Real-world dictations

Posted by on Mar 25, 2013 in Listening |

If you want to improve your listening (and spelling) skills, try out this site: Listen and Write.  They have taken media from a wide range of sources, found transcripts, and made them into dictation activities.  This means that you can listen to (or watch, many of the sources are on youtube) a news report, an interview, a song, a film trailer or a TV show and then listen to it in “chapters” so you can focus on 5-10 seconds of text...

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Free audiobooks–Librivox

Posted by on Mar 20, 2013 in Listening, Vocabulary |

We all need to practice our listening skills, but it can be difficult.  Listening to the news can be boring.  Watching films or TV shows can be fun, but do we really understand what they said?  Can we remember it?  Sometimes we want to check if we really heard everything. Librivox is a community of people who are trying to record all of the books in the public domain.  This means that all of their resources are 100% free and legal!  It also...

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Ask a teacher

Posted by on Mar 18, 2013 in Grammar, Learning Websites, Vocabulary, Writing |

You’ve checked your dictionary and your grammar books and you still don’t know the best way to say something.  Or maybe you know the “right” way to say something, but you want to know why it’s the “right” way.  You might have problems with an idiom, slang or phrasal verbs; or you just want someone to check some sentences you’ve written. Here are two great forums where English teachers and native...

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Free spelling and grammar checking software

Posted by on Mar 15, 2013 in Grammar, Writing |

We all use a spell-checker when we write, but most of them don’t notice when we write the wrong word.  If I wrote, “I had a bear at the pub last night,” all of the words are spelled correctly but I should have typed “beer.”  Ginger is a new kind of spelling and grammar checker that checks the context of your words, not just the words in isolation.  Ginger notices “pub” in the sentence and offers to...

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Test your vocabulary and donate to the UN World Food Programme

Posted by on Mar 14, 2013 in Vocabulary |

Freerice.com seems like a simple game: you just match the word you see with a synonym.  But for every correct answer you get, the game gets harder.  When you choose an incorrect answer, the game gets easier.  The real challenge is trying to remember if the words are nouns, verbs or adjectives… it’s a lot harder than it seems!  This is a good way to practice for Part 4 of the Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE). The game is run by the...

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Test your pronunciation in this game

Posted by on Mar 14, 2013 in Speaking |

Here’s a silly game for you to try: http://easywaytest.com/ Just pronounce the word on the screen (into your microphone), if you do it correctly you’ll see the next part of the cartoon.  The game understands the other things you say too, so be polite!

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