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Material:
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Rating:
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Classroom Use:
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Not used in classroom
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Submitted by:
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Josh Overcast (Faculty), Feb 11, 2009
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Comment:
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The sheer variety of exercises and activities given with each lesson of Breaking News English makes for an enormously useful resource for ESL/EFL instructors. As with a textbook, the site provides a consistent structure and guide for the classroom--those instructors with heavy teaching loads will find the suggested ready-made tasks of great benefit in saving time while preserving quality. In Breaking News English, activity and exercise types--cloze, gap fill, true/false, etc.--are repeated from one reading to the next, which with some exposure allows learners to focus less on the instructions for each task and more on content, new and unfamiliar vocabulary, new grammar structures, etc. The news articles are updated on a very frequent basis, and the content of the articles more often than not seems engaging for learners, especially in an EFL environment.
To comment on the peer review of Breaking News English, I must say that I disagree with the concern as to poor layout of the site. While the site may not be instantly attractive to learners, instructors with an eye for well-designed lessons and exercises will find what they are looking for without difficulty.
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Time spent reviewing site:
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Several hours (over the course of approximately one year).
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