The prompt below will produce a full TPRS-inspired TextActivities resource with just a few additional details required from you!
The prompt below will produce a full TextActivities resource with just a few additional details required from you!
Up until now, all interactive activities on TextActivities.com have worked by automatically checking interactions immediately. This gives students instant feedback on every single move.
So if rebuilding a text in blocks, clicking the correct next block produces a positive "ping" noise and inserts the block in the next text slot, whereas clicking the wrong next block produces a negative sound and stops you in your tracks. Same with putting words in order, filling gaps, separating words, filling in letters, etc.
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Correct interaction = positive sound and keep advancing.
- Incorrect interaction = negative sound and progress blocked until you find the next correct block, word, gap, letter, etc.
This "immediate feedback" is still the default for the vast majority of the activities. It makes sense for the "gamey" activities, and it stops students from having to write out a whole sentence before realising they were on the wrong track.
Adding more challenge / Requiring greater reflection
BUT I decided I wanted to offer something that puts students on the spot a bit more.
The new Submit mode requires them to build their full response before submitting it for analysis.
Pedagogical benefits of the "Space" or "Break the flow" activity (SLA perspective)
Core task: segmenting a continuous L2 letter string into words
>> TRY IT YOURSELF: French | German | Italian | Spanish
This task targets a fundamental but often implicit skill in L2 development: word segmentation. By removing spaces and punctuation, learners are forced to engage in active parsing rather than passive recognition.
From an SLA perspective, the task promotes:
STUDY MY OWN TEXT
This guide assumes that you have a student account on TextActivities.com
Sign in and go to the "Resources" page, and you'll see that there is a "STUDY MY OWN TEXT" button (see image above). Click this to access the page that allows you to create a new student resource (or edit an existing one).
The ###chunked### marker (added to the top of the main text box) is a hangover from Textivate that you may not be aware is available on TextActivities. Read on for information about how to use this feature and what effect it will have on the activities created.
ASSIGNMENTS & 
COMPETITIONS WITH NO DUE DATE 
You can now set assignments with no due date and competitions with no end date / time.
You can manually end these using the end assignment / competition option in the teacher tools menu next to each assignment / competition.
Assignment data with full score breakdowns is available for 6 months following submission. All assignment scores are deleted after 1 year. (i.e. this has not changed)
This is a feature that was available on Textivate and has been requested by several teachers. I hope you find it useful 🙂
RECORD YOUR VOICE & COMPARE 
I've just added something to TextActivities.com that was actually a feature of my [no longer available] authoring software for Windows PC "TaskMagic" years ago.
It's the facility to record your voice and play it back so that you can compare your pronunciation with the model provided by the text-to-speech audio.
The student holds down the record button to record their voice and releases it to stop the recording. They can then play it back using the play button.
This works on all resources that have TTS audio controls enabled, including all sample resources and temporary student generated resources (accessed via the "study my own text" option).
It requires you to have a microphone available, obviously.
Let me know what you think 
TextActivities does not store any sensitive data at all. Any student data that is stored relates only to resource or competition points scores and the completion of assignments.
Student accounts are set up by their teachers or by their school admins and are NOT based on email addresses. (No student interaction with TextActivities requires the use of an email address).
- Student usernames are automatically generated by our system based on the names entered by their teachers when they set up their accounts
- Student passwords are 4-digit numerical PINs which students cannot change (but teachers can)
Student usernames on TextActivities look like this:
ABC-FirstnameLastname (see explanation below)
For language teachers aiming to elevate students’ proficiency, combining dictation with translation into the target language (L2) offers a dynamic, dual-prompt approach. Students receive a written prompt in their native language (L1) and a spoken prompt in the L2, with the goal of producing the written L2 form. By integrating scaffolded activities -- such as text reordering, gap-fills, word reordering, separating fused words, and spelling tasks with word shape or letter clues -- this method enhances engagement and guides students toward accurate L2 output. Platforms like TextActivities provide an ideal environment for delivering these interactive, progressively challenging tasks. Research supports this approach, highlighting its ability to improve linguistic accuracy, fluency, and retention through structured support.