Category Archives: Audio

Lyreach.com : learning through songs

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I can’t imagine life without music but much though I love listening to it when I’m driving, working, relaxing or having fun, you won’t see me bringing music to the classroom just because. There is always a reason to choose the song I ask my students to sing. It could be either because it contains a certain structure we are working with or because of its vocabulary or its phonetics, but there is always a reason
This is why when I bumped into this site lyreach.com I was thrilled as it offers the possibility of typing words or idioms or structures as you might expect to get them in the lyrics. The lyrics of about 470000 songs are stored so the hard part is choosing which of these songs you would like to work with. Then you click on your choice to see the paragraphs that it appeared in, the title of the song and the singer and sometimes a clip from Amazon.com
In this case I was looking for a song containing Adjectives with too and enough and this is what I found.

You might be interested in having a look at these songs:

Lesson Plan: Films

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Mixing traditional and modern teaching? What’s the right balance? That’s a hot issue and one I haven’t yet found the answer to but I feel that there’s nothing like the interaction between teachers and students or students among themselves.
In this lesson plan Focus on Films I’ve combined both traditional teaching and new technologies. I’ve even published one exercise Film Genres that I’d rather do with my students in class with them taking an active role in their learning process. You choose but what comes below  is how I  definitely plan to do it with my students.

I ‘ve prepared one set of blue strips of paper with the names of famous films and another set of green coloured strips with film genres. All in all I’ve written 10 strips of paper and then placed them on my table. Students will then come up to my table and do the matching exercise using blue-tack to stick the strips on the blackboard. I’m planning to revise  by showing them only the films and then only the genres.

On the other hand, there is another exercise in this lesson plan where, if I were a student, I’d definitely choose to do using a computer and I’m referring to the brainstorming exercise we normally do on the blackboard. Well,  I’ve had a lot of fun ( and also wasted a lot of time ) doing this brainstorming  about films with this little application called Simple Diagrams, which I highly recommend (mainly because it’s free)


It must have been sheer luck that I bumped into this cool site only last week, just when I was gathering material to use  in the FILMS lesson.


This site has been nominated as one of the 50 best sites in 2010 and it contains about 12.000 film snippets that can be searched by genre, director, props, setting…etc. Isn’t it just unbelievable that you can even choose Action  and under this category choose whether you want a clip with a cough or a bump or a cry? Isn’t it just as amazing that you can choose the clip by Mood; do you want something inspiring,creepy or maybe funny?

The whole lesson, designed for intermediate students, comes with Vocabulary, Reading, Listening and Writing exercises. Click HERE to do it

Want to learn English through music? Lyrics Training helps you

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Do you want to learn English and/or French, Italian, German… through music? Well, if this is so, this is your place. This cool site is called Lyrics Training and it’s just amazing and hear this ,free to use!

This is how it works: at the bottom on the right-hand side you can see some lyrics, choose according to your level. There are three: easy, medium and hard. Then, when the window with the song you’ve chosen opens up, choose your mode; again, there are three, beginner,(fill in the blanks10%), intermediate (25%) and expert (full lyrics).

Now, this is what you’ll see if you choose  the song Tell him  in the beginner mode.  One of the best things is that if you get to a word and you can’t understand it or if it goes too fast, it will stop until the blank has been filled. The song literally WAITS for YOU!!!

But there’s even more. If you click on HELP at the bottom you can see what else the programme can do for you. Let’s imagine that you want to listen to the same line again, press Backspace, and if you are still unable to understand the word, don’t worry, just press TAB and the word will be written for you. Aren’t you dying to give it a go!!

Free Audio Books

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When I am in the gym trying to sweat my kilos away I’ve sometimes considered not listening to music and  instead ,making a better use of the time I spend there. Today I’ve bumped into this page and I have thought :” That’s what I was looking for!” So instead of running with Lady Gaga I’m going to start running with Jane Austen, Mark Twain or Virginia Wolf.
In Books Should Be Free you can find a lot of free audio books divided according to their genre: adventure, comedy, romance, fairy tales, poetry…etc and you can download them in mp3,iPod or iTunes format . Now, you have no excuse for not practising English, even when you’re at the gym!!

Newsy- the video news you can easily understand

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I just can’t wait to share this amazing site with you. It’s so very much what any teacher teaching advanced levels has ever wished for. It not only presents the world’s news coverage through two or three minute video segments but it also gives you the transcript. Wow! Amazing …! no more playing and replaying to get the transcript for the piece of news you want to bring to your classes and definitely,a chance also to improve pronunciation by reading the news at the same time as the presenter.

http://www.newsy.com/

Now, watch this video about Lady Gaga  getting 13 awards at the VMAs. The video you can see here is embedded so you won’t be able to see the transcript. To see it, click here http://www.newsy.com/videos/lady-gaga-dominates-vmas/. Ready? Enjoy!!!