Why can't we walk straight

Funny video from NPR which teaches us something about the sense of direction in humans.

Aids Day

1st December is Aids Day. To make people aware of this pandemia, a group of celebrities have agreed to take part in a shocking publicity campaign, as you may well figure out from the photo below.

Read this The New York Times article about Aids and about the campaign.

Newsy videos

Newsy comes close to perfection for English students who want to keep abreast of the latest news developments. The news items come together with their transcripts, and each piece of news is a mash-up from different sources -ABC, BBC, NBC, and so on.

All in all Newsy is an excellent place to develop our listening skills in an easy effortless way.

Some New Yorkers want to lose their accents

Article from The New York Times that deals with the fact of how self-concious some New Yorkers are about their accent.

You can also watch an embedded video.

12 ways to learn vocabulary with The New York Times

This article from The New York Times should be of interest to all English language learners, especially if they are preparing for an exam.

Farmer feeds families for Thanksgiving

It is finally Thanksgiving Day, but some people celebrate it differently... This farmer, for one, devotes the holiday to doing charity work.

Growing up digital

Superb work by The New York Times, where we have a look at the dependence of today's youth on everything digital.

First of all, read this online article to gain some background information about the topic.

Now, listen to a group of youths expressing their views on how important everything digital is for them.

Finally, listen to the teachers' views:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/21/technology/20101121-brain-teachers.html

An improbable baseball factory

New York Times article on baseball where we can practise the fill-in the blanks reading comprehension task.

Udemy

Udemy is a free platform for teaching courses online. You must sign up first, or gain access to it through your Facebook account, if you have one. After that, just choose from the wide range of courses which are available, either through videos or slideshows or a combination of both.

I think Udemy is a nice site to keep in touch with authentic English while learning to do something else.

Video Games

Presentation by John Chatfiedl in TED Talks about the value and influence of video games in today's world. Remember you can activate the English subtitles if you wish to do so.

Edge video

Edge video might turn out to be an interesting site for advanced English students. Lots of interview videos together with their transcripts of well-known people.

Idea City

Idea City online is a real find. We can gain access to loads of talks by outstanding personalities from all fields without moving from our computer. The idea behind Idea City is somehow similar to that of TED talks, which we have already dealt with in a previous entry: top scientists, researchers, politicians, sports people, artists, writers and so on share a piece of their mind with the purpose of educating viewers for life.

Immigration debate

Watch the embedded video on immigration and answer the questions about it that follow.



1- How are immigrants portrayed, according to the woman speaking?
2- What percentage of household has been done by immigrants in 2004?
3- Which are the results of the study mentioned by the woman?
4- How much is the deficit going to be according to the speaker?
5- Explain with your own words the meaning of the following words heard on this video shot: welfare state, dropout and domestic policy.

Andrew Wright's stories

Wonderful blog by story writer Andrew Wright. Here you can gain access to tons of stories. Hope you enjoy them.

The story of stuff

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad. The Story of Stuff is a twenty-minute look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.

Edgar Allan Poe

To mark the 161st anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's death on October 7th, Open Culture posted the animated short film The Tell Tale Heart.


The Tell Tale Heart - UPA (1954) from J.F. Culhane on Vimeo.

Smart History

At Smart History you can find a great collection of artists, from the very beginnings to contemporary artists. On top of that, you have access to lots of downloadable videos with explanations.

Class blogs

Class blogs seem to be getting fashionable in the teaching world, as this blog itself shows. But to what extent are they beneficial? This article from The Guardian sheds some light on the issue.

Idioms

Idioms are one of the most difficult areas of English for students. We spend lots of time memorising them, and when the time comes, either we have forgotten them or are unsure about their use or use them wrongly. The BBC learning English site has this wonderful idioms section where we can learn a few of them while we develop our listening skills.

Anglicisms in Spanish

Read this online article from the Macmillan Dictionary blog on the impact of English on Spanish and vice-versa.

Charlie Rose's web page

Charlie Rose's web page can be a very interesting site for advanced English students. Lots of videos on current affairs and reports on general interests topics, many of which are accompanied by their transcription.

Just to give you an example, why don't you want an episode of Charlie Rose's brain series as a follow-up to Straightforward's unit 2?

Robots

PBS is a very interesting place for advanced English students. As well as everyday news, the site broadcasts highly-interesting reports, many of which have transcripts.