Breaking News English: The perfect website to find lesson plans based on up-to-date news.

What is Breaking News English?

Breaking News English is a free website in which teachers can find different current pieces of news adapted for EFL/ESL teaching. It provides a wide variety of downloadable or ready-to-print PDF lesson plans with many activities based on themes (topics), and it states the level of difficulty of them. Every lesson plan is organised according to every stage of a lesson, for instance, warm ups, before, during and after listening or reading activities. This website also supplies an mp3 version and transcript of every news, both materials  facilitate the creation of diverse activities using just one recording. 

You can find Breaking News English in the following link:

breakingnewsenglish.com

 
How to use Breaking News English? How might you use it in class?

First, in the left side of the website you will find a list of different current affairs. Choose one of them by clicking in the title of the news.

Second, the text (http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1301/130128-perfume_for_babies.html)  that you have chosen will display as follows:

As you can see, this text has 40 activities which you can choose and you are free to decide which of them you would like to use. The activities are classified in different columns, for listening, reading, grammar, spelling, and words (vocabulary). You can choose, for example, 'Read' and here choose the activity 'sentence jumble':

'Sentence jumble' is very useful activity for developing reading skills. It requires to reconstruct the text and make it coherent and cohesive at the same time. For example, students after listening to or reading the news, they are asked to construct the text again by making sense of the different sentences; they have to 'collocate information' encouraging the use of careful reading as a subskill because they may be combining information from different parts. Students also have to be aware of the use of grammar rules in English which would help them to develop the activity, for instance, after a subject a verb is required, or after an article 'a' a noun is the following word. This activity also fosters the awareness of orthography, because after a full stop the next word will always start with a capital letter.

It favors interactivity because the flow of the activity is easy and fast. For instance, after the students choose the first alternative, the next item will display authomatically.

 

What is the relevance of Breaking News English to language learning?

• Breaking News English provides an interesting and engaging way to incorporate the four skills integratively in the classroom.

• It is a useful website for teachers who do not have enough time to create their own lesson plans.

• Teachers can foster critical thinking by asking students to discuss  and give their opinions about current issues, and news articles.

• It promotes the communicative approach of learning because students can work the different activities in pairs collaboratively.

• Students can increase their vocabulary, because it gives the opportunity to recall words more easily due to the number of activities they can work on, with just one text.

What limitations can you see with the use of Breaking News English? 

• The website is not neat. There is too much information, and people can easily be distracted by different levels of communication.

• It also looks old fashion, and teachers may not feel attracted to use it because at first sight, it does not reflect the real usefulness of it.