Breaking News English!

Teachers' resource: Breaking News English!

1. What is it?

Breaking News English offers ready-to-use EFL/ESL lesson plans in Word and PDF, graded news articles, listening, podcast, and communicative activities. All lessons are based on stories currently in the news and a new lesson is added every three days. Listening files can be downloaded in mp3 format or subscribed to via a podcast.

2. What makes it a useful tool in language teaching?

First of all, it is easy to use. As the following picture shows,

all the news are displayed on the left column, users can not only see the title but also know the difficulty level. Click the title you are interested, and then you can continue reading.

Secondly, since the above categories include all the aspects in a ELT class, such as 'listen', 'read', etc, while the beneath is the whole article, teachers can use these resources to do more activities in the classroom.

Take 'grammar' for example,

let's see what will happen when you click these four different exercises:

Grammar gap-fill

You can type in the missing verbs, gerunds, adjectival forms in the spaces - their infinitives are at the top. Then click to check your answers, and aslo press the "refresh" button on your browser to play again.

Articles gap-fill

This one is simply to check how students are familiar with using articles, which include definite 'the' and indefinite 'a' and 'an'.

Prepositions

whose layout is similar to articles gap-fill but with different purpose. 

word order

3. Advantages of using it

• All lessons are based on stories currently in the news - as the world's news breaks, teach it.
• Classroom handouts are readily reproducible.
• There are graded listenings with each lesson.
• Each lesson has 26 pages of printable activities / handouts, which are rich teaching resources for teachers.
All lessons are also downloadable PDF format.
There are 30+ online quizzes for each lesson, which allows students to finish them either in the classroom or at home.

4. Disadvantages of using it

• The interface is a bit messy.
• Teachers will spend more time choosing the appropriate teaching materials.
• Students will spend more time finishing the homework or pair work.
• This fixed genre may make users feel bored.

Say it! Record it! Make it!

Vocaroo: easy recorder!

1. What is it?

     Vocaroo is an online voice recorder which allows you to create your own voice recordings without installing any software. All you need to do is provide a microphone, the in-beded one also works.

2. How to use it?

    Click the 'record' button, you can easily record your voice.

    If you want to know more, follow this video:

3. How to apply it into language teaching?

Obviously, teachers and students can use it to do a lot of activities:

• Teachers can start an activity in the classroom by providing examples, such as telling a story.
• Teachers can create an audio to distribute the homework outside the classroom.
• Students can use it to do some reflective thinking, by either preparing the task in the  class or recording their thoughts at home.
• Teachers can use it to give some feedback on students' homework, since the recordings can be sent by the recorder and be downloaded by the receiver.
• Students can use it to complete peer evaluation, because vocaroo can be shared with other classmates.

4. Benefits of vocaroo:

• For some unconfident students, using vocaroo can help them to overcome their shyness when they practice speaking at home, and they can listen to their own recordings again and again.
• It is easy because there is no barrier to entry.
• Students can use it both in the classroom or outside the classroom.
• For both teachers and students, it is flexible.
• Comparing with taking down notes, speaking through vocaroo saves a lot of time in the classroom.
• Teachers can use it to design more interesting activities.

5. Limitations of vocaroo:

• Time limit is only 5 minutes.
• Users can not track the voice, which brings much more difficulties for teachers to give feedback or for students to give peer evaluation precisely.
• Users can not edit their recording. That is, if they make mistakes, they may only retry, which costs more time.

                                                 Record music and voice >>

Dvolver: make your own movie!

Dvolver Moviemaker!



    1. What is it?

 

Dvolver is an online software that allows you to make customized animated videos. According to Dvolver, "People have a lot to say, and they like to say it with animated characters." Dvolver is easy to use, free of charge, and you don't even need to sign up.

      2. How to make a movie with Dvolver?

Click the link:
http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/index.html

 

 

• Select the background and sky for your first scene. Each style has a fun description of the climate and culture of your chosen setting. Next, select a plot for your scene. "Rendez-vous," "pick-up," and "chase" are made for two characters, and "soliloquy" is made for one.

• Choose the characters for your scene. Similar to the background and sky options, each character has a fun written profile. Characters include normal-looking folks, celebrities lookalikes, aliens, animals and more. 

• Add dialogues if you want. Add up to three lines for each character. The dialogue will appear in a thought-bubble above the character's head in the finished movie.

 

•  Select the music for your scene. By clicking on the options, you can preview the sound and its recommendations for use. After making your selection, you'll have the options to add a new scene, or to finish the movie.

• Select a style for your titles. During this last step you can also add your name and the title of your choice. These will appear in the title sequence of your video.

     3. How to use it to foster language learning?

Teachers can use this tool in the classroom, such as asking the students to work in pairs, to stimulate communication between students. Moreover, it can also be done as a homework for the students so as to train them to learn language autonomously.

Reading Comprehension: Middle-High School. Students can transform the novel into a summary play. The students could create an alternative to something that happened in the story as well. This will have to depend on the type of story, of course, as there is a limit to 2 characters per scene.

Writing/Presenting: Have the students work on a documentary, summarizing a recent coup! You can assign a minimum number of scenes and ask students to create their own stories.

     4. Advantages:

• It is funny and attractive to students because of the music and animination, especially to younger learners.
• It is free.
• It can accelerate students' creativity and enhance their motivation. 
• It guides the students to choose and identify appropriate words and expressions to be used in appropriate context.
• It helps students to improve their communication skills through creating conversations in a movie.

     
     5. Disadvantages:

 

• Length limitation: there is a limit of words in a conversation, why brings much more difficulties for young learners.
• Only 2 characters can be chosen per scene. In a situation where a child is recreating a story, this won’t work.
• Voices can't be embeded.

TodaysMeet

Welcome to

    1. What is it? What does it do?

        TodaysMeet is a tool, which can be used to maintain students' focus on the subject of the teacher's lecture. The tool allows students to continually post comments, questions and answers on the screen, while the teacher undergoes a topic. You can create a room in TodaysMeet without creating a user account, and need only give the students access to the room by sharing a url with them.

    2. Why is this tool relevant to language teaching?
        Within the monological form of teaching, it is natural to use TodaysMeet as a common reflection- and questions / answers platform, displayed on the projector / interactive whiteboard. Students can continually ask questions aimed at the teacher and each other about the content of what is presented, and they may have solved some of the doubts, that slows their understanding of the presented subject.

        The most important thing is that all the ideas students got can gather together, which can be seen as a collaboration work in an ELT/ICT class. In this way, it is useful when teachers plan to distribute some pair work or group discussion.


    3. How to use it?
        Easy to learn. Just follow this video:

        The teacher gets an insight into, whether his/her presentation is well adapted to the students, and the whispering that normally takes place at the back of the class, is channeled into class using TodaysMeet, and may contribute to the onging evaluation and adapation of teaching.

        Following the teacher's presentation, one can examine the contents of TodaysMeet-room, and ensure that everyone gets their questions answered.

   

     4. What are the limitations of using this technology?

•  It needs a high support from the teaching institution for computers or other Internet-based facilities, eg. iPad.
• The responses are limited to 140 words or less so there is no development to the points given.
• It minimized the face-to-face communication between teacher and students, and also student-student interaction, which may hinder the development of students' communicative competence.