My immigration story

My immigration story is a site that presents us with short stories (200-word maximum) of immigrants in the United States. This government-run site tries to raise people's awareness to this widespread experience in the first world countries.

Read and enjoy. You'll find lots of food for thought.

Self-study idea:
In order to practise your speaking skills you can try the following tip: Once you have read one of the stories, try to repeat the story in your own words without reading the text. That way you will have an excuse to 'speak English to yourself'. You can even try to record yourself.

British Council Podcasts

The British Council offers podcasts that you can download on your computer to practise your listening skills. On top of that, they come with activities that you can also download and print. Great stuff to learn English for Basic and Intermediate students.

Beyonce biography

Self-study activity:
Watch this short biographical  video on Beyonce and answer the questions that follow.

1) When was she born?
2) Where was she born?

3) When was her singing ability noticed? 
4) How old was she when she entered her first talent show? 
5) What was the name of the group Beyonce was in before Destiny's Child? 
6) Who designed the clothes for Destiny's Child? 
7) Which title did Beyonce become the first African-American to win? 
8) What was the name of the album released by Destiny's Child in 2001? 

9) When did Beyonce release her first solo album? 
10) How long did her first solo album top the charts for? 
11) How many Grammy Awards did Beyonce's first solo album win? 
12) When did Destiny's Child release their last album? 
13) Which 2006 musical did Beyonce star in?

Self-study idea:
You can find similar short biography videos on famous people  in You Tube. Just type 'Biography' or 'Biography: Need to know' and you will come across lots of them.

Why don't you get together with an English-speaking friend and decide to prepare a short comprehension activity for each other? Make sure you choose a different video to start with. Then prepare a few questions on the video about information you have actually understood. You don't need to understand everything to do that. Simply prepare questions on information you are confident you have the answer for. Make sure the answers are short, or true/false. Then exchange the questions and do the listening activity your friend has created for you.

This way you can greatly benefit from your own skills and those of your friend's while you do activities that are sometimes difficult to find.


Key:
1) September 4^th 1981   2)  Houston (Texas)   3) While singing for the church choir   4) About 7 (she entered a town competition)   5)  Girls’ Time   6) Beyonce’s mum, Tina   7) One-song writer of the year   8) Survivor   9) 2003 (Dangerously in love)   10) 8 weeks (Crazy in love)   11) 5   12) 2005 (Number ones)   13) Dream Girls

Road education

Although Think! is primarily a British government website aimed at teens concerning road education, I think the contents will be interesting for everyone. You can play a game showing you are smart enough to manage time and attitude to reach a place safely, investigate an accident and find out what shouldn’t have been done. On top of that, if you visit the site with an English-speaking friend you can engage in conversation and discuss all the issues there. There's also room for writing your own suggestions. If you work on your own, the main skill you will be practising will be reading, but in the 'Media and advertising' section there are some ads with which you can practise your listening skills. Overall, Think! is an excellent site for language intermediate learners which also provides great education for life.

24 accents

Just watch this video in which a kid manages to produce 24 different English accents. What he says is really unimportant. I have just posted this video to make you realise the difficulty in understanding native speakers we sometimes have. Source: The Huffington Post.

A, E, I, O, U

From a Clil to Climb comes this mini-presentation that can help students in Básico1 level pronounce the vowel letters in English.

BBC How to

How to is a couse on the BBC Learning English site where you can practise lots of phrases and expressions that you can use in all kinds of situations of everyday life, from ordering a drink to giving some advice to seeing a doctor.

Each unit has audio and texts you can download, and you can subscribe to an audio podcast.

Wonderful tool to learn!

Thanks Jeffrey Hill for bringing my attention to How to .