We posted about SimpleEnglish Videos back in 2012 but Vicki and Jay refurbished it some weeks ago, so we thought it would be a good idea to remind everyone of the site.
Simple English Videos intends to help learnersto speak more fluently and with confidence. To do so, Vicki and Jay show how English is used in real life with videos, ‘with jokes along the way’.They shoot the majority of the videos themselves in their home or in locations nearby with the help of friends and acquaintances.
Students will find more than one hundred videos on the site grouped under three levels: Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced. The videos are also grouped according to these categories: British and American English; Business English; Grammar; Hangouts; Short conversations; Social English; Songs and stories; Vocabulary.
In addition, every Sunday they broadcast The English Show live on their YouTube channel, which is full of language practice, game, conversation and raps.
Every week the show revolves around a different English-learning aspect: How to improve your listening and vocabulary by watching movies; English questions; English to advance your career; National Fairy Tale Day; Improve your listening with podcasts; Celebrate St Valentine’s Day; UK and US pronunciation differences; How to sell and convince in English; and so on.
A few weeks ago Jeffrey Hill informed on Idiomicon The English Blog. Idiomicis a site to learn idioms through illustrations.
Here's the way the site describes itself:
Idiomic? Never heard that word before….
Don’t look ‘idiomic’ up in the dictionary. It won’t be there. Iddy just made it up. It’s part idiom, part comic.
Idiomic hopes to explore the world of idioms with a bit of humour, a bit of colour, and a bit of useless information.
In each post, our host, Iddy, will try his best to understand each idiom, illustrated in lavish technicolor. Below his attempts we will explore the phrase with a definition, an example, and finally, an attempt to find its origin.
Iddy’s not a linguist, so he’s approaching this on a purely amateur level. He invites you to correct any errors he’s made or theories you may have heard.
He’s also happy to take suggestions of idioms to explore, so please, drop him a line. After all, it’s lonely being a big green ball.
Kiosko.net is a visual daily press directory that gives access to the world's largest news sites and displays a readable image taken from today's frontpage cover of each newspaper.
The site can be useful for both English students and teachers to compare how the same news item is reported from a different perspective.
Read - Listen - Learnis a collection of graded reading activities ranging from elementary to advanced level.
Most of the texts have audio recordings, so learners can read and listen at the same time. Similarly, the stories have a glossary and some graphic aids to help the student understand the most complex vocabulary in the stories.
The stories can be either fictional or non-fictional and they range between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
To select which story to read, just click on the Find articles tag at the top.
Write & Improveis a free online service from Cambridge University Press to help English students of all levels improve their writing skills. Here's the way Cambridge University Press describes Write & Improve.
"Write & Improveis the best way to improve your written English outside the classroom. Just choose a task and write about the topic.
Submit your work and Write & Improve will award you a Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) level, so you can see your progress. It will check your spelling, vocabulary and grammar in seconds and suggest ways to improve your writing.
Write & Improveis the reliable new way to improve your writing skills. And it’s completely free for learners of English!"
Presenting the new Sainsbury’s Christmas Advert – a joyous Christmas musical created in stop frame animation featuring vocals by James Corden.
It tells the story of Dave, a hard-working and devoted Dad, who realises that the greatest gift he can give people this Christmas is his time.
Another year ______________
Where do they go to?
It's a ______________.
Now it's December
So much to remember
Before Christmas ______________.
I'm already late
And my train is __________________
Disruptions on the line.
I ____________________into work
And the place is berserk
Yes, it's Christmas time.
I want to find the greatest gift
I can give my family,
But right now I don't have time to ____________________.
The streets are chaotic,
The shops idiotic,
There's a ____________________for the ____________________.
A granny's taking her time at the front of the line
"Ninety-one, ninety-two".
There's a party at work
And the manager's twerkin' ____________________.
To top off the day
Another train is delayed.
It's a ____________________.
"Christmas time is here".
I'd like to spend the time
With the ones I love so ____________________.
I'm trying to find the greatest gift
I can give my family.
I don't have time,
There's only one of me.
Tell me how do people do it all,
I'll never get it done.
If only there was a way to be
In two ____________________at once.
