CNN: Student News

According to the website, CNN Student News is ' a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students produced by the journalists and educators at CNN'.The website is totally free for charge throughout the school year.

Value:

• Reliable and valuable resources that can be used as the teaching and learning materials: 'you'll find a wealth of teacher materials presented free of charge, including Daily Transcripts for each show, Daily Discussion questions, the Media Literacy Question of the Day, in-depth Learning Activities, downloadable Maps and additional support materials to help students understand the news.In addition, the educators at CNN offer Discussion Guides for CNN documentaries and initiatives, including Black in America, Latino in America and CNN Heroes.' (from CNN Student News )
• Diverse and latest topics 
• Videos in the website are authentic which can provide visual and audio input 

Usage: 
I recommend using this website for self-study or extending materials because it offers everyday news and also includes lots of activities that easily be held by students themselves. The video is very short and it is suitable for the busy high school students to listen everyday. As a teacher,I don't think we need to spend too much time on listen to the news and practice the designed activities because all of these can be done outside classroom by students themselves.  I think it is better to demonstrate students how to use this website and then motivate them to insist on the listening everyday.


1. you can choose a news and then listen to it 

2:  There are two options for you to 'study' the news:

1). quick guide and transcript:  where you can download the image maps and have the whole transcript of the news 

2). daily discussion: where some specific questions will be arranged for you; some of them are listening exercises that base on the news; some of them are just general question related to the topic

However, daily discussion is really good for students to work together. we can combine the  wiki with this website to let students finish the listening task outside the classroom. Offering the question above, and embed the video in the wiki, students write their answers in the wiki. Teacher will update the news video everyday and students can choose two days of a week to do the task. 


limitation:
CNN news, with its own political views, will affect students' world views; some political issues may be sensitive to discuss.The questions design make students to think in CNN way.  

Lyricstraning: funny website for listening task

LyricsTraining is a funny and easy website where visitors can watch the music videos and type the lyrics of the songs as games. You can also choose difficulties of the games according to your English level.

Step1: Choose a video as you like

Step2: Choose the level of the game

Step3: Begin to play the game:

you may watch the video and listen to the song. Some words is missing from the whole lyrics and you need to fill them in the blank. if you cannot catch it, you can just press the UP and DOWN button in the computer keyboard to move the sound to the lyrics you want to hear again or  simply click 'select language' which can translate the English lyrics into the language you choose so that you can have the hint to complete the whole lyrics. The button of 'Withdraw' will show you the whole lyrics without the blank.


Value

• interesting games with popular songs that motivate students to be engaged in. 
• listening dictation activities for improving students' listening skills.
• Different choices of levels help the practicing go ahead step by step. 
• Authentic materials 
• improving 'guessing' ability of listening skill. students grasp the missing word base on understanding the whole sentence. 

Usage

• listening activities: warming-up activity, dictation. Teacher can play the whole song to the class can ask the students to grasp the gist of the song. After discussion, they will play the games and focus on the specific information by themselves. 
• vocabulary: teacher choose a song that includes range of vocabularies that learners needs to be learned. After learners have learnt these vocabularies, they are required to play the game on the song that teacher has been chosen. It is a kind of exercises of vocabulary review which not only focus on the pronunciation but on the meaning and usage. 

Limitation:

• It is time-consuming for teachers to find the most suitable song for the target student. Possibly a detailed category is necessary. 
• teachers can hardly monitor learners' behavior since students can use 'withdraw' button to see the whole lyrics which make the whole task meaningless. 
• the rhyme and tone of song are different from the ordinary speaking 

TED: ideas worth spreading

TED is the website that devotes Ideas Worth Spreading. It provides large a large amount of famous speech in different fields around the world. There are lots of brilliant ideas and genius thoughts can be discovered when you watch TED. choose the field you are interested in, search a topic or a key word and you will find hundreds and thousands genius people talking about their fantastic ideas. 

Value:

• The speech is in English and in different fields so that the students have chances to learn vocabularies and expressions in different areas. For instance, students in computer science can enlarge the vocabularies in CS which possibly improve their further studies in the subject, esp. when they need to read their core books in English. 
• students can download the speech in audio or video format so as to achieve mobile learning. 
• If the students are advanced learner, possible he or she can challenge to be a translator in TED. 
• Great listening materials 

Usage:

•   Great listening materials, esp. for students studying English for Specific purpose. 
•   Brainstorming your ideas through listening to others
•   warming-up activity 
•   Understand different English accents because speakers are from different countries. 
•   To study the foreign cultures. (see example below )

Limitation:

• For upper-intermediate or advanced learners.

MapCrunch: travel around the world

MapCrunch


The website can teleport you around the world and you can view every street, road, building, view sight in the world that available in the Google Map. 





