FunEasyEnglish.com is a web site where you can, efficiently, learn English for free. The site was created by an American teacher called Howie Hayman. The teacher claims that if one follows the lessons correctly, one by one, one is likely to have learned the basics of the English language by the end of one year of education.
A great part of the content on Fun Easy English is appropriate for any person who wants to learn English (even for adult learners) but there are also many lessons which would be good for children around the age of 10 (in Årskurs 9) when the students have to prepare for Nationella Provet. On the website students can read texts and answer questions as well as watch videos made by a native speaker of American English, which can be a very good exercise for training their comprehension skills.
Another interesting resource which can be found in Fun Easy English is specially designed for teachers; it is a page where the author of the site presents some websites that can be very useful for teachers who are well trained primary teachers but not so well trained language teachers. These websites offer information about educational courses, discussions forums for some teaching advice, several ideas for planning lessons, as well as help with creating work sheets and activities for young learners.
Fun Easy English is a very user-friendly website and the students don’t have to pay anything to use the resources offered by the site. The only necessary thing to ensure it works well is to have a good internet connection, which is nothing difficult today and, of course, to have basic knowledge about how to use a computer.
Since Fun Easy English contains a lot of information also for adult learners, the exercises to be used in Årskurs 9 need to be handpicked from the website by the teacher. Here is an example of what reading exercises students can do in preparation for Nationella Provet årskurs 9 (this is a reading exercise, which I believe, is more or less that level):
I find your contribution to this blog interesting! I think that it is good to use free websites if they have exercises that fit the learning situation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first entered the website I thought that it was a bit difficult to know what to do with it. When I got more familiar with the website I found a couple of good exercises. But I think that the exercises are appropriate for learners around the age of 15 and older since some of the content handles subjects as alcohol and weight-loss.
There are a couple of good exercises that I agree with you could prepare students for national tests in year 9. But as you say the exercises must be handpicked since there is a lot of information and exercises on the website. This could be a disadvantage because teachers do not have much time to prepare lessons and browse through many activities.
After a while looking around on the website I found the page designed for teachers. It is a good idea to gather websites on one page. But I find it quite hard to find anything that I find interesting and useful for me. Maybe there are many good links there but for me it is important that it is easy to find information quickly.
There are also some games to play on the website. But they are in my opinion not so well done. I tried a few games but found nothing that I consider to use with my pupils. Some had good content but were too "small", after playing one time the pupils will know what the answer is. A game called "spelling bee" seemed fun so I tried it. A voice said a word that I would spell. I was disappointed when I found it hard to hear what the voice said.
I am a bit disappointed with the website but as you said there are some good exercises there, it is just to find them.
I think that you have done a good job to describe this ICT-resource.
/Helena