Breaking News English

• What is it?

Based on the current news event, Breaking news English is a teaching material website which is produced by Sean Baville. A variety of completed and well designed exercises and activities are provided, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar skills.

• Why is the content good for language learning?

1.Less preparing, more educating. The materials are designed into different types of tasks, such as warm-up activities, while-reading/writing exercises and after reading  or listening activities.It is very convenient and time-saving for teachers to choose the parts they want and print off as handouts or download the listening file(MP3). Both of them are free.

2.The news and information is up-to-date and quite relevant to people's life, so students will find it meaningful and stimulating to learn.

3.There are a wide varieties of high quality quizzes designed in line with the materials, with which the teacher could use to strengthen  students' language knowledge.

4.There are also some collaborative activities,which can create a more interactive learning atmosphere. During these sort of tasks, students may feel relaxed and be willing to engaged.

• How might you use it in a teaching context?

1.Select a chunk of activities related to a certain topic or lesson to do warm-up activities and brainstorm with the learners.

2.Select a relevant activities to expand students vocabulary,such as matching games. Also,it can be used as an interesting testing program.

3.Put the students into pairs or groups to do some reading comprehension together.For example, the quiz activity.

• Limitations

1. This is a fixed genre which can lead to a narrow range of vocabulary learning.

2. As to the audio clips, they are almost recorded by the same person reading at the same speed. Thus, students may rely on this accent.

3. Less considerations taken into students' personalities. If a student dislikes news as teaching material, he/she may feel boring.