Sunday 29 January 2012

Marco Polo


Using videos in classroom helps to motivate students and encourage them to talk in class. There is a number of sites from which the teacher can choose a video. One of these sites is Teacher Tube 
 I have chosen a video from this website about Marco Polo the famous traveler who had his journey through the silk road. This video is very suitable to be used in classrooms because it is less than six minutes long what ensures enough time for the teacher to repeat the video for the student to watch more carefully and discuss it with them. It is suitable for students in the intermediate school who have a previous knowledge of English. The teacher can start the lesson by introducing the new vocabulary. After watching the video, the teacher can engage the students into a group discussion by asking few questions about the video.


Thus, this  video helps students to improve their listening skills while linking the linguistic information with the visual information in addition to the speaking skills which are improved through the discussion. Also there is the historical information that they can get by understanding the video.


Monday 23 January 2012

Lyrics Training


I like this particular website because it is interesting. Learners can learn language while listening to songs and having fun.

This way be used in classroom where the teacher plays the song and ask the students to fill in the blanks. This exercise can be done as a warm up activity or an activity at the end of the lesson. Students find it interesting to listen to music and learn language through songs. This way can also encourage autonomous learning. Learners can listen to the songs on their own and fill in the blanks. They also can choose the level that suits their proficiency .
This website enhances listening and vocabulary learning. It also improves reading since students have to read fast while filling in the blanks but it cannot be the main source of language learning because it is not enough. It does not discuss the main aspects of language properly like strategies of reading and listening, grammatical rules, etc. This website is useful to improve or enhance language learning.

Sunday 22 January 2012

Breaking News English

Breaking News English




This website is helpful for teachers of English. It provides complete English lessons accompanied with the exercises and their answers.

The teacher can find in this website various English texts in both written and audio forms about various subjects. Also, there are different exercises accompanied which are divided into warm-up before the reading or listening, exercises while and after reading and a post reading and listening activity.

The teacher can adapt the text with the facilities available in the classroom. The teacher can assign some of the exercises as a homework and do some of the online activities in the class as a group work or pair work.

The teacher can divide the class into groups of four or more then ask them to do one of the exercises and the one who finishes first is the winner. Thus, encouraging the use of the target language in classroom and students can learn through communication. This kind of exercises are different from the traditional way of teaching language and it can increase motivation for the learners.

However, if the classroom is not equipped with the suitable facilities like the computers, the teacher can printout the activities and ask the students to do them in the classroom in groups.

Despite that this website includes listening and reading, the main focus is on vocabulary. It depends on teaching vocabulary through reading and listening without giving any direct attention to grammar. This, sometimes, can cause problems for students when using language outside the classroom or apart from the tasks given.

Friday 20 January 2012

Language Guide

Langauge Guide


This exciting website helps learners to learn different languages through different colorful pictures and mp3.
this website is good for different levels of learner as it has more detailed pictures for advanced learners. Also there is a variety of options related to different groups of vocabulary and it provides a discription of the grammar of language as well,in a addition to the reading part.
The learner can learn new vocabulary through listening to the pronounciation of the words with the help of the pictures. Also, there are exercise provided for the learner to enhance learning.
However, this website is limited in terms of the number of languages to be learnt and it is also limited in terms of material provided for each language such as a wider range of vocabulary is provided for English and French but not for Japanese. besides it is the case for grammar in that grammatical rules are provided for some languages like French but not for others like Turkish. Moreover, this website focuses mainly on listening and speaking more than the other skills of langauge like writing.