Tell @ ELI

Technology Enhanced Language Learning at the English Language Institute

Making CALL Interactive

Issue 8, Spring 2005
TELL ELI Archives

NPR News: Homework Assignments
By Irshat Madyarov

My feeling is that many ELI instructors might have some, and I suspect, quite extensive experience in using the NPR news web site. I do hope, however, the activities I developed for my classes using NPR interviews might be of some help, too.

I have used online the NPR news for homework assignments to provide students with more listening practice. Thus, all tips and strategies in the worksheets were not new to the students. Depending on the focus in class, these homework assignments aimed at predicting, listening for main ideas, details, answering true/false questions, etc. Another objective of the activities was to let students engage more in the process of learning rather than to get them to produce the final result, i.e. answers. Hence, the worksheets contain warm-up activities, review boxes, somewhat elaborate instructions, and end with reflection-type questions.

Technically, the worksheets and links to the audio files can be posted on NiceNet or on the instructor's web site.