English Central: YouTube for English Teaching!
Kids as well as adults love videos and they make excellent language teaching tools. The only problem is that many of the videos on YouTube are too difficult, especially for beginners. However, there is a good option! English Central. You can search by level and find just about anything you could possibly want. Keep reading for how I use English Central in my own ESL classes in South Korea.
A Listening and Speaking Activity
Skills: Listening/ Speaking
Time: 10-15 minutes
Level: Beginner to Advanced
Materials Required: Internet connection
English Central is YouTube for language learners. There is premium content and functionality, but you can enjoy many features for free. YouTube has subtitles on some videos, but English Central takes it to the next level. The videos have been curated and organized by level, topic, and/ or language skill and each video is segmented for easy replay of a chunk of speech. Students can also click on a single word to hear it pronounced slowly and clearly.
One activity you can use English Central for is pronunciation. Have your student listen to a clip and repeat. The videos for young learners are fairly simple, with slow, and clear speech. You can pause after each phrase or sentence and repeat as needed.
Begin by playing the entire clip once or twice. Then, replay the clip bit by bit for the student to repeat. Each clip is a short story, so you can also watch and discuss and/or summarize a clip as a 120-90-60 fluency activity.
Procedure for Using English Central:
- Make sure you will have an internet connection.
- Select a video in advance or let your student choose one. There are “courses” which are sets of related videos, which you can work through in a series.
- Play the entire clip once or twice.
- Play one segment (sentence or phrase) at a time and have the student repeat, trying to copy the pronunciation.
- End by watching the entire clip one more time and discussing and/ or summarizing.
Like this ESL Speaking and Listening Activity?
It’s from the book, 39 Awesome 1-1 ESL Activities: For Kids (7-13). There are 38 more fun, engaging and interesting ESL activities for private classes with kids. It’ll make the Moms happy and your lesson planning easy, guaranteed. And of course, happy moms = more money in your pocket at the end of the month
You can get the book in both digital and print formats on Amazon:
—>Buy 39 Awesome 1-1 ESL Activities: For Kids (7-13) on Amazon<—
