Hello Elllo English!

Olla Everyone!

Today's website for you guys is Elllo English. Elllo English is one of the largest source for teaching and learning materials on web. It is also known as English Listening Lesson Library Online, where you can learn English naturally! As mention by its name, library, it also means there are lots and lots of listening texts that available for teachers and students to learn the language genuinely. The main focus of this website is listening skill, and the activities include multimedia, free MP3 files, vocabulary tasks, language notes, print page, comprehension exercises and many more. There are a lot of interesting topics to be chosen and cover for different levels of students. What I like the most is that they allow video sharing, where people from all over the world can send their videos to be used as listening texts! This is great because you can listen to many accents of English and their speech rate in their uploaded videos. 

The topics introduced are very engaging and interesting, and since it has thousands of listening collections, I am sure it will be hard for you to decide which one for you to choose! The examples of topics are culture, environment, lifestyle, health and sports. The texts are divided into 5 main areas (depends on the text type) which are Views, Mixer, Game, News and Scenes. See the red circle in the image below.

Teaching suggestions:

As this website focuses on listening skill, it is obviously very useful for teachers in their listening lessons. I believed the content in this site is suitable for all levels of students, because the videos are rated to which level they are relevant for. Moreover, for every listening text, there is also audio files for vocabulary pronunciation which is great for students to practice it. It is not only that, the audio also tells the description and meaning of the chosen phrases from the text, and students get to listen to them as many times as they want. If there is no facilities (computers, internet, etc) at schools, teachers can download the listening texts (depend on the topic) and print out the handouts for their students. Some texts are accompanied by visual shows, and if teachers are brilliant they may manipulate them to explain the content of the text to their students.

Another suggestion for teachers is to encourage students to use this programme as an autonomous learning source. Since it gives direct feedbacks for the exercises given, and the vocabulary enrichment are easily to be understood with brief explanation, I feel that it is very beneficial for second language learners. Students can choose any texts that they like and suit their interest before practising their listening skill. They can also challenge themselves by choosing the questions slightly above their level or they can even reward themselves by answering easy questions!

What I like about this website:
1. It has personalisation because students can choose any topic that is related to their interest and become even more motivated to learn the texts.

2. There are audio for each vocabulary item highlighted in the texts and it helps students to improve their pronunciation of words. It serves as a drilling activity if students listen to them for several times.

3. Lots and lots of different topics to be selected by students and teachers, thus provide varieties in the language lesson.

4. Users (teachers and students) are exposed to various accents of people who use English from all over the world.

5. There is a consistency in the arrangement of content, types of activities, audio and visual complimentary in this website.

6. FREE and no need to register!

Some considerations:
1. I feel that the layout of this website is too packed, full and there is not empty space can be seen. The page is full with words and advertisements sometimes can be very annoying as they may distract ones' focus in doing the activity.

2. Not all schools have enough facilities for all students and not all students have internet or even computers at home. For this, teachers can print out the text and exercises for students to do in the classroom and download the audio text for the listening activity.

3. Sometimes the website might not be functional if their serves are overloaded.

That's all for today. Let's learn English in a fun and easy way!

Listen and Write

Hello and welcome again!

Internet has always served me a great source of language activity for students. For this time, I will suggest a webpage for listening and writing activity. This website acquire us to dictate the listening text into words. It uses the news format and the topics are fresh and coming from all over the world. It is suitable for lower and secondary school students, depending on the texts.

There are a lot of topics and recent news for us to choose, depending on your interest. After you choose the topic, you need to decide which mode do you want to try before listening to the text. There are three modes available which are; full, quick and blank mode. I believe it would be better for teachers to show to the students on how to do this task since it can be confusing for some of them especially for beginners.

Students get to listen to the text and need to dictate the words for a sentence in the box provided. The sentence will be repeated for several times and it helps them to listen carefully before writing it down.


