Great Questions

Great Questions is an interesting site for advanced English students to develop their listening and speaking skills. It is a section of Story Corps, a site whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives.

The Great Questions Lists and Great Questions Generator provide you with excellent questions that you can use when interviewing people about their lives or about the lives of others. The Great Questions Lists is just a list of questions that you can select on your own. The Great Questions Generator will help you select the best questions for the person or people you're planning to interview.

You can listen to lots of stories in the section Listen to stories of the site, and some of the stories have a transcript and can be downloaded. Simply click on More Stories, and then click on Read more... whenever the stories allow you to do so. On the right-hand side you will be able to check whether there is a transcript, if the story can be downloaded as a podcast, related stories and so on.

As an example, I have included the story submitted by Frank Kovac, who explains how he built a planetarium in his garden. Frank's story is perfect for us, as it illustrates everything we can get from Great Questions.

H/T to Free Technology for Teachers.

The story of Scrabble

This is the story of Scrabble narrated by Liz Dubelman. Just click on the picture below and click on click here to play on the ensuing screen.

Woody Allen

Listen to Woody Allen read his stories.

Andrew Wright's stories

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

I remain a zombie

I remain a zombie is an online game that is played while reading the story of the game as a narrative story. It is a great way of getting everybody reading. Playing the game becomes a comprehension check.

Bow Street Runner

Channel 4 brings us this interesting adventure based on the real Bow Street Runners created to fight crime and control the streets of London during the 18th century. Pick objects, talk to people and investigate in order to solve the crimes in the story. Being a free online game as it is, the quality is extremely rich. You will have a good time as you roam through the muddy streets trying to solve the mystery.