What is the best free online platform for learning English in this video I'm going to show you one of
the best technologies I've come across masses of activities available listening and reading
and grammar and tons of audio work this is perfect for students that are above an intermediate level
teachers show this to your students students watch this video you're going to find it really useful
Hi I'm Russell Stannard from Teachertrainingvideos.com we're going to look
at a brilliant free platform today I'm going to show you some of the best aspects of this platform
some people will know this platform but perhaps you don't know it the way that I do I promise
you I'm going to show you some fabulous gems particularly at the end I'm going to show you
one of the outstanding activities in this platform but there are loads of activities to cover and I'm
just going to choose the best ones really hope you like the video as always if you do please
like it click that thumbs up button I'd be really happy if you could share it with other teachers
and students so that they can find out about the platform and of course if you've got any comments
the one I'd really like to know is out of all the activities I'm going to show you which activity do
you like the best let's get started okay so this is the site it's called breaking news English when
you come here you've got different news stories and each one has got loads of activities to do
now you can click here to get to the news story okay or you can click on these slightly
lower levels now most of this material is from above intermediate so we're going to choose
this one here we're going to click and as you see there is masses of activities that you can do and
what I'm going to do is take you through the best activities if you're a student working on your own
so let's focus on some of the audio stuff first this really outstanding feature of this site is
that you can play the audio at different speeds you get different accents and there's a whole
range of audio activities that students can use to develop their listening skills it's also possible
to download the audios and make use of them perhaps on your telephone listen to them there
as well so you can be listening at any time let's look then at the audio features that I really like
on this site and we're going to start by listening to the news story and there's a little trick I can
suggest you just duplicate so that you've got the page open twice now what I'm going to do is
click here and listen to the text being read and I can click here and then what I can do is choose
slowest lower or normal speed and I've got even British accents or American we're going to do
medium we can click here and play the audio but we can also click on this tab while we're listening
we can read at the same time so we can click on this button to play the audio Germany's Merkle
warns floods highlight climate dangers this is breaking news English dot com we jump over here
has expressed her fears about climate change after visiting the devastation caused by the
severe flooding in Europe chancellor Angela Merkle said she was horrified so we can jump between one
tab and the other if we want to listen and at the same time we want to read or another trick is and
I'll show you now is click here download the audio so we can just click on that button now
download the audio and I'm going to open that audio so just click here
and now now the good thing about that is now I can listen to that audio at the same time that I
read the text now once you've done the listening and you've read and listened to the text there's
a number of brilliant listening activities that we can do and I'm going to show you the first one I
really like and it's this one here dictation if we click on this what we do is we listen
to a bit piece from the text and then we try to guess the word so let me click here
Germany's leader has expressed her fears about climate change now what we can do here is I'm
going to just write it in Germany's leader sorry you know right the correct spelling in Germany's
leader has expressed now I'm going to put that in and it should then show me that those words
are correct I don't have to do this in order so I know that the word last word was change okay
so I can click on that and then check that and the other I know it was climb it okay so slowly
I can rebuild the text now if I click here and listen again Germany's leader has expressed her
fears about climate change her fears about now if I press enter now that completes that one
okay and I can move now onto the next dictation so I click here and I can do another dictation
now anytime I want to go back to the beginning I can always just click on the back button and
go back that way that's one quick way of getting back to the beginning and let's have a look and
see if there's any other interesting listening activities now this is quite an interesting
activity as well it's called 20 questions it's 20 questions related to the text and the idea here is
that you listen and you have to write the correct question so let's just listen discussion questions
one what did you think when you read the headline
so what you can do here is then write this question in the correct order okay what did you
think when you read the headline now if you're a teacher you could even use these questions
in a discussion with your students and then we can play the next one so it's like a dictation
two what images are in your mind when you hear the word flood okay now of course you could do
it another way around you could write the sentences first and then correct yourself
so we've looked at listening and now I'm going to jump on and look at the grammar exercises
some of the grammar exercises are quite easy some of them are quite difficult
now there's loads of grammar activities and I'm going to focus on the ones that I particularly
like one thing about the grammar activities is some are slightly more difficult than others
and so I'll kind of show you as well which ones are more difficult so you're clear about
the levels um let's dive in then to some of the grammar activities some of these grammar exercises
are easier than other ones the prepositions one for example shows you the whole text and then you
have to choose the correct preposition so you can read the text Germany's leader has expressed fears
