British Council offers free online resources for learners, parents and teachers. LearnEnglish Kids is a website for children who are learning English. They have done everything to make this page available to use for everyone regardless of which browser you use. It has got free online games, songs, stories and activities. You do not need to become a member but if you do, you have more things to use. If you want to sign up, it costs nothing. But you can create yourself a character and participate in various competitions, answer questions and do some comments in forums. You may also be able to do tasks based on your own interests. Parents and teachers can also register as a user. Parents can participate in forums which may mean that you ask each other for advice and share ideas. This page consists of five main themes, games, listen and read, read and write, make and explore.
Games: Here you will learn English by playing different games.
Listen and watch: Here you can listen to songs and sing along. You can also listen to short stories. You learn interesting things from children’s talking. You can listen to the news clips of children and practice pronunciation through tongue twisters.
Read and write: In this part you can read and write. You may, for example, practice word of the week by watching and listening to other children who speak.
Make: In this theme, you'll learn to do things in English.
Explore: Here you watch the videos of how other children learn English. There are also links to other sites where you can learn English.
How the resource can be used by pupil.
Students learn a new language through various activities such as playing games, listening to songs and stories. Students will be able to communicate in English. It learns English by means of play. They have the opportunity to hear the language from native speakers. By playing games, they can hear English while they are having fun. There is an opportunity to learn from their learning style. They are free to adapt the exercises according to their needs.
How the resource can be used by teachers.
As a teacher, I can take advantage of various resources such as links to games, songs and stories. I can also print out worksheets and flashcards that I can use in teaching.
I can give instruction to the pupils that will allow them to use the website. If the pupils are going to learn about animals, I choose animals as a topic. Then I choose what skills they will use, for example, listen and watch. Then I choose activities so these skills can be trained such as fun games, shorts stories and songs. I can give the pupils homework to do on the side.
You need the latest version of Adobe Flash Player on your computer. It can be downloaded for free on this page: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
I've chosen to critically analyze the blog about the British Council's website LearnEnglish Kids.
ReplyDeleteExamination of the text: Overview of the content in the blog post
The author of this blog post describes the British Council's website LearnEnglish Kids, a site which offers free resourses for children learning english as a foreign or second language. The website contains many functions and a great amount of material for kids, teachers and parents. The reader gets an good overview by reading this blog post.
The author begins by making a summary of what the website is, what it offers and who it's for. The reader also gets some information about technical requirements. We learn that the site can be used regardless of which browser you use and that the latest version of Flash Player needs to be installed on your compurer. We also learn about the benefits of becoming a member on the site.
The author descibes five main themes on the site: ”games”, ”listen and watch”, ”read and write”, ”make” and finally ”explore”. The main themes are briefly descibed.
The author then continues by describing some ways students and teachers can use the website. We learn that students can use the website to learn english by listening, communicating and playing games. The author emphasizes the benefit of learning in a playful way and by being able to choose exercises which fits individual needs. The author shows how the website can be used by describing an example where the students learn about animals.
Finally we get some hands on tips.
The disposition and language in the blog post makes it easy to read and comprehend.
LearnEnglish Kids is a website with a lot of functions and material. I think the text works well as a brief overview of what LearnEnglish Kids has to offer, and what the benefits are. As a teacher I get a good idea of the main content of the website, and how it may be used by students, parents and teachers.
I believe the website can be used the way the author describes. When describing a website with so many functions, I think the author makes a wise decision showing the ”animal” theme exemple, which gives the reader an idea of how the website can be used.
Is anything missing in this Blog post?
Overall I think the blog focuses on the benefits of the functions and material available on the website. However I miss a more critical perspective. I would also be interested to know more about what pedagogical ideas this webpage reflects. What considerations would I as a teacher have to make before deciding to use LearnEnglish Kids? Are there only advantages, or may there also be disadvantages, weaknesses or risks? When I was in primary school computers were rare in the classrooms. Teachers were thrilled about the new tequniqe, and my impression is that language learning software were considered a miracle method. However, the exersises used were based on behavioristic idéas and relied heavily on drilling. Today we have a curriculum which reflects the ideas of Communicative Language Teaching. My experience is that many language learning games on the Internet often still rely on old behaviouristic ideas. What is the case of the games available on LearnEnglish Kids? I have studied some of the games available, and many of them are based on the stimulus-response model of learning (for example the ”Human body” game). I think it's important that the teacher makes deliberate choices of what material to use and keeps a critical eye on these kind of exercises. It's easy to be misled by an attractive package.
I also wonder if there are any other disadvantages. Are there any games, worksheets or movies that don't work very well? What problems may my students encounter using LearnEnglish Kids? For example, when I browsed the website, I found that the movies are very short and sometimes peculiarly cut, which sometimes makes it hard, even for me as an adult, to hear what the kids in the movies are actually saying.
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There are a few things I think would make an introduction of LearnEnglish Kids more complete: The author mentions that parents register and participate in forum discussions. One might also mention that parents can also download learning resourses, watch video tips and download articles about english learning.
ReplyDeleteWhen describing the ”games” theme, the author mentions the student can learn english by playing different games. Here, as well when describing the ”make” theme, I would have liked some examples of games available and things to do.
The ”explore” section gives an introduction of what LearnEnglish Kids is, where you can find things on the website and what's new. This might be worth mentioning, since a new visitor might find it difficult to get a grip of a website as big as this.
Under ”how the resources can be used by pupils” the author mentions how LearnEnglish Kids enables the students to communicate in english. By reading this blog, I get the impression that most of the activities provided do not encourage a lot of communication. Listening to stories and songs, writing, answering questions on worksheets, playing games and watching videos etc. seem to be the main content. The opportunity to make comments and participate in competitions are mentioned, but since Lgr 11 focuses on communication, I'm interested to know more about the communicative possibilities of the website. For instance, the polls do encourage comunication on different topics.
By: Malin Ljungström