Day #49 Practise your English with British Council podcast

If you are not advanced in English, especially in listening to English I recommend you British Council elementary podcast which you can find here:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/elementary-podcasts

This website contains audio materials but much more. First of all you can find transcript and some exercise  both in printable (in Instructions & downloads section) and interactive version. Using this materials you can not only listen to British English but also learn English by yourself.

To make it easier the whole material is divided into section. Every part has its own exercise or exercises. Of course there is also a key with answers for them at the end on the printable version. You can learn with interactive materials from website as well, it’s up to you.

But it’s not all. There is also a mobile version of the podcast. The one for android users is available here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hk.hkbc.epodcast

I don’t know what about you, but I like the idea of listening to the podcast and doing exercises wherever I am, using my mobile phone.

So try the podcast and write in the comment section what is your opinion about the materials.

Day #43 - Talking avatars – how can we use them?

I want to introduce you an internet service called Voki www.voki.com. It lets you create crazy avatars which can say what you want them to say in the language you want them to use. Here is an example. British English:

And American version:

Here you can hear Austalian accent:

OK. I know it’s  not perfectly natural human voice, but you can make your avatar to speak just writing a few lines of text. Isn’t that amazing? Do you want to know how to do it? I’m going to write more about it in the next post.

Because Voki is easy to create and making speaking avatars is fun we can use Voki to learn English. We all know that with more fun there is a better learning.

Here are a few examples how we can use it:

• Avatar which represents you and tells something about you,
• Avatar tells a joke,
• Avatar asks funny questions.

Could you give me some more. Try to find the craziest and the funniest way of using it.

Write your ideas in comment section.

One of my favourites tools - Quizlet

The tool I've been using for some time is Quizlet.
I really recommend it to all of those who learn new words. It's a quite helpful tool when you need all your new vocabulary lists to be always close at hand.

It is possible because you can use Quizlet in different ways and you can use with it different kind of tools.
You may learn using PC computer, tablet or your smart phone or you can even print your flashcards and use them in traditional way.
Yes, this tool helps you prepare electronic version of flashcards, it helps you to organise them and learn with them more effectively. Using Quizlet's flashcard you not only can see the word and the definition of it but also hear the pronunciation (American one) of the word or of the whole phrase. The service is very helpful because of possibility of choosing the way you want to learn. There are flashcards of course, there is a game or two, there are some tests with various kind of questions, there are also tasks which test your spelling or understanding by hearing.
Imagine, with Quizlet you have all your vocabulary you're learning just now always with you. All you need is the internet connection and your readiness to memorise or revise English words.

And here is the list of words from the one unit of the book I use to learn English.
Flashcards from Quizlet (English - English):

Day #6 - An example of gamifying learning English

Good news for people who want to learn English using materials from the internet.
We all know that there are load of this kind of materials, but knowing it is not enough, even having access for this materials is not good enough.
Learning alone is very difficult and you have to be highly motivated to do it constantly.
But... but learning with the internet don't have to be alone, you can meet, contact with other learners this way and you can use gamification to motivate yourself.
The solution  for the problems mentioned earlier can be very interesting service - Duolingo.

It is a place where you can find courses of many languages and one of them is English.
You learn by using interactive and multimedia materials but you also have fun because of the elements from games used in the service. This use of games elements (like gaining points, badges, losing lives ect)  is called gamification and it is a new and interesting trend in education. If you want to find out what it is and how it works - do use Duolingo to learn English or other language. It can be very interesting experience.