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!
- US President Lyndon B. Johnson: War on Poverty, 1964
- Ken Robinson: Changing Paradigms in Education
- John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your country…
- Michael Douglas: “Greed is Good” (‘Wall Street’, 1987)
- Robert G. Menzies, Declaration of War, 1939
- Clark Gable: ‘It Happened One Night’ 1934
- Barack Obama: Inaugural speech, January 2009
- Woody Allen: Hannah and Her Sisters
- Barack Obama: Cairo, June 2009
- Mary Schmich: Wear Sunscreen (1997)
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?