Category Archives: English culture

Lyrics training

Do you have any favourite song in English? Don’t look for the lyrics in Internet to translate it! Try to guess the lyrics yourself using a useful web page: Lyrics training, an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills, through the music videos and lyrics of your favorite songs.

😎 Try it! Click on the lyrics training web page, you can look for your favourite song using the search tool or choose any English song to practise. Songs are organised by levels: easy, medium and hard. Once you have completed the missing word(s) the song will go on. If you get lost, use narrows to go up and down the song. It’s easy and fun!!!

The scavenger hunt

The Internet is an enormous collection of answers. The challenge is to find them! Start by doing a scavenger hunt, be yourself the teacher of your class and prepare an activity to your students. You will learn lots of interesting stuff.

What is a scavenger hunt?

A scavenger hunt is a web page with a number of questions and a list of web addresses to find the answers to those questions. At the end there is usually “the big question”. The answer to that is not found directly in any of the suggested web pages, so you have to read, understand, process and produce their own answer.

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Scavenger hunts are very useful activities for a number of reasons: you and your classmates can  research and learn a lot about a certain topic, you prepare your project reading real English, you practice different abilities in relation with the use of ICT, and you improve your reading comprehension and your written and/or oral production.

😎 Try it! You can work in groups of 2 or 3 students. Choose a topic from the English culture you want to learn more about (Art, History, Sites and Monuments, Important people, Sports…). Look for information on the net. Then, try to do your own scavenger hunt. The next class, exchange your hunts with the rest of the groups and try to solve the other scavenger hunts. You will learn a lot of things and spend a good time.

Useful web pages:

Scavenger hunts at Education World: A collection of scavenger hunts organized by month.

Scavenger hunt generator: you can use this web page as a model to create your scavenger hunt.

Second life for teenage learners of English

 

Do you want to learn English and visit the UK for free? Now you can, virtually. The British Council has created a learning zone for learners in the Second Life virtual environment. Interactive LearnEnglish activities and quests based on UK culture are available for all registered Second Life residents.

😎 Try it! Watch the video to get a general idea of what English Second Life is. You can register and know more about it here. Enjoy yourself and practise your English at the same time!

The Lord of the Rings into passive

 

Are you a Lord of the Rings fan? You can watch the opening scene, visit the official site and learn more about Tolkien universe, books and movies.

😎 Try it! If you want to learn more about Lord of the Rings as well as about English grammar and passive voice, you have to visit this site where you can do some crosswords, exercises or multiple choice activities.

Trick or treat?

Halloween is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. Do you know why are pumpkins, skeletons or ghosts associated with halloween? What does it mean the expression ‘trick or treat’? If you want to know more about this celebration click on here.

😎 Try it! There are a lot of online activities about Halloween, as well as crafts to do. Click and enjoy Halloween! or if you like, do the Halloween’s quiz or watch and read one story about Halloween.

American reports

Snag films is a useful web page with a lot of American videos to learn about different topics: history, science, museums, technology, health…

😎 Try it! Click on snag films topics and choose the one you want lo learn more about. Some videos are only available for American people, nevertheless you can find some interesting reports at your disposal!

In love with Shakespeare

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In Love with Shakespeare is a didactic unit for Batxillerat designed by Anna Aznar and Jordi Jordan. It can be done as a whole or selecting some of the units.  The main objectives here are to develop communicative strategies, both spoken and written, and to get to know some aspects of English culture (basically history and literature), with the aid of ITC.

😎 Try it! Click on the link and pass your mouse over the picture, the different units will appear. Click on the first one, Tudor England and start by learning about the context in which Shakespeare lived: the monarchy, the city of London and the way they dressed. Again, pass the mouse over the screen and click on the different pictures. By searching the web sites provided, you must find out about Henry VIII, his wives and how Elizabeth I accessed the throne. You must also identify the main characters in Tudor history in a number of portraits. Then, you can click on Tudor London and complete a description of the city at that time after reading a website, learn about London monuments and place them in a map.

Poe animated

Do you like horror stories? Then Edgar Allan Poe is your writer! He was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, best known for his tales of mistery…

😎 Try it! One of Poe’s best stories about crime was ‘The Tell-Tale heart’. Read the story or click on the video to listen as well as to watch the tale. Poe is one of the best American writers, hope you enjoy his tales but be careful about nightmares…

We all live in a yellow submarine

You can listen to music, but sometimes is possible to read or even to watch music. Turn off the volume and let’s see it with Yellow Submarine,  a 1966 song by The Beatles.

😎 Try it! Think of a song and work in pairs. Prepare a power point presentation only with the lyrics or images about the song and show it to the rest of the class. Without listening the music, will your classmates be able to guess the title or the rythm of your song?