Hello colleagues, I am always on the look out for interesting texts that have accompanying audio. Did you know that ReadWorks has audio for some of the texts on their site? I have often chosen informational texts from ReadWorks for my beginning ESL class. For example, recently we have read about seasons (why do we have winter?), Ground Hogs Day, and the 2018 Winter Olympics.
We do a wide range of activities with these texts. My goal is always to seek to balance listening, speaking, reading and writing, so when there is audio available, I always make use of this in the class.
ReadWorks requires registration, but is free for both teachers and students. Like so many of these online sites, it's designed for K-12, but can be quite useful for adult literacy educators and learners.
Members are invited to share the many ways they use audio in class. Also, if you have found other sites that feature audio, please let us know.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition
Comments
Yes, I use Read Works quiet a lot . It is a wonderful resource not only for listening, but differentiating passages for students in different levels working together. News English also have listening option. The activities are also very good for vocabulary and comprehension.
Hello...Two of my favorites are learningenglish.voanews.com and newsinlevels.com, and I like to connect every ELL mom with uniteforliteracy.com and storylineonline.net. The other thing I like to do is find texts on Project Gutenberg, which has more than 50,000 titles, and then I pair the text with the recording on librivox.
ReadWork is great! Thanks for the suggestion! I really like how the filter works. It's nice to be able to limit the search to books with human voices. I tend to avoid using robot voices for ESL listening.
Like you, I'm always looking for good sources for audio with text. It's my preferred way to learn and so I incorporate it into my teaching, and it's the main homework that I assign....Independent outside reading along (texts) with audio.
Thanks again!
Hi Lorraine and all, Thanks for these additional suggestions. I didn't know about several of these, and I'm looking forward to checking them out.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP
Susan, I think audio books are great, and would like to recommend that teachers should create their own audio books for beginning students in order to help them with their pronunciation and listening comprehension.
Every language learner automatically has difficulty “hearing” that language when it is being spoken. Often this can be quite frustrating and even demoralizing.
English may be one of the most difficult languages in the world to pronounce and to understand. So, for beginning students, having texts accompanied by audio is very useful.
At the same time I strongly urge that a bilingual vocabulary be added to each text. Do students have bilingual dictionaries or know how to use Google translate?
And, I also am an advocate of Graded Readers, which basically are stories or lessons written in an appropriate vocabulary for adult learners, usually accompanied by a bilingual explanation or vocabulary list.
I have written a number of texts, and also have made my own audio books. And also the Pumarosa website includes my texts with audio.
Students like to have access to an assortment of materials, and gradually learn to enjoy studying English instead of being intimidated by it.
Hello everyone, Thanks, Paul, for the great suggestion to create our own audio resources for both in class as well as for outside of class. I know you've linked us to your resources previously, Paul, which is helpful
If other members have created audio files for use by learners, please let us know. How do you make these available? What topics or themes?
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP
I agree that recording books w/ audio tailored to the student is ideal. For busy teachers who don't have time, however, online sources are invaluable.
Here's another one that I forgot: LearnOutLoud.com.
The full text is available and so is the audio. I particularly like the documentaries. It would be most appropriate for higher proficiency levels, but isolated segments would be appropriate for intermediate levels and perhaps even high beginners if scaffolded appropriately.
I'm on my way via coach to TESOL International's conference in Chicago! Hope to see you there!