Mixed skills practice
You can improve your reading by listening - and improve your
listening by reading. You can build up your vocabulary and
improve your pronunciation at the same time. How?
Do you find it's often hard to understand the news on
TV?
You can understand much more this way:
- Choose which news you will watch (e.g. BBC
News at 10pm or 6pm or Channel 4 at 7pm).
- First, go to the same company's news
website (in this case, the BBC's).
- Look at the main stories. Decide
which ones interest you.
- Use the website to learn about them.
- Check the meaning of unknown words if they
seem to be very important (if you see the same word many
times)
- Watch the video report. Listen two or
three times to difficult parts (if you are interested).
- Watch the news programme on TV. You
will understand more!
Of course, you can do step 7 before Steps 2-6.
Materials
- You can do something similar with graded readers (read and
listen to the whole book). These are special study books we
keep in the Language Support Centre (Holgate 137). You can
borrow them. You can read first, then listen; or listen
first, then read; or do both at the same time.
- Channel 4 TV also has a good news service. Their main TV
news is at 7pm and you can click here to see their news
website.
Written by Charlie Martineau