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The lessons have pre-reading activities, reading
comprehension, writing and grammar
exercises and post-reading activities, games, role plays or discussions.
Each lesson comes complete with teachers' notes
and answer keys. There are over 1700 downloadable, photocopiable lessons
from elementary to advanced and across an enormous range of topics.
We also have "warmers" or "ice-breakers",
Vocabulary
worksheets and Grammar
worksheets.
Cutting news for the classroom
Would you like to involve your English students
in a topical discussion? Do you find your ESL students need to develop
greater understanding of many world issues to help them develop general
language proficiency? Through newspaper articles students can access up-to-date
information from countries all around the world. They can learn geographical,
historical, social/cultural, economic, and political information using
the target language.
Learning through newspapers
Learning through newspaper
articles provides learners with an interesting challenge. Many of
us, as language practitioners and teachers, recognize this and regularly
turn to newspapers and magazines for authentic texts of current interest
to enhance our teaching. We scan the paper, find a piece we consider interesting,
cut it out and then photocopy it for the class. Often, however, the hoped-for
goal of reading and discussing the news article with the class is a disappointment;
it can prove to be an unfocussed and relatively unproductive exercise.
The material is too long, too discursive, the vocabulary can be off-putting,
and in the end, very little discussion is generated. Sadly the text is
often abandoned, even though the objective was sound.
Authenticity itself does not assure a valid learning experience. The exploitation
of an authentic text requires considered development to achieve direction
and focus.
Using Textbooks
Textbooks provide us with a systematic and organised
way in which we can focus our teaching. However, much literature focuses
on the potential of topical, authentic text for motivating the students
we teach. A piece of text from a newspaper can have an immediate relevance.
For this reason many EFL and ESL
textbooks try to incorporate newspaper articles. Unfortunately, they are
only able to do so when all forms of exophoric reference are removed.
Exophoric reference is the background or real world knowledge students,
or readers in general, require to understand a text. If a newspaper text
is to be incorporated into a textbook in two years time, all references
to the event must be explained in full.
Most real world communication requires exophoric referencing so we try
to incorporate when we teach. We can only do this by using recently torn
out news articles (if we are fortunate enough to have a readily available
supply of English-language newspapers and magazines), and this in itself
presents another problem. Our students, fellow teachers and employers
are accustomed to a high standard of presentation in the materials used
in the ESL classroom. Trying to maintain that presentation standard, and
general lesson quality in the materials we produce, while working a full
teaching load, is more than a little daunting.
This is where of
English-to-go comes
into play; the work has already been done.
English-To-Go supplies a variety
of ESL teaching resources, the main one being “Instant Lessons”
- English lessons based around Reuters news articles ranging from elementary
to advanced. The materials offer reading, writing, listening, grammar
and speaking activities and include, vocabulary, language-use, comprehension
and post-reading activities such as role plays, discussions and games.
Each lesson comes complete with student worksheets, teacher’s notes
and follow-on activities. On average, each lesson contains nine different
activities based around the news article. For busy teachers, English-To-Go
can save hours of preparation time in cutting up news articles and formulating
lesson plans. Full membership to English-to-go is not free, although you
are able to sign up for the free guest membership to receive one free
resource monthly. There are also free sample English lessons: Free
sample_lessons
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 Teacher
Resources: Printable Instant Lessons
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Our high quality online English lessons
and additional ESL teaching resources provide you with a valuable
tool kit. Teach your students about our rapidly changing world
and how to communicate more effectively within it with photocopiable
lessons from Thomson Reuters
news.
Click here for more information. |
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