A food festival Introduction When students are going to do a listening activity, it is useful to get them thinking about the topic of the listening beforehand. That way they can reactivate and extend their store of vocabulary. In this lesson, students first discuss the topic of food festivals, then they focus on their listening skills in preparation for part 2 of the FCE listening test. Through a series of activities students will become more aware of what to ‘notice’ in a gap fill listening exercise, enabling them to do the Listening part 2 more successfully. Topic Listening skills for FCE Listening part 2 Level Time 75 minutes Aims To encourage students to predict which parts of speech are missing in gapped texts.To familiarise students with part 2 of the Listening test of the FCE exam.To develop students’ listening skills. Materials Lesson plan: download Worksheets (1, 2A, 2B, 3): downloadNote to teachers: worksheet 1 is reproduced twice on the page to reduce paper usage. Audio script: download
Words that Change the World Susan Schaller believes that the best idea she ever had in her life had to do with an isolated young man she met one day at a community college. He was 27-years-old at the time, and though he had been born deaf, no one had ever taught him to sign. He had lived his entire life without language--until Susan found a way to reach out to him. Charles Fernyhough doesn't think that very young children think--at least not in a way he'd recognize as thinking. Charles explains what he means by walking us through an experiment in a white room. James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, argues that Shakespeare behaved more like a chemist than a writer: by smashing words together--words like eye and ball--he created new words, and new ways of seeing the world.
Podcasts to help English learners practise listening Do your students want more listening practice? Aoife McLoughlin, blogger with ELT-Connect.com and latest winner of the British Council's Teaching English blog award, recommends five podcasts to get them started. Do you spend enough time working on listening skills with your students? Is there ever enough time? In my experience, I would say no. Often, when we ask students what part of their English they most want to improve, they will say listening and speaking. But we often give less attention to the receptive skill of listening, perhaps in the belief that 'if you can do it alone, you can do it at home'. Podcasts are a great way for students to improve their listening on the go. With such a huge selection available, students are bound to find a podcast they are interested in that suits their needs. Here are my top five podcasts for learners of English: Englishclass101.com This is much more than a podcast. TED audio podcasts Podcastsinenglish.com IELTSpodcast.com Downtobusinessenglish.com
Shakespeare Lives - Who Wrote Shakespeare? Some interesting resources for listening at basic levels | English in Soria VOA news: News in easy American English, with transcripts.ESL Lab: An interesting site with a lot of listening exercises.YouTube SpeakOut videos, e.g. Enjoy them, and please tell me if I could add any to this list! Like this: Like Loading... Macbeth: Cheat Sheet | Movie News | SBS Movies Why It’s Important Macbeth, Shakespeare’s brutal tragedy of betrayal and bloodshed, is the perhaps most enduring fictional depiction of unchecked ambition. It has been staged and reinterpreted countless times across all corners of the globe. Yet when it comes to cinema, the reigning adaptation remains Roman Polanski’s 1971 Playboy production. Kurzel’s Macbeth premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Tonally, Macbeth has much in common with its director’s debut, Snowtown, a grim, unsettling recreation of Snowtown’s infamous bodies-in-barrels murders. Screenwriters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Leslie and Todd Louiso’s interpretation of the classic tragedy retains Shakespeare’s core storyline. Watch Kurzel, Cotillard and Fassbender discuss Macbeth at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival What’s It Really About? Isolation What distinguishes each Shakespearean adaptation is what it chooses to omit. Kurzel’s careful use of colour contributes to this distancing aesthetic.
BusyTeacher.org While these are crucial concepts, others are equally important. What follows is an assortment of alternative ways to teach listening, some quite simple and others based on many years of research. In each case, I will explain each one briefly and give you a suggestion for using it in class. In addition, I have provided a list of resources about each item, for readers who want to learn more about a topic. Get the Entire BusyTeacher Library: Dramatically Improve the Way You Teach Learn more 9 Different Ways to Explore Listening 1Affective ListeningAffective listening (not to be confused with effective listening) refers to listening with the student motivation at the forefront. In conclusion, I’d like to point out that not all of these concepts may be useful in your classroom. Your students might prefer a competitive listening game over applying metacognitive awareness to their burgeoning listening skills. Resources: AFFECTIVE LISTENINGRost, M. and Wilson, JJ. 2013. Bilbrough, N. 2014.