"Wait, that gives me an idea!"
If I wasn't alone,
What if I had a ____________________,
I could do so much more.
It would all be a breeze,
With a ____________________more mes
I'd have time galore.
I want to find the greatest gift
I can give my family.
The greatest gift I can give is me.
Now I can meet with the ____________________
And empty out my ____________________ all simultaneously,
Leaving me time to spend
With my family and friends,
Where I wanna be.
I want to find the greatest gift
I can give my family.
The greatest gift that I can give is me.
Key: over mystery Eve delayed race breathe queue; queue inappropriately catastrophe dear places clone couple boss in-box
phraseup* is a useful online tool that may be of assitance with writing by finding and filling up the words we can't remember or we don't know the right collocation for.
So if we type the beginning of the saying The early bird... in the phraseup* search box, a number of options will come up: catches the worm. gets the worm. rate.
We just have to choose the right one or the sentence ending that best fits for our purposes.
phraseup* can be a useful tool for English students when writing compositions if they want to make sure they are using the right combinations of words in their sentences.
Throughout the years we have posted on the online pronunciation dictionaries below, but we have decided to bring them to your attention once again to remind you of these useful tools, which might help you get around the pronunciation of difficult English or foreign names.
What's the correct pronunciation of these names: Rachel Weisz, Rebecca Romijn, Hermione, Granger, Joe Pesci?
The Name Engine provides the correct name pronunciations of athletes, entertainers, politicians, newsmakers, and more. Even well-known names are often pronounced in different ways, leaving you to wonder what the correct pronunciation is. You'll find the right answer here. Better yet, you'll actually hear the right answer.
Another site that can help us get around the problem of pronouncing difficult names is Pronounce it right, run by Patrizia Serra and Laura Mazzoni.
Patrizia
and Laura have organised the names by categories and nationalities. In
addition, they include categories like 'the newest 100 pronunciations'
and even a pronunciation test.
English with Jo is a site where English learners, especially those at intermediate and advanced levels, will have the opportunity to gain access to a large number of speaking and vocabulary resources.
By clicking on the Conversation Lessons tag students will find a trove of over 100 self-contained lessons around general interest topics which usually come up in both English exams and in the classroom (toys and games, homes, censorship, singlehood, parenting, artificial intelligence, household chores, and so on).
All the lessons keep to the same layout:
a short video to introduce the topic
some basic vocabulary to talk about the topic
a comprehensive questionnaire to talk about the topic
Other sections of the site are 'Word of the Day', 'Idiom of the Day', 'Phrasal verbs', Useful vocabulary'.
All in all Australian teacher Jo has put together an invaluable resource that might come in handy for both teachers and students.
One of the great advantages of the internet for the language learner is the possibility of using online dictionaries to check the pronunciation of a word as well as its meaning and examples in sententences of how it is used.
In addition, students have at their disposal some online pronunciation dictionaries like Forvo or Howjday, which come in handy when we want to find out how names are pronounced.
A few weeks ago Jeffrey Hill posted on youglishon The English Blog. youglishuses YouTube videos to illustrate how words are pronounced. The videos come complete with subtitles and youglish sports a repeat button so that we don't have to rewind the video to hear the word again. We can even specify whether we want the British, American or Australian English pronunciation.
The newspaper from the Thai capital sports a more than interesting section for English language learners which we can find by clicking on the heading "learning" after displaying the menu.
Here we will find a wide choice of updated news for English students at advanced, intermediate and elementary (easy) level.
Most of the news items come together with an audio file and can be listened to and downloaded. In addition, a detailed glossary for vocabulary development is included.
Genius is a site where users annotate songs. Contributors to the site give the lyrics of the song with explanations and examples, so that the song can be better understood.
One of the main difficulties about English music (for both native and non-native speakers) is understanding the context and all the cultural references in the song.
On Genius, users explain the hidden meaning of lyrics and give examples, so that we can learn both the meaning of the lyrics and what they refer to. The story behind the song is sometimes featured.
On Genius we can find all music genres as well and an A-Z index of artists.
Here are the annotations and lyrics for Beyoncé's Formation.
