Autor: Jimena González Sanz.
Welcome everybody to the English section of this magazine. Hope you enjoyed the last months and you could spend some time to English.
But, first things first, I want to send you all a message of support and encouragement to you. I t is true we are living taught moments and we need to focus on activities and positive facts while we need to stay at home.
By the time, you will be reading these lines we might have been a couple of weeks at home and it seems it is going to take us a little bit longer to feel the freedom. So please do not desperate and focus on things you like and those you need to work a little more, English for instance.
My proposal today is to continue with some interesting resources where you can help yourself with English.
The first one are TED Talks, you can either search them in youtube or use the resources of National Geographic to learn English based on these talks. For those who are not familiar with them the TED Talks are performances of the world’s leading thinkers and doers. These talks normally last less than 18 minutes. They tackle many topics like Technology, Entertainment and Design (that is where its name comes from) plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. These talks are really engaging their contents are real, you can enjoy many of them and you can get ideas and encouragement from people of all around the world.
BBC has a news site that is more for native speakers or if you are looking for current news but, there is a clearer and easier site for English learners too. There are activities for different levels and a selection of programs about language, culture and English. And what is best, most of the articles can be downloaded as well as the audios; you can download the transcriptions in pdf too.
You will be able to practice the listening skill because there is a wide range of audio and video recordings. You can also find short videos about interesting topics in The “Words in the News” section.
And there is a program that focuses on idiomatic expressions “The English We Speak” an another one that connects vocab , listening and culture in a short, fun program: “6 Minute English”. There is also a section of the site about pronunciation of course uses British English
These two are my proposals so far. Please, keep a high spirit for you and the ones you live with.
BW.
