Doing grammar exercises is not the only way to improve your English! Sometimes you just want to have a little fun and sing a song. Karaoke Party is a clever website where you can sing a bunch of different songs for free. You can search by genre, year or keyword and you will see a flash video with or without the words and a representation of the melody (kind of like SingStar for the PS3). You can already sing a few songs without registering,...
Short films about global issues from the United Nations
The United Nations has short videos with transcripts on their UN in Action site.
Documentaries from Australia
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has some fantastic resources online: Catalyst is a 10 minute documentary programme with transcripts, and Foreign Correspondent is a 30 minute news documentary programme with transcripts. Both shows have a short introduction before the transcript begins.
Watch the news in English
The news is a great learning resource because you usually already know the context. Just by looking at a few pictures, you can usually guess what the story is, so it’s easy to listen and connect what you hear with what you already know. Euronews provides a transcript with each video in their “OUR LATEST VIDEO NEWS” section so you can listen first and then read if you’d like.
Learning with your DVDs
Practicing English by watching films is good for improving your stamina, but there are other things you can do as well. Take a film that you know very well from watching it in your mother tongue. Now watch this movie in English (with English subtitles if you like) and you will learn all kinds of language because you know what they will say so you can pay attention to how they say it. When you’re watching a film for the first time, after a...
Learning can be inspriational
TED is an incredible organization that brings some of the most intelligent and passionate people in the world together to give lectures and inspire the rest of us with their ideas. They also have subtitles in many languages and an excellent interactive transcript tool for every video. For a taste of the amazing minds who participate in TED lectures, watch neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran talk about some very unusual things he has discovered...