Learning About the World While Learning English -- Breaking News English

News reports are commonly considered as one of the most useful English langauge learning resouces, because reading and listening to news are basic skills in routine life, also from the news, we are informed of the latest things happend in the English-language speaking countries and districts and get connected to their life and culture with ease. 

However, training the students to news listening and comprehension is always boring and torturous for both teachers and students.

Here comes a fantastic website Breaking News English, which makes teaching and learning news easily and funky!

What is it ?

Breaking News English is a up-to-date website providing free English teaching and learning resouces. Generally, every three days, there is one piece of news updated, more importantly, with a corresponding and comprehensive lesson plan as well as many interesting quizes. Teachers can use it via computer and internet or print out the lesson plan of great layout.


The reasons for choosing Breaking News English

• Two ways of teaching/learning the same piece of news

Every piece of news in this website is designed into both reading tasks and listening tasks. It's up to the teachers' choice. And both the PDF format file and the mp3 format audio file of the news is downloadable for free. Therefore, the students are facilitated with audio materials if they want to listen to the original native speaker's pronunciation and intonation after they finished the reading tasks, and supported by the transcription if they find some difficulties in listening comprehesion.

Free download files

From the perspective of the students' learning motivation, it's quite encouraging for them to know they can get enough help and surpport. Besides, it promotes learning autonomy a lot. The teachers can encourage the students to do the quizes and learning activities by themselves at home if there's time limitation in the class.

• Various well-designed learning activities and quizes

For each lesson, there designed various learning activities and quizes with different target language skills, namely listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, grammar, etc.

                                               An example of the table of contents in the lesson plan

Speaking:

Basically, the speaking practices are put in the warming-up (general questions for ice-breaking) and post-activity (more profound questions for discussion) phases. As you can see in the following pictures, the speaking activities includes distinguished modes of problem-solving, debates, peer-interviews, etc., which promotes both cooperation and competition. Besides, students critical thinking and interpersonal skills are also practised.

Two examples of speaking tasks

Listening/ Reading

Listening and Reading are two core target language skills in the lesson plan. Aimed to practise listening/reading skills, there designed a blank-filling task which can be done either by listening to the news article or reading it.

Besides, for better preparing the students with their main tasks and activate their schemata, a couple of pre-activities are offered for choice.

Also, in the post-activity phase, there are more discussions concerning the listening/reading comprehension and social issues related to the news content. It reinforces the students' understanding of the materials and expand their thoughts to the surrounding issues.


Writing

In every lesson plan, there is a 10-minute's writing tasks related to the topic.

An example of the writing task

As you can see in the example above, the instruction of the task is very simple and not appealing to the students. However, it is worth using this task very much as a post-reading/listening activity in the class: after the heated discussions and comprehensive input of the language and knowledge, they students deserve 10 minutes to write their thoughts and points of view down. It is also a chance for the students to think about the language accuracy since they probably only focus on the fluency in their oral tasks. Thus, their piece of work becomes a perfect record of their thoughts as well as the language for future reference.

Another highlight of this activity is that it involves peer-feeback. The students can get their peer students' feedback after they finish, and they can learn from each other at the same time, which can be very collaborative and motivating.
Vocabulary and Grammar:

In every lesson, there are differetiated types of vocabuary and grammar tasks and quizes for the students. Following are some examples.

Traditional grammar practices: multiple choices, blank filling, etc.

  

Multiple choice

                                                      Blank-filling

There are also some interesting online quizes, for example fill-in-the-blank, matching, hangman, flash cards, sentence jumble, missing words, no letters and crossword.

   Different types of vocabulary/grammar tasks and quizzes

Flash cards and Crossword are advised to make into exciting word guessing games as post-activities in the class.

 A brief introduction of the usage of Flash Cards

Crossword

• Time efficiency

The most obvious and direct reason for choosing Breaking News English is time efficiency. Almost all the lesson plan and the activities and homework are offered for free. And every three days, there will be one new lesson updated. Thus, it is very convenient for the teachers to adopt some of them and they don't have to waste a lot of time preparing the teaching materials. However, it is also risky and not recommended to employ the whole set of the lesson without taking the class and students' situation into consideration.

Limitations?

• The genre of the teaching/learning resouces is limited to news. In other words, the students cannot get access to other genres, such as short story, argumentation, exposition, etc.
• It is risky employ the whole set of the lesson without taking the class and students' situation into consideration.
• The layout of the web pages is not neat and organised enough.
• The ads scattered around are annoying and distractive.

Suggestions for Teachers

• The Breaking News English is suggested to be employed both in the listening and reading class, and outside the class as students' homework/ autonomous learning resources.
• Teachers are strongly advised to evaluate and filter the materials before bring them to the class, because the amount of the resources is too big to squeezed into one class.
• The vocabulary quizes in Breaking News English can be developed into exciting guessing games either as the post-activity or as a warming-up activity of the next class.
• To futher motivate the students, the teachers can also look for some concerning pictures or videos.
• The practices provided can also be made into a mini test of reading/listening.

Here is a sample lesson plan provided by Breaking News English.

Wordle -- More than a beautiful word cloud

Wordle -- Beautiful word clouds, and MORE than beautiful word cloud!

It has many educational potential!

What is a Wordle ?

Wordle is a Web 2.0 tool to make word clouds. Generally, the users put in the text, and the more frequently a word is used, the bigger it becomes in the word clould.

The following is a word cloud I did when I put in the fairy tale -- Snow White.

You may want to start doing your own wordle after you watch a brief tutorial. :)

The reasons for choosing Wordle for ELT

Colorful and interesting, thus motivating for students, expecially the young learners.

Limitations?

• It requires for Java plugin for a computer.
• When embeded to the blogger, the word cloud image is too small to be clear enough. Therefore, if you want a bigger image of the word cloud, you should do a screencast.

