In the first part of this article, I have given a general introduction to the experiment I carried out with the students of Pharmacy at CHARUSAT.<\/p>\n
This week, I am focusing on the vocabulary learning process I adopted with the help of BBC Learning English website<\/a> and the learning outcome at the end of the semester.<\/p>\n For any sort of learning, a base should be created and the base for language learning lies in WORDS. So I started making my students visit and refer the ‘Words in the News’ column on BBC Learning English website<\/a>. At the beginning of all the lab sessions they were supposed to open Words in the News<\/a> page on BBC Learning site.<\/p>\n The ‘Words in the News’ column features latest news stories from around the world where new words or the key words are focused to make the learning quick.<\/p>\n The following is an example of how the BBC Learning English team puts the news and highlights the word from a specific news item.<\/p>\n Much of Singapore’s growth has been\u00a0fuelled <\/strong>by investment and tourism from overseas.<\/p>\n It has positioned itself as\u00a0a high-end manufacturer<\/strong>. It makes complex\u00a0nanotechnology<\/strong>, pharmaceuticals and\u00a0biotech products<\/strong>like flu\u00a0vaccines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Exports of electronics alone were up 49% in June. But Singapore’s main trading partner remains the European Union. And, despite\u00a0austerity measures<\/strong> imposed by EU governments, exports to\u00a0the bloc surged <\/strong>75% in June.<\/p>\n That prompted Singapore’s government to raise its annual growth forecast to a record high of between 13 and 15% for the year.<\/p>\n Pauline Mason, BBC News, Singapore<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is the text of news item which has the base of audio in the form of audio news story.<\/p>\n We had integrated these kind of news stories in our everyday curriculum, where the students used to listen and read the news stories and then follow the following steps:<\/p>\n 1. Forming questions based on news stories.<\/p>\n 2. Forming sentences using the newly learnt words from the news story.<\/p>\n 3. Creating students’ own version of the same news, keeping the newly learnt words in.<\/p>\n The students found it quite interesting and challenging to be gaining general knowledge, learning new words and practicing a language.<\/p>\n Having involved the students in the above mentioned process for almost 4 months, the results were as below:<\/p>\n The students who were able to write 15-20 words per minute at the beginning of the session were able to produce 35+ words per minute at the end of the training.<\/p>\n They became more fluent at oral expressions as compared to the beginning of the session.<\/p>\n And the last but the most important impact was – they started putting efforts on their own to learn new words by referring the BBC news site, on their own.<\/p>\n That’s it I could share in this piece.<\/p>\n Next week, I will bring in one more aspect of using the BBC Learning English website<\/a> contents.<\/p>\n
\nAnd visitors from wealthy neighbours China and Indonesia haveflocked<\/strong> to its two new\u00a0casino resorts<\/strong>, which opened in April.<\/p>\n