"This site has been created to help people learn English language. Adapted books – one of the best and interesting way to increase your vocabulary. Here you can find English ebooks of different levels in epub, mobi, fb2, rtf and txt formats.
Read ebooks on you eBook reader or PC/mac, we are supporting all of them, you only should choose appropriate type, for e.g.: choose mobi for Kindle, fb2/epub for Nook or PocketBook, epub for Nook; you can read on PC/mac books in rtf, or use txt as the simplest format for reading using any device, even on your mobile-phone."
In English e-books you will find adapted readers from elementary to advanced level, and some of which come complete with audio in mp3 format.
The quickest way to find your way round the site is by scrolling down to the bottom of the home page and clicking on the tag Find book, where you will see a comprehensive list of titles classified by author, genre, level, length and audio availability.
Conservation International, a charity which “empowers societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity and the well-being of humanity”, has developed a number of very high-quality videos in the series Nature Is Speaking to make us aware of the importance of nature and the way its destruction means our destruction.
The videos are narrated by well-known personalities who include Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford and Kevin Spacey among others.
Here’s the video Mother Nature, narrated by Julia Roberts. But drop by Nature Is Speaking to watch the full collection of videos in the series.
Some call me nature.
Others call me “Mother Nature.”
I’ve been here for over 4.5 billion years.
22,500 times longer than you.
I don’t really need people.
But people need me.
Yes, your future depends on me.
When I thrive, you thrive.
When I falter, you falter. Or worse.
But I’ve been here for eons.
I have fed species greater than you.
And I have starved species greater than you.
My oceans.
My soil.
My flowing streams.
My forests.
They all can take you.
Or leave you.
How you choose to live each day,
whether you regard or disregard me,
doesn’t really matter to me.
One way.
Or the other.
Your actions will determine your fate.
Not mine.
I am nature.
I will go on.
I am prepared to evolve.
Are you?
How to speak fluent English – 34 experts give their tips on Jason R Levine's Fluency MC.
A number of the world’s leading language learning experts like David Deubelbeiss, Larry Ferlazzo, Nik Peachey or Scott Thornbury give their opinion on how learners can become more fluent English speakers.
Every Monday The New York Times publishes an eye-catching photograph in their section What's Going on in the Picture. The picture comes with no caption, no headlines, no links or other clues about its origins. The idea is that students use the picture as a sprinboard for conversation: They will have to construct some kind of meaning from what they see and develop their critical thinking.
The basic questions students have to answer are:
What’s going on in this picture?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What more can we find?
Additional ideas would include students imagining what has led to this situation and what's going to happen afterwards.
The following day The New York Times will publish background information about the picture and students will be able to read some other students' ideas on the photograph.
All in all the What's Going on in the Picture looks like an invaluable tool to develop conversation inside and outside the classroom.
Lingua.ly is a site that allows you to build up your reading skills and vocabulary in a language of your choice (there are 17 languages to choose from, English included). You can use the desktop version of Lingua.ly or its app.
To start using Lingua.ly, first you have to log in through your Facebook account or through your Google account, then you choose the language you want to study and your level (beginner, intermediate or advanced) and off you go.
You are given a selection of articles from the international press and once you have made your choice, you start reading it. You can build up your own personalised dictionary by selecting individual words that you want to learn. Lingua.ly will store them for you and will show you how to pronounce them. You can use these words for revision purposes later on.
This short video will show you how Lingua.ly works.
You can choose three different types of activities to do with each video clip, which will also help us to get to grips with the dialogues in the trailer:
1. Listen and put the words in order
2. Fill in the Blanks Quiz (easy)
3. Fill in the Blanks Quiz (difficult)
Learn English through moviesalso has a comprehensive collection of 'movie sites for English learners' and 'Best movie and film websites'.
TestYourVocab is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.
TestYourVocab functions by means of a quick three-part test: the first part with a handful of words to determine the general vocabulary level, a second part with a larger but narrower selection of words to determine the vocabulary level with greater precision, and a final (optional) survey to collect statistical information.
TestYourVocab provides accurate results for virtually everyone, from very small children (with answers input by parents) to professional linguists. It can calculate vocabulary sizes from less than 100 words to more than 40,000 words.
