Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 61

LINGOHACK
There is one more thing I discovered on the BBC website: the Lingohack
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/lingohack/ep-170426. The students
listen to and watch weekly authentic BBC World news bulletins and learn key words that
help them make sense of the news.
The video is followed by exercises and then the answers are offered at the end.
Use one of the words or phrases from Lingohack to complete each of these sentences.
Note that you may have to change the form of a word or phrase to com plete the sentence
correctly.
solar power / remarkable / sanctuary
1. My niece is a ______ student – she is only 15 but has won a place in a very famous
university.
2. The first elephant ______ in Latin America has opened in Brazil to provide a home for
an estimated 50 circus animals from across the region.
3. As gas and renewable energy sources such as wind and ______ have become more
popular, the use of coal has decreased.
These activities are extremely valuable as they are up-to-date, they focus on three-
four new words, and they can be done in class or individually at home.
Obviously, we should also insist on the students’ ability to analyse the issues
presented in the material. They are fascinated by such activities and I have discovered
that they are much more interested in the topic if they discuss a real situation.
Most of my students come from rural areas and they obviously become much
more interested if they can relate to the characters and the problems discussed in
the lesson. A beautiful example is a lesson I organized starting from the site Error!
Hyperlink reference not valid.. I chose the topic of agriculture, environmentally friendly
approaches to agriculture, healthy crops and a success story of a sugar cane farmer. They
loved the story and the character even if he was not a native English speaker and it was
sometimes difficult for them to follow him.
Dealing with topics closely connected to the domain the students specialise
in is another amazing way of motivating the students. My students prepare to become
workers or technicians in the food industry. Therefore, I sometimes offered them the
opportunity to do some research work, organise their material in English and talk about
food, ingredients, food processing, food specialists, famous chefs and delicious recipes.
They got deeply involved in these projects and the results were great. Also, they enriched
their vocabulary and improved their communication skills. Meanwhile they had lots of fun.
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