assignment 3 listening resources

1st edition 4/1
2nd edition 4/4
CNN San Francisco
http://literacyworks.org/learningresources/
Content:
I look for English Listening resources for assignment and hope to use it often. According to my English listening ability, I would like to sharpen my skill by listening to the News those English native speakers often listen to. The first criteria for me is the website must contain Journal English. Second, I need the full text of the News to check the information I received is right. Third, the organization of the website must be very easy to understand so that I pay little effort to access to the information I want.
The searching process is not very smooth. If I search “Journal English Listening” on google, it would pop up with many Chinese papers research for English learning strategy development. Before I used up my patience, I found a Chinese website which recommended many useful English learning resources. There, I found CNN San Francisco, one of the most reputable American news channels.
Strengthens:
The CNN San Francisco website has a good clean outfit. It is easy to find text and audio we want. Because the articles come from prestigious English speaking news channel CNN, the text is concise and accurate. We can learn a lot from the text. If you have difficulty in listening to the whole story, there are still story outline and abridged version available. The abridged version still has audio to listen. We can also learn how to shorten the text and draw main idea by reading it.
The speaker in the audio has a standard American accent so people can learn it easier. Another merit is that it takes little time downloading the file. After you finish listening and reading, there are some small quiz to practice. You can practice vocabulary, cloze test, comprehension, and memorization. After you choose your answer, you can immediately find out whether your answer is right. That is just what we need.
Weakness:
Unfortunately, the CNN San Francisco website still has some shortcoming. First, its article is limited. The old articles are stored under the category “story archive.” There are only three in that category and one current story available. Furthermore, the website seems to stop updating since 2006 so you can not receive latest information. Although it provides a link to its previous version website where it stored dozens of articles, the audios and links are less stabilized and not available. I got distressed when I tried about 10 times but still can not get abridged story audio.
The advantages can sometimes become disadvantages. Since we can listen standard English tone audio, we can not listen to other accents in the world. The audio we download is normal speed version. If your software do not have a change speed function, you can never slow it down. Despite these shortcoming, I believe it is still a good free learning resource.
Five Star Grading:4 star