Entries Tagged as 'listening'
The Learning Edge is one of the sites that I have looked over recently and think it is worth being shared on my blog. Unfortunately, my students haven’t been so enthusiastic about reading so far therefore I have always been in a search for new and interesting ways arousing the students’ attention and testing them in the light of their readings. The thing that caught my attention on this website is also that it offers all these facilities on its unique platform.
When you enter The Learning Edge, you come across a variety of issues on different topics which look like the articles taken from a newspaper, so it makes you feel like you are a reading a newspaper. When you click on a headline, you are directed to the screen where the text is written down. Here, you have the opportunity to listen to the text while reading. Once you complete reading, it offers different types of learning activities (comprehension questions, quizzes, writing activities) to you.
Another issue about the Learning Edge is that you can choose the difficulty of some texts depending on the level although this application is added to a few articles.
What I like on the Learning Edge
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it is free, really quick and easy to use.
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no special software required
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great animated videos, texts with audio
What needs to be improved?
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it needs more updates
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more articles can offer the option to choose the level of the text.
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more games can be inserted into the learning activities page
I hope you find the Learning Edge fairly useful. Please do share any ideas you have for using it in the comments below.
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Tags: listening·online resources·reading
Elllo is a great site containing hundreds of activities to practice your listening and comprehension skills. Most of the listening activities come with a downloadable MP3 tracks, text views, slideshows, audio notes and quizzes. The activities are categorized in seven ways offering different contexts. These are:
1) Views: You can listen to short interviews on up-to-date topics.
2) Songs: There are many songs by independent artists. While you listen, the words are displayed on the screen so that you can work on pronunciation, reading speed, reading by chunks and common idioms.
3) Mixer: You can listen to the audios including the answers of different people for the same question or topic.
4) Games: As you listen, you can play game choosing the correct options as shown in the screenshot below.
5) Videos: The recordings in this section are unique in that they offer English accents of people from all over the world on current topics such as unemployment, holidays or food, etc…
6) News: This part is ideal for the ones who want to practice Academic English.
7) Points: You can achieve mini-lectures and presentations divided into six sections.
Before Listening to the Recordings
- Preview the comprehension questions.
- Look at the slides to give you an idea about the topic.
While Listening to the Recordings:
- Replay the audio and restart a spesific section in the recording.
- Turn on the text view and follow the text paying attention to pronunciation and stress.
- Turn down the volume and turn on the text view. Then read the text view trying to get the same speed (This is Shadow Reading Technique which is quite useful for fluency.)
(!) It is also important to know that the versions of the videos may be different from each other. While in the 5th- 6th- 7th versions, it is possible to find slideshow, quiz, text view, downloadable audio, audio notes, video response, related links, some of these specialities are absent in the previous versions.
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Tags: ESL websites·listening·Web 2.0 tools
I believe that learning songs is one of the great ways to learn a language but unfortunately, I’ve never found a tool to do this clearly and effectively so far. However, I have recently found a very nice website “Lyrics Training” operating imbedded You Tube music videos of famous songs to provide language learners to practice language skills. Videos are categorized into three levels of difficulty (easy, medium and hard) together with “fill in the blanks” exercises. When you select a music video, you can begin the game by pressing the “Play Now” button next to the video. Don’t worry about filling in the blanks in time since the song is paused once you start to write. Here are some screenshots that will help you to figure out “Lyrics Training” quickly.
1. Advanced Search
2. The menu showing how to play
3. The table showing your score
How to Use “Lyrics Training” in Class?
- Assign your students to learn a song from the Lyrics Training
- Create forums to discuss the songs and ask their ideas about the song, the clip or the artist.
- Students can create their own clips and lyrics as a project.
- Ask students keep a journal to write down the new words and grammatical items that they have learned in the lyrics.
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Tags: lyrics·song·Web 2.0 tools
