Listening / Reading Comprehension: Oprah's Show to End

Reading & listening comprehension for today:  Oprah's show to end.

This article really does represent the end of an era.  Oprah absolutely changed and dominated daytime television in America and around the world.

As usual, you have choices of both audio file and text.  You can also find a collection of useful vocabulary definitions at the bottom of the page.

Long live the BBC!

BBC's The Reading Group

Here's an interesting page on the BBC's website: the Reading Group.

The page brings together students & teachers, as they share their love of reading.

There's some text for you to read, and an audio file to practice your listening comprehension.


Reading is a great way to learn English.  It's a fantastic way to sharpen your grammar and learn new, interesting vocabulary.

However if you don't enjoy reading in your own language, don't do it in English.  You'll find it far too frustrating.  You can learn a lot of English by watching TV & movies etc.

Remember, the most important thing is that you enjoy your learning experience!

Crossword Puzzle: Movies, Hollywood & Bollywood

Start the week with a crossword puzzle about Movies, Hollywood & Bollywood.

Instructions are at the top of the page, in the scroll down menu.   You have to click on each number for a clue to that word.  Then fill in the spaces with the word you think fits best.

The quiz is quite hard.  I had to check the Words in the News link for numbers 1 & 9.  Number 1 is a particularly obscure word!  (that is my excuse, anyway)

Listening / Reading Comprehension: Monty Python in US Election Row

Monty Python?  In a US Election row?  It must a listening / reading comprehension from the BBC.

Once again you can work through this exercise in different ways: you could try just listening first; then try only reading, and finally listening and reading. 

Perhaps read it first and then listen to it; see if you can pick out the things you read, when you listen to it.

The exercise also comes with a useful list of vocabulary definitions at the bottom of the page.

BBC's Country Profile of Luxembourg

Practice your English by reading about Luxembourg: the BBC's country profile of Luxembourg.

It's a good idea to read about things you know, when practicing your English.  It'll help to make the English more tangible for you, and more applicable to your life. 

This will help you remember the English.

Listening / Reading Comprehension: Social Notworking

Let's kick the actual blogging off with a link from the excellent BBC World Service site: Social Notworking.

There are a number of different ways you can approach this exercise:  you could try listening to the audio without looking at the text.  You could read the text without listening to the audio.  You could then try doing both at the same time.

It's also very useful to read as you listen and just concentrate on the pronunciation of the different words.  The connection between English spelling and pronunciation can be very confusing, even for native speakers!

Finally, don't worry if you don't understand every single word.  You can, of course, go through the whole article with a dictionary, if you want to.  But the most important thing is to understand the article in general: small steps every day are better than large steps once a week.