Kanopy – Thousands of Free Movies

Posted on August 13, 2018 by faeslcommunity

This is a new service from the Framingham Library. You can watch up to 5 free movies each month – at home, or on your phone with the Kanopy App.

Classic movies, international movies, educational movies (including learning English), and lots of movies for kids too. All you need is a Framingham library card. If you don’t live in Framingham, you can check here if your library also has this service. Or – you can check to see at your own library if they have Kanopy, or other services with movies, such as Hoopla or Overdrive.

YouGlish – Listen to “Real” Pronunciation

Posted on July 24, 2018 by faeslcommunity

Are there words – or groups of words – that are are especially difficult for you to pronounce, or understand, in English? “uncomfortable”; “sixth”; “how much does this cost”; “what are you going to do”?

On YouGlish.com you can type in those words, and then listen to how they are said – as part of conversation – by many different people in YouTube videos. Try it below. (Press the button to go to the next video.)

YouTube – Finding English Grammar Lessons

Posted on July 23, 2018 by faeslcommunity

There are SO many videos on YouTube that can help you improve your English grammar (and much more!). Search for a video lesson about anything you want to study. You can start by searching for: beginner English grammar.

You will see many choices for videos. Which one should you watch?

Look at:

How much time the video takes – 5 minutes? 30 minutes? 2 hours?
How many people watched (viewed) the video
(1.3M = 1.3 Million = 1,300,000)
(14K = 14 Thousand = 14,000)
When was the video put on YouTube – 2 weeks ago? 8 years ago?

If you have a problem with something specific, watch some lessons on that. On YouTube, search for English past tense (or ESL past tense); or ESL verb to be; or ESL auxiliary verbs; or quoted and reported speech (direct and indirect speech).

When you find a video you like, you can look for more videos by the same people. Many people have a “channel” – a group of their videos – that you can go to on YouTube. Examples of some good YouTube channels for English learners are: Jennifer ESL, EngVid, and Rachel’s English.

Numbers!

Posted on July 8, 2018 by faeslcommunity

EnglishNumber.com is a very good little website to help you learn and practice… English numbers!

Small numbers, large numbers, and numbers of all kinds – such as the name of years (2018), months, dates, fractions, math equations, decimals, and percentages.

There are listening exercises where you can see if you understand the numbers correctly.

This works best on your computer, but it mostly works on your phone/tablet.

Let’s Play a Kahoot

Posted on June 22, 2018 by faeslcommunity

Kahoot is a free app where you try to answer questions about many topics, including English, in a game-style way. You get points for answering a question correctly – and quickly. Let’s try a 5-minute Kahoot especially for beginners on this blog:

Install the free Kahoot app on your iPhone or iPad, or on your Android phone or tablet
From your phone/tablet, press on the picture below, or this link
When you press, it should open the Kahoot app and start the game

You can also open the Kahoot app, press “Enter PIN” and enter this number: 0764667
Good Luck!

Soon there will be more articles about how to use the Kahoot app to test, and improve your English.

Tiny Little Crosswords

Posted on June 8, 2018 by faeslcommunity

Tiny Little Crosswords is a free app for iPhones and iPads. Each puzzle is small – only a few words – so you can finish a puzzle quickly. Some are easy, and some are more difficult. They now give you one free puzzle every day – another good way to improve your vocabulary! Here are a few examples: