by | March 22nd, 2007
The TEFL Logue review of Breaking News English.com was one of the first TEFL Logue Reviews…I have to admit I don’t use a lot of online TEFL resources, but I’m still using Breaking News English. Here’s why this site is a keeper:
- The topics are “discussable” – this is perhaps the (second biggest – first is level) stumbling block to using real news articles. The latest political development or technological breakthrough may be newsworthy, but to discuss it you need either a great interest or outside knowledge of it; I find it easy to come up with discussion topics connected to BNE articles; they are specific enough to be interesting yet general enough that most people have or can form an opinion on them.
- The level can suit nearly everyone – it’s not difficult to pre-teach a few words and have a lower-level student make some predictions before reading to make it a bit easier, and a student whose level is a little higher can still be challenged by thought-provoking questions or more detailed vocabulary questions.
- As above, the texts are good and come with suggested questions and vocabulary exercises, but you are free to do with the texts (and listenings) as you wish; plenty of TEFL sites provide actual lesson plans, but you generally need to follow those closely or do quite a bit of work to adapt them to your own tasks. Not Breaking News English.
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The site is easy to navigate – it’s straightforward and logical and you don’t have to poke around several pages trying to remember where you found the cool stuff.
- You can keep a few articles on hand for times when what you planned finishes early, or perhaps when you’re short on prep time.
{ 2 comments }
This is my favorite resource! I use it with the ESL kids (indeed, I have used it for ALL of my kids!) in my classroom. It\’s so multi-faceted that I can use it for not one, but several lessons, as well as writing projects and reflective writing. The students universally enjoy it, because the reading is short and the topics are relevant to their lives.
I\’m not a TEFL teacher, but BNE is a useful addition to ANY English classroom.
I would have loved reading articles like these in school. Sean Banville does an excellent job not only of adapting the articles but of selecting them and coming up with good questions and discussion topics - sometimes even humorous ones (one of my and my students’ favorites: “if you were a grain of rice, would you like to be genetically modified?”)
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