and then we can choose from here about climate change after visiting the devastation caused
by the severe floods in Europe so one way is to simply do a simple prepositions activity where
you're choosing the correct preposition once you've finished you can click on the button
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get back to the video now another interesting activity on the grammar is this one called word
order and basically the idea here is that you rewrite the sentences and then after you've
rewritten all of the sentences you click on this button here so just to show you a quick example
I've just written in the first one I won't do any more but you should finish all of them and then
once you've done all of the sentences you can click here and it will check your answers and
I've got nine percent so far because I got the first one correct and you can notice now that
that is not in the box it's now showing me that that sentence is correct obviously I would need
to do all the other ones now if we click back one final really good grammar exercise is this kind of
general one gap fill but this is much more difficult because the gap-fill activity
requires that you just write the word in you haven't got the answer
so for example this is Germany's leader has expressed so I'm going to put here expressed
her fears about climate change after visiting the devastation caused by and so you're having
to write the sentences yourself obviously that's much more difficult to do now I'm going to focus
on a couple of other activities I really like one around reading which I really like and I use
a lot in my own teaching and learning and also one of the vocabulary activities that I think
is very strong on the site so let's focus there now so let's click on the back button we've now
looked at some of the interesting reading active sorry some of the interesting listening activities
and some of the interesting grammar at activities let's just move now to the reading and there are
a couple of really nice things in the reading and I like this one here text jumble and in this game
you've got to try to reproduce the text bit by bit so let's start a b or c Germany's leader
has has expressed her fears about climate change after
visiting okay so you can see it's telling me I've got a hundred percent it's adding all of the words
I'm re making the whole text now let's see what happens if you get make a mistake so devastation
some of the hardest okay so it tells me no that's wrong and then i have to click again and obviously
my score goes down it's a really nice reading activity it helps you with grammar it helps you
with syntax it helps you with vocabulary and of course it's great practice for working with the
language in the text if you want to work with vocabulary I really recommend missing words and
if you click on here this one is again where you have got the choice but obviously this is working
now with vocabulary not so much with grammar so it's really working with keywords from the text
and if we click here again we can choose for example Germany's leader has expressed climate
field after visiting okay and then we would look again at the word here that we want to use
the devastation caused by so that's a really nice word building activity okay I'm going to
finish with a real gem this is an activity that I've used literally hundreds of times
in class with my students but students can also do this at home on their own it's great
for syntax for for vocabulary for grammar let's get into it I'll be really interested what you
think of this activity if you try out with your students and also any of the other activities that
I've suggested and highlighted please leave it in the comments section let's look at that final gem
now one bonus activity that I absolutely love I've done this in other languages I find it really
interesting it works great in class if students are working together but students can also do
this on their own and it's called no letters and if you click here the idea is that you try to
re-build the whole text so if we for example write the word leader and then we press enter we know
that's in the text if we write the word Germany okay or Germany is we know that's in the text if
we write the word climate so slowly we're trying to rebuild the text by thinking of the words
now in pairs students can do this in pairs in the class or students can work on their own if they're
really having problems and they can't it's easy to start with the easy words like the and and and
because they're always in these kind of text especially a particularly long text like this
and then we've also got the word fears we know that's in there now let's see what happens if
the word is not in there so let's write for example England which is not in the text
and then suddenly what will happen is that you'll get a list of all the incorrect words that you've
written here okay so the idea is to rebuild the text now if you can't do that what you can do
if you're really finding it hard is listen to get more words Germany's Merkle warns floods highlight
climate dangers this is breakingnewsenglish.com Germany's leader has expressed her fears about
climate change and okay that's a great way then now to start to add the words in that you think
so for example the word floods is probably in the text okay the word but is probably in the text uh
we can have the word concerns etc and so we can add the words in as you can see slowly it's
rebuilding the text and below we can see the words that are not actually included in the text as well
that's a great activity for reworking all of the vocabulary from the text and it can be done
students working on their own or in pairs in class works very well as well i really hope you like
that video i would be very interested to know in the comments section which of those activities you
found the most useful if you want more free videos please come over to teachertrainingvideos.com
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and thank you very much on the screen now you can see some more videos that you can click on that
will give you access to other great free material that is ideal if you're an English teacher and
you're looking for material or if you're a student and you want to study on your own