Watching Documentaries

By documentaries I'm not talking about those films Michael Moore makes...

But the genre can be pretty educational since a lot of them don't have a happy ending where the hero rides off into the sunset. Just like life.

I like watching documentaries because many of them make me think about what is really true, what can I really believe?

This site has a pretty good list of documentaries you can watch for free.

http://www.tv-links.cc/documentary/index.html

To make it a complete learning experience I recommend you write a short summary of what you learned or how you react to what you have watched. Unless you do this, you're just another passive consumer. And talk to somebody about what you see. Discuss the chances that what you see resembles what the truth.

NYTimes

For me, and many other people around the world, this is the best newspaper in the world.

The good news is that recently the good people at the NYTimes website have made their entire archives (back to 1981!)freely accessible.

This is an incredible resource for everyone who appreciates good writing.

A little anecdote: I was cleaning my office today and came across an interesting newspaper clipping I had saved and written a few RC Qs about.
It was about a speech therapist in NYC who helps people get rid of their accent or acquire a new accent (like actors often have to do. He has an unusual name, Chwat, so I thought what the hell...I'll go ahead and see if I can find the article and then I'd be able to use it in a class for RC practice. Sure enough, in less than 2 seconds I had found and printed out the entire article, which, even though it was written back in 1993, is still of interest for language students.

The website is huge, but well-organized and has a lot to offer language learners.

Have a look, for example at the Learning Network.

Or for some good conversation topics, try News Snapshot.

or improve your Vocab AND Culture by doing a Crossword Puzzle.

There is much much more interesting stuff to do and read and even videos to watch and entire First Chapters of the latest bestsellers to read...

Language lessons at euronews.net

I have always liked euronews.net because you can get the same video and text in 7 different languages. Today I saw that they offer free language lessons now using one of their current videos. There's a new lesson every week.

TELL ME MORE® offers 3 languages: British English, Spanish and French.
Each lesson lasts 30 minutes and is based around a video from EuroNews in its Original Language, in a way which encourages learning.


What do you think?
Any good?