumi