Teacher Discussion Forums

mbartizmo · Joined: 23 Apr 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Czech Republic

Greetings, teachers.

Since I have to create lesson plans based on the news for my students, I decided to put together a website that offers these news lesson plans for free. Check it out at www.englishcurrent.com (lessons in .DOC format). The levels are from Intermediate to Advanced. I'm still playing with the lesson plan format. I hope some of you find the lessons useful.

If anyone is interested in contributing to the site, get in touch.

--- Other good websites for lessons based on the news include:
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ (also has downloadable lessons)
http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/

I'm currently teaching in Prague. If any of you have any questions about teaching in Prague, feel free to get in touch.
-MB / www.englishcurrent.com

Meigom · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 5

Hi,

Have you ever considered writing current news for lower level students?

Thanks for the materials you have posted.

Megaen
Hong Kong

mbartizmo · Joined: 23 Apr 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Czech Republic

Hi Megaen. Well, when I write a lesson plan, it's usually for one of the group classes I'm currently teaching in Prague. My students are almost all intermediate to advanced here. Czechs can speak English fairly well, compared to non-Europeans EFL learners.

Also, I think it would be hard to have a current events lesson with students who are lower than intermediate. They probably lack the vocabulary to discuss political/economic issues. When I asked my [lower-level] students in Japan about political issues, often I would just get a long pause "...." and then they'd say "difficult."
and that was it =)
(of course the Japanese are have their own unique language-learning challenges.)

Well, there's my reply.
Good luck
-MB

hihowareyou · Joined: 29 Nov 2011 Posts: 3 Location: Brussels

Actually there is something out there for you Megaen. I's called News for Beginners It has short articles in really simple English and then some questions you can do with the students.

MB is right, you can't really have political discussions with beginners but you can use the articles to teach questions and vocabulary.

I use this in my class, give them about 5 to 10 min to read the article and then see how they answered the questions.

http://www.newsforbeginners.com

RWL731978 · Joined: 05 Jun 2012 Posts: 1

I also used to teach adult conversation classes. And I also made up a bunch of discussion classes based around news articles. And I too decided I might as well put them on the internet. So for anyone who's interested, here it is:

http://topicalenglishfreelessons-tefl.weebly.com/index.html

The reading articles are mostly from news sites and they deal with fairly complex issues.
My class was very advanced and already reasonably fluent.
None of these are suitable for lower level classes.

andrewgessman · Joined: 01 Nov 2011 Posts: 27

These sites are fantastic! Thank you (and thanks to the others who have replied to your post) for making this site available and pointing to others. I am extremely interested in incorporated news/current events into my teaching, as well as civics. These sites will be a big help to me in the future and I've already "bookmarked" them. It's heartening to find other teachers who recognize the necessity of teaching current events, and share my passion for a topic that should be much more commonplace in schools.