Self-Study Ideas · 20. July 2017
Whether it’s a short time or a long time, living in a foreign country can be an amazing experience. But it can be even better if you take a few steps to make sure that you get the most out of it.
Self-Study Ideas · 06. January 2017
Did you know that the UK has more accents than any other country (for its area)? Even within a large city, local people can often recognise which neighbourhood someone comes from by their accent. People’s accents are often different according to their social class or level of education, as well as the region they are from. Most of the British accents heard in films and on television are RP (received pronunciation) which is the accent of middle-class, well-educated people from the south of...
Self-Study Ideas · 29. November 2016
Here are two model texts that you can use for back translation (improving your writing without a teacher - see the post here). The first one is suitable for elementary - pre-intermediate students, while the second is suitable for intermediate - upper-intermediate students.
Self-Study Ideas · 22. September 2016
If you want to improve your writing, it’s often important to have a teacher look at your work and tell you how to improve it. They can point out your mistakes much better than you can, and they will notice sentences that sound strange in English even if they sound fine to you. However, you can still practise writing on your own, using a method called back translation.
Self-Study Ideas · 04. August 2016
"Five Minutes With ..." is a series of short interviews created by the BBC with a huge range of interesting people. Each interview is exactly five minutes long, and usually involves lots of short questions and answers. Click here to see the list of interviews on the BBC website.
Self-Study Ideas · 08. July 2016
Quizlet is a website that allows people to create and share “sets” of vocabulary. Each set is a group of words, with translations or definitions. You can look through them, or do various activities to test how well you know them. If you want to create your own sets, or share sets with other people, you’ll need to log in. You can do this with just an email address and password, or using Google or Facebook. Different things to do on Quizlet: - Search for a topic that you’d like to study,...
Self-Study Ideas · 12. June 2016
TED is an organisation that encourages people to share their ideas in short talks. There's a huge library of videos these talks on the TED website, and you can choose talks according to topic area, language, and length. They're a great way to improve your listening - and therefore your speaking, too. Below are some suggestions of ways to use TED talks in self-study. You don't have to do all the exercises for each talk - just choose one to start with.