I couldn’t believe how many language learning blogs are out there! While searching, I enjoyed this one because it incorporated some conversations with British English and it was quite comical: Better @ English: Real English for Real People (B@E). The URL is http://www.betteratenglish.com/ The site is designed for adult learners, but some topics could be modified for children as well.
The purpose of the site is to provide language learners with audio and text of “real” conversations in English. The content is organized by learning levels: Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and Advanced. However, most of the conversations are targeted toward the intermediate learner. There were a couple of resources for the upper intermediate and advanced learners, but most of them redirected the user to go to Manager Tools podcast at www.manager-tools.com
B@E seems very informal compared to other language learning sites I visited. I think it would be useful for a language learner who wanted to supplement his/her formal learning with comical, informal conversations. The site is appealing in that it claims to be “real” conversations for “real” people by focusing on idioms, slang, and colloquial English.
The most recent conversation is displayed on the front page. For example, the current conversation is titled “Don’t step in the dog doo” and is part 4 of 4 conversations. The most useful external documents provided are the transcripts of the conversations, which seem extremely helpful. The author also includes links to other sites for further learning such as practice with grammar and vocabulary. However, I think it would be more beneficial if the guides and learning resources were available on the within the site instead of being directed to another location. The learner is only able to listen to the conversations on the site. There are no areas to practice speaking, vocabulary, grammar, or any other language learning skills without following a link.
The site is easy to navigate since the conversations are also categorized by topics such as, phrasal verbs, British vs. American English, business English, grammar, idioms and slang, vocabulary, and many others, which makes it easy to quickly find your area of interest. (An archive is also available that contains all conversations since 2006.) In addition, users can access categories including learning resources, listening, teaching resources, and videocasts. The ads take away from the integrity of the site and were confusing at times.
B@E is an interesting, informal site that would be useful solely for the purpose of listening to casual, conversational English. I would not recommend the site for anything other than that purpose. All in all, I would not rate the site as a good resource since it is not inclusive to all language learning needs and does not provide the learner with practice, feedback, or assessment of any kind. While the site contained links to numerous other sites for these purposes, the links were not always reliable and were more advertisements for Google Ads than useful links.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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Kristie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the website has many external ads and it was difficult for me to locate the actual contents, being away fro those ads. However, I think this is understandable becuae these are the financial sourses that the website managers run it on.
And I believe evary website has their own areas of pushing forward--I don't think a personal website/blogs can hand all the four skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening.
I agree that whether language learners actually need to sit down and listen to the talk show to learn slangs or informal conversation. Maybe, I think some of the talk shows from NPR streaming radio would be better for listening--too bad we don't have transcripts for the shows. But VOA provides mp.3 files and transcripts!
Any I enjoyed reading your comments, and thanks!
Kristie,
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful find! I think that the website you found would serve time and time again as an authentic language tool in an ESL classroom. There are even multiple types of English so learners can get used to more than just one dialect.
If you were to use their podcast in an ESL classroom, how would you assess the students?
If I would do an entire lesson based off of the "Don't step in the dog doo" podcast, I would probably start off with an exercise where I would take out words or sentences and the students would have to fill in the blanks. After, I could even have them try to pick out the different types of speech such as slang, question inversion, and etc. At the end of the lesson, I would have the students go to a language language and record their conversation about the matter. There are a lot of things that could be done!
Brian,
ReplyDeleteWhat awesome ideas!! I really like how you take this wonderful site that Kristie found and offer useful applications for this site.
When we get into talking about WebQuests, this would be a great site for students to explore as part of a WebQuest activity. I love your idea, Brian, of encouraging the students to use computers and even record an authentic conversation (or short speech) about the conversation heard. This would get students using the vocabulary presented in the original conversation.
I very much like that the content on Better At English is lighthearted. Sometimes students need to learn this type of speech so that they can talk in more informal speaking situations.
Thanks for sharing this find, Kristie!!