Todays news in your classroom - Rapid Authentic Text Lessons using Technology Using authentic texts in the classroom is widely accepted as best practice. However, there are a number of challenges associated with the sourcing and annotation of authentic texts, not least that it is a time consuming and labor intensive activity. Two of the key tasks for an educator preparing an authentic text are: (1) sourcing a text at an appropriate level of difficulty for use with ESL students, and (2) annotating the key learning points in the text. This practice based presentation will focus on innovative ways of sourcing authentic texts on the internet and creative ways of annotating authentic texts for use in the classroom. In this session we will show educators how to create lesson plans using authentic texts in less than 10mins.

1. Todays news in your classroom -
Rapid Authentic Text Lessons
using Technology
Ian Butler
… save time and motivate
learners

2. Authentic Text
How oftendo you use it?
What do you use?
How longdoes it take?
What are the challenges?

3. What are the challenges?
• Finding a language focus within the
materials
• Finding materials at the right level
• Deciding what is relevant interesting &
to students
• Fitting the materials with the syllabus
• Preparation time involved
• Temporary nature of web materials
• Keeping web based materials organised
for students to revise

4. Challenges&benefits
Student comments
Video Clip
( Cannot be shared due to copyright restrictions )
See “Dress to Kill” by Eddie Izzard”

5. What are thebenefits?
• Motivational for students
• Real context
• Style diversity
• Cultural exposure
• Intrinsic educational value
• Current language
• Helps develop students’ digital literacies

6. How can web tools help?
Find It Analyze It Create It

7. Find it tools
Findit

8. Find it tools
- Search Engines -

13. Find it tools
- Aggregators & Curators -

15. Search Multiple Sources
Storify
http://storify.com

17. Analyse it tools
Analyse it

18. Analyse it tools
- Term Extractors, Word list Generators -

22. Analyse it tools
- Concordance generators -
CasualConc

26. Analyse it tools
- POS Taggers / parsers -
FreeLing 3.0

30. Create it tools
Create it

31. Create it tools
- Gap/Cloze Generators -
http://l.georges.online.fr
http://martineau.tv/cloze/

35. Create it tools
- Crossword Generators -
http://www.puzzle-
maker.com/CW/

37. Integrated tools
Find It Analyze It Create It

38. In 10 Mins ?
• Business Spotlight International
• Guardian Weekly
• Breaking English News
• Simple English News
• News for you online

39. LingleOnline
http://www.lingleonline.com

40. Resources
http://www.wordle.net http://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW/
http://labs.translated.net/terminology-extraction/ http://www.newsforyouonline.com
http://lexically.net/wordsmith http://www.simpleenglishnews.com
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ http://business-spotlight.com
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekly
http://www.lextutor.ca/
http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html http://www.lingleonline.com
http://www.sketchengine.co.uk See also http://www.youtube.com/lingleonline.com
http://storify.com for some short training videos on how to use
Lingle
http://hyperpo.org
http://scoop.it
https://sites.google.com/site/casualconc/web-
concordancer
http://fivefilters.org/term-extraction/
http://maui-indexer.appspot.com/mauiapp
http://www.alchemyapi.com/api/keyword/