LearnEnglish Teens - British Council

 AS A TOOL FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

You can visit the site here!

LearnEnglish Teens - British council is an amazing website to practice English language skills because it provides learners with different amusing readings for each level, writing activities and listening exercises so students can improve in almost every aspect of their language. Moreover,  this website provides tests to evaluate in which level of English you are and also, you can interact with people from all over the world. The approach of this website is mainly task based, there are several activities that can be translated into the real world such as roleplaying and day to day conversations.

Using it to foster language learning 

Reading is a skill that has been challenged in recent days due to the fact that nowadays the youth is attracted to the media in more visual ways, such as videos and memes. While the presence of reading is unavoidable, the language presented is not challenging nor improves the reading skill level of the student. For this matter, reading has to be adapted to the proclivities of students to convey true learning and be appealing. Thus, as a way to resolve this matter, different applications and web platforms have been created in order to keep up to date with the current time. One of these is the platform of the British Council, in which different activities related to reading can be found. These activities foster language learning and the development of reading skill through the variety of topics it offers that can be appealing to the different students we might be teaching.

Furthermore, it offers students the chance to deal with readings suitable for their English level since they are classified into A (1st- Basic), B (2nd- Intermediate), and C (3rd- Advanced) level; thanks to these, reading skills can be enhanced while at the same time be challenging and not too overwhelming for students. Finally, when the text and English level are already chosen, different activities are going to be provided to verify the students´ comprehension of the text. At the same time, it gives them the opportunity to decide which type of activity they feel more comfortable with.

Limitiations when using this technology with the purposes of language learning 

Despite providing a great source of information regarding reading comprehension as well as adjusting the vocabulary level for different English learners, there are some drawbacks when it comes to choosing these types of readings into the classroom.

First of all, students normally seek things that would interest them and catch their attention. Because British Council readings provide narrow topics such as “Travel Guide'', it can sometimes be difficult as a teacher to decide which of these readings would suit a lesson due to its very narrow content, which can create a sense of boredom in students if the readings are not interesting enough. 

The other drawback, also connected to the previous idea, is that authentic materials are the best option for teachers because they can relate what is being taught and students’ cultural backgrounds. However, this is not always the case with LearnEnglishTeens because of the universal content they have. Incorporating readings such as traveling in both rural and low socioeconomic schools can create a false sense of hope for students due to their status in society. Though we’re not saying that they will never have the chance to travel, but to be meticulous about what type of content would be more appropriate for these types of students.

A possible solution would be to select some reading materials that could possibly motivate students and modify them in a way to match the content with students’ backgrounds and interests.

In order to close this entry, we would like to provide you with a tutorial video on how to use LearnEnglish Teens website

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