Category Archives: Listening

Ready-To-Go Lessons:Breaking News English

Audio, Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing skill, , , , ,

I cannot believe I have never posted about Breaking News English. I have been a subscriber for a long, long time. But, you know, sometimes   the things you are more familiar with are the things you more tend to forget to highlight but the site is incredibly helpful.

♥Breaking News English mainly helps you improve listening and reading but also if you read along it’ll help you with your pronunciation.
♥It has more than 1,500 lesson plans based on current events and news.

♥These lesson plans are very useful for the teacher as this site provides warmers, pre, while and after reading/listening activities, discussion ideas, writing suggestions and even homework activities, all related to the news story. There is an MP3 listening you can download or listen online.

Reading or listening to a biography?

Audio, Listening, Resources, , , , ,

Nobody can deny the pleasure one gets from reading a good book. I always boast  that I’ll never be bored as long as I have a good book by my side.

Reading certainly helps  students learn and biographies are definetely something quite light to read . Today I want to show a website I came across just by chance when I was looking for information about Whitney Houston (rest in peace). The site is called biography.com and here you can watch exclusive biographies about famous people like Christian Dior, Bob Dylan, Sarah Palin or Michael Jordan to name just a few. What I especially liked about this site is that you can choose between watching a minibio (2-4 minutes) or watching the full bio. What’s your choice? Don’t tell me  I think I can guess .

Now, watch this minibio about Pablo Picasso and tell me what you think about this site.

St Valentine’s Day: two activities

Funny Stuff, Listening, Music, , , , ,

I have never celebrated st Valentine. I cannot remember a single occasion in my life when I was given a present or  invited to a romantic dinner whatsoever.( If you are reading this and you are one of my ex-boyfriends, don’t hesitate to send me an email if I have forgotten what you did for me on that day. Don’t get pissed off, I am sure it was beautiful and it meant the world for me).

I’ve prepared two activities for two different levels.
The first one is a song by Whitney Houston “I will always love you”. It is my way of  paying  a little homage to one of the greatest singers in history. Click here to get the worksheet. Level: absolute beginners .

The other activity I have decided to do is on the other side of what love should be. Please don’t take any offense ! It is only a small  joke and although it is a bit sexist it is also good fun. And remember that I am a woman, too. In my opinion it would be suitable for intermediate students and I am planing  to give them the first part and ask them to work in pairs to predict what is the woman going to find on the sixth floor. There are lots of follow-up questions that can be the object of discussion and of a lot of fun, too.

Practise your Listening: Dubai Islands

Listening

I had  heard some scattered pieces of news  here and there about Dubai being some kind of architectural wonderland  but after watching some videos  about this emirate I can only wonder : “well, what’s next?.

I’ve prepared this video for my intermediate students.If you want to test your listening you might want to click here and answer some questions about this video

Teaching teens: Present Simple and continuous

A word on Grammar, In the Computer Room, Listening, ,

The first video is very easy to understand and though grammar is not explained as such  students, at the end of this short video,are perfectly aware of  how to use these two tenses.

The next video is a bit longer and it has different sketches, so if I’m running short of time I might decide not to use all of them.

Questions for the different sketches, click here