if you enjoy reading books in English… try listening at the same time with Audible
Audible.com is a huge online bookstore - but it only sells audiobooks. What you’ll find there is a wide variety of books, including bestsellers like Da Vinci code, Blink and Harry Potter and much more. You can even subscribe to the audio versions of magazines such as Harvard Business Review.
Prices vary with each book but if your intention is tobe a regular customer, an Audible membership would be a nice choice. Basic membership costs less then ten dollars a month and it will give you a discount on each book purchased. After you buy for the first time, download Audible’s software to your computer to listen on the spot, or transfer the files to a player.
If you’re an advanced English student, try buying both the print (somewhere else) and audio versions, so you can listen while you read. Highly recommended!
CNN transcripts: read while you listen to the news in English
A very nice resource for upper intermediate English students who have the habit of watching CNN to practice their English but still get lost, or would like to go beyond simply “getting the general meaning”: CNN offers a number of transcripts for several shows, including Larry King Live, CNN Presents, Business Traveller and many more. The transcriptions aren’t in PDF format, but are easily printable. Everything is organized by date and easy to find - it’s worth recording a few shows to watch later with the text in hands. Está tudo organizado por data, bem fácil de achar - vale a pena gravar alguns programas para ver depois com o texto.
British Council’s Learn English: Sports
This is part of the mini-series on the British Council’s collection of websites for English learners: if you love sports then you’ll love Learn English Sport.
Here’s some of what they offer:
- Read articles on the favorite sports of the British - football is one of them, and here is an article on Football slang;
- Choose among several articles with audio that you can listen to online or offline (save the mp3 files to your computer.) Each text comes with a number of pre-reading activities - check out this one about two football fans chatting;
- Fun & Games offers several fun things such as animations showing how players celebrate when they score, tests, hangman games and more;
- See the blog for a discussion on English championships, with activities.
And there’s more: double-click any word in any texts to get a pop-up box with Cambridge’s English-English dictionary.
Recommended for intermediate students and above.
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Train your accent: American English pronunciation practice
At Train Your Accent, American teacher Randall Davies explains that a common problem with English students is that they tend to equally emphasize all the words in a sentence.
Randall’s goal here is to help students find a natural rythm when it’s time to speak - and to give every word the appropriate weight. Look at one of his examples:
I WANT TO GO TO THE PARTY TODAY FOR ABOUT AN HOUR, AND I CAN DO MY HOMEWORK TOMORROW (all words have the same weight)
i WANT ta GO ta the PARTY taDAY for about ?n HOUR, and i kn DO my HOMEWORK taMORROW (capital letters represent emphasis)
So Randall produced several English lessons with audio and 2 versions of the corresponding text: a plain transcription and another one that shows Reduced Speech symbols.
Each lesson also comes with questions for discussion. Make sure to read the sections About the Site and Accent Symbols to become familiar with the teacher’s method. Recommended for intermediate level students and above.
Breaking News English: printable worksheets (with audio) for classroom or self-study
Breaking News English offers an amazing number of very well structured English lessons based on news reports. Very practical for teachers looking for upper-intermediate or advanced lesson plans: each one comes with an audio file (mp3) that can be downloaded and a detailed description of several classroom activities.
Activities range from discussion and vocabulary exercises to listening, post-listening, role-play and ideas for homework. Also nice is the fact that the news reports in each lesson are relatively short, allowing for a realistic workload during class. All worksheets are easily printable: they’re available in PDF as well as Word docs.
To top it off, archived lessons are presented in two versions: easier and harder, so you can choose the best fit for your students. Awesome resource not only for English teachers but also for learners who enjoy self-study.
BBC English: a lot of audio (and everything else) in authentic British English
For students with intermediate English skills and above: BBC Learning English is a huge website with practically everything you might be looking for: grammar, vocabulary, exercises, phrasal verbs, idioms, business English and more. And this site doesn’t have just a small audio area: almost all sections come with audio.
Here are the main sections:
- News English: authentic news reports from BBC with audio and definitions for advanced vocabulary
- Business English: vocabulary and audio tips
- Watch and Listen: articles on various topics, in audio, with corresponding text in PDF for reading. Some programs come with comprehension exercises.
- Grammar & Vocabulary: you won’t find grammar rules, but several interesting things instead.
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- Ask about English: type you question about English and click on Search, or browse the answers archive
- Songlines: mini-lessons using song lyrics. Audio and PDF.
- Pronunciation Tips: several resources to improve pronunciation. Take a look at Similar Sounds, where you can hear the difference in pronunciation between words like key e pin
- Communicate: here’s where students can participate in discussions and leave messages.
- Quizzes: online English exercises on vocabulary and grammar, several with audio
- The Flatmates: a story with weekly episodes. Audio and reading.
Translation
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