Value

•   The website is funny and motivate students' engagement
•   It  offers a ranges of vivid pictures that built a virtual world where students can 'walk' in.
•   The language is English
•   By exploring the world, students can not only be exposed to the new vocabularies but also the culture of other countries 

Usage

• For demonstration: teacher can demonstrate  the view of a street or a place to provide the basic background of a relevant  topic, including building, view sights or culture of a country. Good sources for warming-up task;  students can select their favorite  places or countries and demonstrate them to their peers with presentation. 
• Improving describing skill: because all the things in the website is visual able, so students can explore the world and then describe their trips or a specific place to their peers. 
• Gap-filling activity: one student describe the place and the other draw on the paper and then reflect his or her information. 
• For brainstorming: lots of images available in the virtual world can help students to brainstorming their ideas via visual aids. 

 Limitation

• Speed of net- connection is demanding. 
• Time-consuming for students to find the destination. we need a 'search bar' to help students to find a specific place. 

TodaysMeet

link: TodaysMeet



This website offer a convenient online communication platform whereby users can create a room by naming it and invite other members  join in the chatting room by simply tell them the URL of the room. Users in the room need to have a name firstly and then they are able to communicate with each other through typing the message in the box on the right hand and posting it on the left hand. The system will automatically arrange the posts of all members in the room in sequences according to the time. After that, also you are able to view the transcription of all the posts and embed it into your blog.

Value and Usage?
I think it is useful in the communicative language classroom since it is easily operated by teachers and learners to communicate with each other and view all the ideas in the classroom without ignoring anyone's involvement.

Moreover, in the traditional classroom, we always face a problem that after group discussion, too much time is needed on sharing ideas from each group in which the representative of the group will present their ideas, or members from each group will randomly present their ideas in which some shy students possibly loss the opportunities to speak out. However, this tool offer the equal opportunities for all the students to say their ideas  and it is effective and efficient way to view all the ideas by others at the same time when saying own opinions.

Furthermore, as creator can set the expired date of the room, the room is available and the data in the room will be valid until the  expired date. For students,  it offer a platform for further discussion on the topic that have been discussed in the class; for teachers, it is valuable resource for teachers' self-reflection, etc. daily journal or lesson report.

It is also an useful tool for brainstorming activity in the class.

Limitations:
The most serious problems of this tool, in my opinion, is lack of real face-to-face communication. Students will rely on the platform and interact with each other through typing instead of speaking. Is it the real communicative language classroom? Shy students on the one hand, are motivated  to say their opinion based on this tool; on the other hand, they become more and more shy when facing real speaking in the public.

For Everyday English: Learningchocolate VS LanguageGuide

link: Learningchocolate    

  link:  LangugaeGuide

What are they?

Both of these two websites provide large mount of vocabularies that we often encounter with in the daily life. The vocabularies in different categories are usually nouns to represent certain objects or  sometimes numeral when describe time or numbers. Both tools support pictures and various languages for learners, which means learners can learn the words in different language expression from the pictures, their mother tough or other language they have already mastered. They also provide the pronunciation of each word and offer several practices or tools for learners  to remember the words. I think they are designed for beginners or people who would like to live in the target language community.

However, there are lots of differences between these two tools. First of all, although they have very similar catalog which may overlap which each other, both of these two tools still have very unique catalog that do not exist in the other's, which means if we want to learn as many words as possible, we can not use one instead of the other. Secondly,  in term of exercises, langaugeguid offer two options: quiz mode and showing spelling, whereby you can freely choose whether to learn or to practice as you like; also, you can save the word into your account in which you can create your own word list. However, learningchocolate provide a more systematic process of learning vocabulary in a flash whereby learners first recognize the words by pictures and pronunciation and then practice the words in match-up, fill-in and dictation activities; theses activities are still based on the picture and pronunciation which learner have been experienced before the activities. Moreover, learningchocolate offer a series of useful links for further learning or teaching.

Therefore, I recommend learners and teachers can give the priority to  LearningChocolate while languageguide can regarded as a supplemental materials.

Why and how can it be used in Language Learning?
As they are websites for practicing everyday English, so it is of great significance for beginners and people who wants to live in the English community.

learners can self-study in both websites because they are easily operated and totally free. Alternately, if for children, teachers can divide the whole class into several groups and ask each group to choose whether learningchocolate or englishguide, then students in the group will study the same catalog in these two tools and finally exchange what they have learned with the group who use the other tool. Teachers is the organizer of the task.

Limitations:

• just available for beginners
• learners possibly do not know how to use the words when they are not nouns
• exercises are a little bit boring for learners which can not arouse their interests. (pictures can motivate learners to study the words which possibly offer effective input , however, exercises seem to be the repeat of the 'input' may fail to achieve the effective output which may reduce learners' motivation)