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.
Good instructions, but I think bigger font and wider layout might be an improvement.
ReplyDeleteThanks Simon, the font on my laptop is normal, a bit confused...
DeleteHi Cynthia. I agree with Simon. Letters are too small to read and the blank in the left part has occupied 45% of this page although you have done a nice analysis on this web tool. By the way, my dear friend...only one???
ReplyDeleteMy dear friend, I'm quiet frustrated with the layout thing, and I have done more already!
DeleteAgree with Simon and Yaeko, a bit difficult to read your blog. However, I fully approve your viewpoint in limitations: Teachers will spend more time choosing the appropriate teaching materials. It really took me lots of time to choose the most appropriate one when I used it two years ago. :)
ReplyDeleteur such an experienced teacher that have so much advice to share with us! I really appreciate it!
DeleteHi. Don't forget you should have around 8 posts. I think I can see 4 so far.
ReplyDelete