Summer reading and listening(1)
By Evelyne Vittoz on Thursday, June 19 2008, 17:19 - General - Permalink
I advise my pupils to read during the summer holidays ... Why ? Because reading will help them learn new vocabulary and structures and improve their reading speed . And this is vital for their exams, for their mastery of English, for their enjoyment of English.
Now what can you read to improve your English ?
- You can read websites about your favorite hobbies. Just make a Google search and bookmark the sites you like. Be careful though, some websites are not reliable (fiables) and some Google searches produce strange results.
Don't blame me for what you get and use caution on the Internet!
- The easiest way can be to read and study the lyrics of your favourite songs :for example, "Chasing Pavements" by Adele is quite nice.
You can offer or read a translation of your favourite songs on La Coccinelle
- You can also read a short story (une nouvelle) in English for instance Death by Scrabble, Tone or The Star on East of the Web
- If you are interested in the news, you can check out Time for Kids
which are very interesting for teenagers learning English particularly in 3ème-seconde-1ère.
- For older students, try Teen Ink, Youth Outlook, Teen Voices
- Obviously you can also read real books written in English for young people.
Some titles in the next post. :)
But you also need to listen to English.
- I'll advise Lyrics training for listening to songs :
Don't forget to write down and learn the words you don't know.
- For more serious subjects, Breaking News English is a good resource (Six levels of difficulty- lots of practice for reading and listening!)
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
- As the BBC world news in one minute :
http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/international
- or the CNN students news archive (they don't publish anything new during the summer):
http://edition.cnn.com/specials/student-news-transcripts
- and of course watching movies and Tv series with subtitles or not in English! :)
Tell us your tips and ideas in the comments.
Comments
I find that reading English books is difficult because we don't understand everything.
Reading full books is indeed difficult, Justine , that's why you have to start small with short texts, press articles and short stories (des nouvelles) as I said. The idea is to practice regularly and it becomes easier .
Have you ever tried borrowing an English-speaking magazine at the school library to read for your pleasure ?
The website La Coccinelle is very useful for young people because it gives a general translation about the song.
La coccinelle is interesting and nice. :)
As I said Aurélien and Lucie, you too can contribute to their website because la Coccinelle is a cooperative website and it makes everybody discover the true meaning of your favourite songs. Sometimes it's quite surprising.
Do you know the English for a coccinelle by the way ?