An example of an embeded version: very small and not clear enough

Suggestions for teachers:

•  Use it as a pre-reading/ listening activity, ask the students to see the word cloud and predict the content of the reading/listening materials.

• In writing class:

1) Using Wordle to check out the most friequently used words and expressions in certain types/genres of articles, so that the students can learn some fixed word choice in a specific type of writing.

2) Put the students’ writing task into wordle, and check out the most frequent adjective, content verbs, adverbs, linking words, ect., so that the students can think about/ look into the dictionary for other words and expressions to replace them, thus making the choice of expression more diversified.

WebQuest -- A task design assistant

WebQuest: a practice of task-based learning theory !

What is WebQuest ?

''A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most of  the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to used learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.'' --Bernie Dodge

Here is a short tutorial vedio for you to have a quick overview of creating a Webquest. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyht-ehlAWY)
Try to create one by yourself at QuestGarden (http://questgarden.com/)

The reasons for choosing WebQuest for ELT

• WebQuest is a practice and materialisation of task-based learning approach.

The students can learn English when using it as a communication and negotiation language. When they are engaged in the task in WebQuest, there would not a teacher judging the accuracy of their speaking, and they can forget about the the embarrassment and anxiety of using a foreign language.

Further, to feel that their English language can express their thoughts and points of view in the group can be encouraging and motivating!

• WebQuest offers a chance for the students to practise their higher level of thinking skills: analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

To complete a WebQuest task, the students are required to analyse the research question, evaluate and critically pick up the useful information from the massive information 'reservior' in the internet, and synthesis them into a logical and coherent piece of work! These are all the basic thinking skills they need to equip with.

• The WebQuest making websites (e.g. QuestGarden) offer the templete for the teachers when creating a WebQuset task, thus making the creation process easier and quicker.

An example of WebQest template

• Filter the information

In a WebQuest task, the teachers can provide the students with many concerning resources, which not only saves the learners' time, but also in some way, filters the information. It is specially important for young learners, since they are not intelligently mature enough to keep themselve from the wrong and bad information in the internet.

Limitations?

• Time-consuming

Although there's templates provided for the ease of creation, it still takes at least 2-4 hours to make a good WebQuest. Therefore, the busy teacher may not want to spent so much time on it.

• Prevent the students becoming a fully independent thinker and 'researcher'

It is mentioned that the information can be filterd in some way, because many web resources are provided by the teachers. However, from another perspective, the students can be too dependent on the resources offered by teachers, thus lose the opportunity of searching for the useful websites and information by themselves.

Further, it may reduce the creativity and diversity of the students' work, since they are using the same sources.

Suggestions for teachers

• The teachers are suggested to use WebQuest in a task-based class as a goup work. 
• The contents of WebQuest can cover speaking, listening, writing, and reading, etc. It's all up to the teachers' design.
• The target students of WebQuest task should be digitally literate, and the language proficiency should be intermediate or above.
• While doing a WebQuest task, other ICT tools such as Wallwisher, MyBrainshark, ect. can be combined together.

The following are some examples of WebQuests:

http://questgarden.com/123/99/4/110413094633/index.htm

http://questgarden.com/100/12/9/100405105301/index.htm

http://questgarden.com/126/41/7/110512074451/process.htm

This is a link to the breif WebQuest design I did with my university colleage:

http://questgarden.com/138/10/5/120127053741/

Wallwisher

Wallwisher? Wish to stick a note on the wall?

What is Wallwisher?

Wallwisher (http://www.wallwisher.com/) is a free Web 2.0 tool. As indicated by its name, it allows users to build a colorful 'wall' of a given topic, and anyone who get access to the wall can 'stick notes' on it. You can share a text, website, an image and even a vedio with Wallwisher notes!

Here is a tutorial vedio to help you quickly learn how to use Wallwisher.

The reasons for choosing Wallwisher for ELT?

• Wallwisher is free and easy to use.
• The wall built is colorful, eye-catching and can be edited, thus motivating for students, the young learners in particular.
• The employment of Wallwisher in ELT classroom is a practical materialisation of the learning theory of constructivism, since every learner has an opportunity to contribute to the knowledge, share the learning resources with peer students and teachers, etc. 
• The sharing function is powerful and cater well for the users' needs.

                           A demo wall (http://www.wallwisher.com/demo)

• It can be used both in and outside of the class, making e-collaboration and e-learning more easily.

Limitations?

• To use Wallwisher as the sharing and discussion platform in the class requires a well-equipped modern classroom with internet access and one computer for each student, or at least one computer for each group.
• To show the name of the notes' owner,  Wallwisher requires the users to regester with a valid email address, which may annoy some people who are conservative to reveal personal information.
• The wall can possibly be completely messed up when too many people post their notes, and it is really hard to orgnise the messy notes again.

Suggestions for teachers

• Using Wallwisher in a speaking class-- A story telling activity

The teacher can randomly post different story elements (such as the people, place, event, time, etc. ) on the wall, and ask the students to create their own interesting story with these elements as a group.

• Using Wallwisher in a reading class -- Put the disorganised reading materials in the right order

The teacher is suggested to disorganise a reading material, stick different parts randomly, and ask the students to put them in the right order -- it is a very good reading activity aimed at training the studentst the capability of activating their own schemata and making prediction as well as the logical thinking style when doing the reading activity.

• Using Wallwisher in the writing class -- An ice-breaking or brainstorm tool

As a warming-up activity in the writing class, the teacher can organise the students to brainstorm the ideas for their topic of writing task.

•  Using Wallwisher as the discussion board in and outside of the class

When doing a group task, it is a very smart choice to use Wallwisher as the disscussion platform. The students can follow each other's working progress, share the ideas and resources, and contribute to each other's work.