Teaching suggestion:

Teachers can use this in the listening lesson to give opportunity for students to try new way of improving listening skill. It is suggested for teachers to divide the students into pairs if they want to do this task in the classroom. It is because students can work together and figure out the answers with peers' help. If teachers find out that this task take 'forever' for students to accomplish during the lesson, it is better for them to make it as homework, and leads to autonomous learning.

I found that this website is quite useful and practical for language teachers and learners in improving their listening skill. This is because:

1. Students have opportunity to practice listening skill (as mentioned above) since the text is repeated for several times.

2. It helps to develop students' vocabulary on their own. They may be exposed for words that are rarely can be found in a normal text and that is I believe an advantage to use current news because fresh vocabulary can be introduced to them!

3. This is NOT only a good listening practice, but it is also a spelling task for all.

4. Students from all level of competency can try this out because there are variety of levels that can be chosen!

5. It encourages students to work independently at home and not depending on teachers' homework.

6. It is free for all and fun for learning!

Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages of this application:

1. Some of the news' source may not reliable and students may have false judgement over certain issues. Thus, teachers should choose and decide for them if they plan to do this task in the classroom. They should also suggest the topics that can be picked by students to be done at home.

2. Speaking about autonomous learning, it is strongly related to the availability of facilities. It may become a problem for students because some of them may not have access to internet and computers and home. What is the best that can be done for teachers is by manipulating the IT rooms at school and book a session for the students after school time. This will at least provide opportunity for all students to try this task on their own.

That's all from me. Happy learning!

Learn Through Lyrics

During my age of learning language in schools, I always thought that songs' lyrics did help me in improving my English competence. As a second language learner, I always wanted to find interactive and fun way to learn, something which won't give me so much pressure in acquiring the language. And now, there is a website that I found and it is useful for students to learn through lyrics! Lyrics Training is very interesting since it allows us (even teachers!) to have fun while learning English.

It has the most up-to-date songs for us to choose and challenge ourself by filling in the blanks while the song is being played. I believe it is not an easy task for certain people especially for those who rarely listen to English songs and have problem with spelling. BUT, as it is FUN and ENTERTAINING, it is worth to try for your own good. So, in this website, we can choose various songs in the search box.

There are three different difficulties that we can opt for, depending on our ability. For beginner level, 10% of the lyrics is missing and need to filled in. It may easy for expert learners, thus the expert level challenge them to fill in all the lyrics on their own. It means all the words are missing and the song won't continue until the correct word is being filled in!

This is for beginner where only a few words are missing from the lyrics!

Try yourself for the expert level and see how far you can go! Your time is being recorded (in the left circle) and it gives pressure for you to do the best. Moreover, you can put yourself in a rank (see circle on the right) for every level by getting as the highest mark as you can.

Teaching suggestion:

English teachers can use this source for lower and upper secondary school students. It is practical and applicable for students to do this activity on their own, and encourage autonomous learning.

There are several reasons why I believe this website will help language learners:

1. It is a good source for listening and spelling activity in a very entertaining way! Students can listen to a very catchy song/ lyrics and spell out words, instead listening to a boring flat tone typical texts.

2. Students have opportunity to practice and learn new vocabulary. Some of words in the lyrics are frequently used in daily conversation, but maybe new for certain students.

3. If such activity is conducted in the classroom, it allows students to participate and engage with the activity very much. Once the students try, I am confident that they won't stop because it is FUN! Well I think it is important for your students to have fun while learning (in a good way) to encourage them using the language.

However, there are also some points that teachers should consider, such as:

1. If this activity is held the classroom during the lesson, teachers should set a time limit so that students know when they need to stop. We don't want our students to be carried away and our lesson planning is distracted. Thus, it can be an option for teachers to encourage students to do this activity at home, as their source of independent learning and report it to the teachers.

2. There is a possibility for students to look up the whole lyrics in the internet without even trying (which is so frustrating for teachers!).

But, in overall, I think, it is WORTH for us to try this out, because this website is FREE!! So, feel free to learn language in a very FUN way.