Yappr.com - Improve Your English Watching Videos

In this online resource you’ll be able to see videos in English sorted into different categories: recent, most popular, highest-rated, business, celebrities, sports, films and others. The videos have subtitles but they are not shown in the same way as “Yolango”; they are shown in a text box on the right of the video. Personally I prefer the option in “Yolango” because it allows you to see the video easily.

However, Yappr had the great idea of showing English subtitles in a text box, and also other subtitles translated into your own language. Moreover, it is possible to listen to the video at a slower pace, which is ideal for those words or sentences that are harder to understand.

Also the web page has a well-developed social aspect to it, which allows you to become friends with other Yappr members and you can actually see what they are doing. The Yappr community is very attractive and offers:

• The possibility of joining a live chat for talking to other people (and thus practice written English).
• A forum where we can raise doubts, opinions and other issue that we’d like to comment on.
• The opportunity to look for other members.
• "What's yappening?", a play on words from "What's happening?" in order to see what’s going on in the Yappr community.

A very interesting web page to improve listening, practise English and have fun!

Visit Yappr.com

Babbel - Excellent Social Network to Improve Your Vocabulary

Tired of not progressing with your vocabulary? Well, don’t worry because this time we present you a web page that’s really useful in this regard: Babbel. This resource allows you to learn new words in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

The operation is simple; we can choose different modules that contain words and sentences about a topic or specific situation. For English, we can choose from 62 modules.

For example, if we select the module related to the current Eurocup football championship, we can learn new words such as: “to be offside”, “to be on the bench”, “fan block”, etc. For each of these sentences we can see a descriptive image, listen to the pronunciation and find the translation in our own language. After learning these words, we can click on the “Play” icon that appears on the right and carry out different tasks that will test our knowledge on the newly-learnt vocabulary.

Another interesting feature is “My Vocabulary” where new words and sentences that we’ve already learnt are stored. So as not to forget our new vocabulary we can use this source for revision from time to time.

Increase your vocabulary!

Visit Babbel.com

Learn American English Online

I would like to share this Web page with you, as it has pleasantly surprised me. Despite its slightly unattractive appearance, it contains really interesting resources for practising English.

There are five different levels of incremental difficulty; these are:

• Blue (basic): the verb ‘to be’, nouns, pronouns, ‘this’, ‘that’ and the present tense…
• Red (basic+): ‘do’, ‘much/many’, ‘little/few,’ ‘like’, ‘gerunds’…
• Yellow (intermediate): questions with ‘did’, present perfect tense, modal verbs....
• Green (intermediate+): the passive voice, (be) supposed to...
• Orange (advanced): adjective clauses, the future conditional, so/too ...

There is a big variety of lessons for each level (as in the examples listed above). In each lesson you will find an explanation, some examples of use (with images) and many exercises to practise.

The lessons are interesting, although they don’t provide for innovation … And what about the video lessons, you ask me? Well, they are like a particular teacher that explains everything to you… great! To date the author has 62 videos in his YouTube profile.

This web page also offers vocabulary about different topics and even some tips on how to get US nationality.

Go on, go and have a look!

Visit Learn American English Online

VOA News - Special English

Voice of America is an excellent web page that offers very valuable material for learning American English and much more besides. If with "BBC Learning English" we can practice British English, with "VOA Special English" we can listen to very interesting podcasts spoken with an American accent.

From my experience, I would say that the American accent is much easier that the British, the Irish or the Australian one. That’s why it’s a good idea to listen to different accents, including American ones, to help improve our aural skills.

Why is this resource so attractive?

1. The podcasts (and complete transcripts associated) have a main vocabulary of about 1500 words, resulting in language that is easier to understand.
2. The editors use short and simple sentences that contain one main idea. They use active voice and no idioms.
3. The podcasts are read at a slower pace. In this way each word is pronounced more clearly and is easier to understand.

What else can we find?

• Podcasts with complete transcripts sorted by a topic or a program. The podcasts can be downloaded, or listen online.
• Dictionary containing the 1500 words most frequently used.
• Games and videos.

What else can I tell you? I hope that you find this resource as attractive as I do.

Visit VOA News - Special English

TED - Excellent Online Talks

TED? What is “TED”? We have to admit that the name of this web resource is not very informative. However, it consists of a web page with hundreds of videos in English about very interesting topics: Technology, Entertainment, Design, Business, Science, Culture, Arts … . Moreover, the videos are speeches or lectures given by very important people: Al Gore, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google creators) and a very large et al.

It is not a kind of web page like “Yolango”, focused on English learning (subtitled videos, transcripts, related activities …). But the truth is that the videos are extremely interesting, it being possible to download them (in MP4 format) so we can see them through in any compatible device (in my case I use the PSP or the iPod).

Go on, go and have a look!

Visit TED.com