Breaking News English

I'll come back and add some details later, but here's a bunch of free listening activities around news items.

Level 8: About plagiarism

A number of files relating to the idea of plagiarism:

• From iTunes U, a 14 minutes interview. (item 11, date 4/15/08) with transcript.
• CBC ideas: In praise of plagiarism.
• Grammar Girl's podcast (episode 252)

This talk is mostly for faculty, but some students might get something out of it.

Although it's not audio and not appropriate for EAP students, I can't resist mentioning this essay.

Level 8 TED talks for independent listening

There are so many great TED talks, but here are some excellent ones that seem particularly relevant to our students' interests:

Level 8 TED talks

The following TED talks have been used, mostly with great success, in level eight.

The paradox of choice materials

One of the TED talks I've been using quite successfully in level 8 is "The paradox of choice" by Barry Schwartz. I've prepared some materials to go with this.

Canadian society

Here are a few ideas for the level 8 sociology course:

International business (level 5)

Here's some material on international business, especially business culture in Japan.

Hospitals and health

For level 3, Here are two Voice of America stories about infections in hospitals, about 4 minutes each. These are public domain files, so you can do anything you want with them. These are in special English.

Level 1: New to school

There was a observation that sometimes the level 1 students enter the EAP program with very little English, so it would be beneficial to have some easier listenings for them to start with before we dive into the textbook. Listening that are just 2 - 5 minutes, using basic, common words, and ideally in an 'Education/College' or 'Making Introductions/Meeting Friends' theme.

Level 7 debate materials

These files are useful for level seven students preparing for their debates:

Presentation skills

Here are a number of YouTube videos related to giving good presentations. They're listed roughly in order of difficulty.

Career-related interviews

These are, as of this posting, 112 straightforward job-related interviews.

What is EAP audio

This is a collection of audio files for teachers and students in Humber College's English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program. Files will often be listed as being suitable for particular levels. We have an eight-level program with students entering level 1 being at a very low level of proficiency (roughly Canadian Language Benchmarks level 2 or Common European Framework level A1) and students graduating from level 8 at a level that would allow them to function well in college  (roughly CLB level 9 or CEF  level B2).

We hope that the files listed here will be of use to other language teachers and learners.