There are a lot of ways you can use the videos to learn English. You can…
- listen (…duh!)
- take notes
- summarize
- pause, repeat
- copy the accent
- act it out
- discuss the topic with friends or classmates
- look up words in a dictionary
- translate passages the old way
- translate words and passages using Google Translate
- print out some paragraphs or the whole video transcript and then use the website at http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html to make gap-fill exercises (cut and paste, click on Interactive and fill them in as you listen
- make beautiful word clouds with Wordle
- find other speeches or clips by the same speakers or actors and make a gorgeous fan page at www.scoop.it
- The site YouSpeakIt has an interesting tool for learners: you can repeat and loop while listening to selected videos on their site. It’s a paid service.
- more…
Suggest some of your own uses on our comment page.
Let’s start!
- Jill Bolte Taylor: A stroke of insight
- Austin Powers: Tell us about your childhood
- Sidney Poitier: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
- Queen Elizabeth II: Diamond Jubilee Speech, Westminster, March 2012
- Bono: Commencement Address, Penn State
- Bill Cosby: Carnegie Mellon commencement ceremony, 2007
- Nelson Mandela: Supreme Court, Pretoria, 1964
- Severn Cullis-Suzuki: The Girl Who Silenced the World
- John F. Kennedy: We Choose to go to the Moon
- Robert G. Menzies, Declaration of War, 1939
i wish to cheer
Using this site in combination with http://wordsift.com/ is another way to learn English in an interesting / fun way.
Thanks very much for the suggestion? Any speeches you would like to see added?