Interesting Facts In Easy English

We Have Good News!

Following the news is a good way to practise English. Many English learners read, listen to, or watch the news in order to learn new vocabulary and practise reading and listening skills. Having a little background information about the news in one’s own native language is very helpful when it comes to understanding the news in a foreign language.

While it’s great to stay informed, too much news can be depressing! The news is full of tragedies, disasters, and conflict. Staying connected to the world can even become addictive if you aren’t careful. A teacher who uses EnglishClub.com’s Weekly News in her classroom recently expressed concerns about the “negative news” on our podcast. She  enjoys using the resource with her students, but asked if we would consider including more “positive” or at least “neutral” news in our feed. EnglishClub’s team discussed this feedback, and looked at the recent topics that had been covered. While there seemed to be a balance of world news, including stories on sports, entertainment, health and the environment, we agreed that the majority of the  “headline news” was negative. In addition to thanking this teacher for her feedback and agreeing to publish more “good news”,  we pointed this teacher to a new podcast on EnglishClub.com called “Interesting Facts”.

Interesting Facts (in Easy English) is updated every Thursday on EnglishClub.com. It uses the same familiar format as the Weekly News, but focuses on interesting facts about random things rather than current events. We hope these tidbits of info inspire learners to strike up a conversation with an English speaking colleague or engage in some small talk at the bus stop. Learning interesting facts is useful for practising paraphrasing, too.

Did you know that…?

• a dentist invented cotton candy
• Great Britain’s stamp doesn’t feature its name
• the colour orange was named after the fruit

Interesting Facts (in Easy English) includes:

✔ a glossary
✔ an audio recording (listen on the site or download)
✔ gap-fill
✔ discussion question (could be used as a writing prompt)
✔ questions
✔ full transcript
✔ answers