Provied the address of some of your favourite websites you have been using for the course and explain how and why they are useful for someone who is learning English.
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Here are some websites I’ve been using for the course. I think they all are useful to learn English. To get news on current events and information about specific matters, I’ve been using newspapers on line (for example: www.nytimes.com, www.latimes.com, www.telegraph.co.uk, www.guardian.co.uk) and other websites that provide not only written texts, but also video and radio articles: www.bbc.co.uk, www.cnn.com, http://itn.co.uk (Independent Television News), www.un.org.
I like “CNN.com” and “ITN.co.uk” with their numerous short video-news, as well as “BBC.co.uk”, where you can find many different sections, which can help you to improve your English. For example, here, you can listen to documentaries of 20 minutes; but you can also have fun by testing your English knowledge in “learning” section, where you can find some sorts of games, like crosswords and quizzes. There is also an interesting section dedicated to history, etc… You can easily have access to these sections under the frame “explore the BBC”. I also like “UN.org”, because in its radio/video section you can find the complete transcription of each spoken article. So, after having listened to it, you can verify how much exactly you have understood. In addition, you can try to repeat the right pronunciation.
For reviews on movies, I’ve been using the following websites: - www.salon.com, a complex website which can give you also other kinds of information (for example about books) - www.filmquipsonline.com - www.imdb.com
Other websites to learn English by having fun can be: - www.youtube.com, - www.msn.com. It provides written texts and videos about news, recipes, movies, music, horoscope, and so on.
I've been looking for some sites on the web that could be useful especially for improving my listening and linguistic abilities.
I've visited different websites for the course, some – already mentioned by Claudia – have been very useful to me, such as the BBC and CNN ones where you can hear and see the news, interviews and so on, as well as videos you can find on English and American newspapers websites.
Here there are some websites I found which I think can be useful, they are about differences among various English speaking accents – a matter very interesting to me - and the way they are different in relation to a 'standard English' (both the British 'Received pronunciation' and 'General American'). I'm also interested in the differences between British and American English in terms of words/expressions used.
This is a very well done and interesting part of the English Library website called “Sounds familiar?”. It has different sections where you can easily find and listen - thanks to a clear map of U.K. - the different regional/local pronunciations, both in terms of single words spoken by different persons and in terms of parts of a speech: for each local person, information about age, job/education level and place of origin is given, often the dialogue is reported and there are instructions about what you have to pay attention to, in terms of words chosen, pronunciation used and particular intonations. I like this site and I think it is very useful.
http://accent.gmu.edu/index.php
Here you can listen to differences in English pronunciations by making a search based on regions, speakers and native phonetic inventory. It's nice to see how the same short reading is read differently both by English mother-tongue speakers and various people all over the world that speak English as a foreign language (and for each country, there are different regional examples).
2 comments:
Here are some websites I’ve been using for the course. I think they all are useful to learn English.
To get news on current events and information about specific matters, I’ve been using newspapers on line (for example: www.nytimes.com, www.latimes.com, www.telegraph.co.uk, www.guardian.co.uk) and other websites that provide not only written texts, but also video and radio articles: www.bbc.co.uk, www.cnn.com, http://itn.co.uk (Independent Television News), www.un.org.
I like “CNN.com” and “ITN.co.uk” with their numerous short video-news, as well as “BBC.co.uk”, where you can find many different sections, which can help you to improve your English. For example, here, you can listen to documentaries of 20 minutes; but you can also have fun by testing your English knowledge in “learning” section, where you can find some sorts of games, like crosswords and quizzes. There is also an interesting section dedicated to history, etc… You can easily have access to these sections under the frame “explore the BBC”.
I also like “UN.org”, because in its radio/video section you can find the complete transcription of each spoken article. So, after having listened to it, you can verify how much exactly you have understood. In addition, you can try to repeat the right pronunciation.
For reviews on movies, I’ve been using the following websites:
- www.salon.com, a complex website which can give you also other kinds of information (for example about books)
- www.filmquipsonline.com
- www.imdb.com
Other websites to learn English by having fun can be:
- www.youtube.com,
- www.msn.com. It provides written texts and videos about news, recipes, movies, music, horoscope, and so on.
I've been looking for some sites on the web that could be useful especially for improving my listening and linguistic abilities.
I've visited different websites for the course, some – already mentioned by Claudia – have been very useful to me, such as the BBC and CNN ones where you can hear and see the news, interviews and so on, as well as videos you can find on English and American newspapers websites.
Here there are some websites I found which I think can be useful, they are about
differences among various English speaking accents – a matter very interesting to me - and the way they are different in relation to a 'standard English' (both the British 'Received pronunciation' and 'General American'). I'm also interested in the differences between British and American English in terms of words/expressions used.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html
This is a very well done and interesting part of the English Library website called “Sounds familiar?”. It has different sections where you can easily find and listen - thanks to a clear map of U.K. - the different regional/local pronunciations, both in terms of single words spoken by different persons and in terms of parts of a speech: for each local person, information about age, job/education level and place of origin is given, often the dialogue is reported and there are instructions about what you have to pay attention to, in terms of words chosen, pronunciation used and particular intonations.
I like this site and I think it is very useful.
http://accent.gmu.edu/index.php
Here you can listen to differences in English pronunciations by making a search based on regions, speakers and native phonetic inventory. It's nice to see how the same short reading is read differently both by English mother-tongue speakers and various people all over the world that speak English as a foreign language (and for each country, there are different regional examples).
A similar site:
http://www.soundcomparisons.com/
http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/us/?view=uk
http://www.digitas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/wiki/ken/BritishVsAmerican
http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm
These are short but useful summaries of common differences between American and British English spellings and expressions.
http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/dial-map.html
A dialect map of American English.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/feature2_3.shtml
A short story of British language changes.
http://septicscompanion.com/index.html
An interesting British slang dictionary where you can search words by letter or by category.
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