GCSE English Literature - Form, structure and language - Revision 3 Language refers to the choices of style and vocabulary made by the author. When analysing the language Shakespeare uses you should think about: What? Social and historical context William Shakespeare Shakespeare was a genius with words. Evidence and explanation of the language used Here are some examples of language choices which Shakespeare makes: key words and literary devices such as animal imagery 1. There are a number of key words in Macbeth which are used over and over again. Blood What relevance does the word 'blood' have in the play? The word 'blood' appears numerous times in the play Blood appears as a real substance all through the play. The word 'blood' also appears a number of times as a symbol of the guilt that runs through the play. The table shows some examples of the use of the key word blood: Why does Shakespeare use the word 'blood' so often in the play? Night What relevance does the word 'night' have in the play? Repetition of the word 'night' also features heavily in the play
BusyTeacher.org YouTube, as well as websites such as wikihow.com, instructables.com, and soyouwanna.com, have an incredible assortment of guides on how to do almost anything, from cutting up onions to making paper airplanes. In this article, I’m going to explain how to adapt a video tutorial into a listening lesson for your ESL/EFL classes. How-to videos contain a number of features which makes them perfect for exploitation in the ESL/EFL classroom: authentic English with natural pronunciation content that relates to everyday life a wide range of topics that can be used images and (in some cases) titles and subtitles which make the meaning clearer the pleasure of learning a useful skill and new English vocabulary at the same time The following sections will guide you through several steps of planning for using a how-to video in class. Searching for the Right Video First of all, you need to think of something that your class would enjoy learning. Planning Your Lesson First, start with a pre-listening task.
Key features of Renaissance culture Andrew Dickson follows the progress of the Renaissance through Europe, and examines the educational, religious, artistic and geographical developments that shaped culture during the period. The Renaissance Few historical concepts have such powerful resonance as the Renaissance. Usually used to describe the rediscovery of classical Roman and Greek culture in the late 1300s and 1400s and the great pan-European flowering in art, architecture, literature, science, music, philosophy and politics that this inspired, it has been interpreted as the epoch that made the modern world truly modern. But the term ‘renaissance’ (French for ‘rebirth’) was never used during the period itself – it was invented by 19th-century historians – and its remit is still hotly disputed. Carpaccio's Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross on the Rialto Bridge This vivid late-15th-century painting of multicultural Venice presents a fascinating mixture of religious and worldly subjects. View images from this item (1)
10 Best Free Listening Websites with Quizzes to Practise for Listening Exams So what do you do to practise listening for exams? Growing up, I never had the opportunity to do any extra practice to improve my listening skills. We didn’t have the Internet and the thousand possibilities it offers to learners of any language nowadays. The teachers had an old tape player that sometimes stopped and started on its own and old tapes that ended up sounding distorted and most of the times unlistenable so if you wanted to get better at listening, you just listened to the radio and struggled to understand the lyrics and sing along. Not that I ever complained. So, exams are just around the corner and I know you’re beginning to freak out. These are, in my opinion, the best sites with quizzes to practise listening comprehension. Check also:
The Influence of the Renaissance in Shakespeare's Time It’s very easy to think of Shakespeare as a unique genius with a singular perspective on the world around him. However, Shakespeare was very much a product of the radical cultural shifts that were occurring in Elizabethan England during his lifetime. When Shakespeare was working in the theater, the Renaissance movement in the arts was peaking in England. The new openness and humanism are reflected in Shakespeare’s plays. The Renaissance in Shakespeare's Time Broadly speaking, the Renaissance period is used to describe the era when Europeans moved away from the restrictive ideas of the Middle Ages. From the 14th century onward, people started to break away from this idea. This questioning produced enormous upheaval in the accepted social hierarchy. Shakespeare, the Renaissance Man The Renaissance arrived in England rather late. Shakespeare embraced the Renaissance in the following ways: Shakespeare updated the simplistic, two-dimensional writing style of pre-Renaissance drama.
You Must Remember This: the woman spilling Hollywood's long-held secrets | Television & radio I’m having lunch with Karina Longworth in an old cinema in Notting Hill when a man taps her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, but do you do You Must Remember This podcast?” he asks. She nods. “Oh my god, I love it!” he screams. It’s a strange kind of fame when your voice is recognisable enough for you to be stopped, half way through a hotdog, to discuss one of the 20th-century’s most notorious murderers. There are also men like B-movie actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan, who used the McCarthy communist witch-hunts to propel his own career, or Val Lewton, who wrote a string of now-cultish horror movies including I Walked With a Zombie and The Leopard Man after losing his job as a society reporter when it emerged that a story he wrote about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heatwave was a total fabrication. Then there’s the Charles Manson mini-series. One of the topics that runs through the podcast is the idea of women as commodities. Listen to You Must Remember This here