LET: The Treasure Hunt Club

Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Over the last few years, video content on the web has become more and more common. A wide range of video content is now available through most portal sites and news sites, as well as sites like YouTube that focus on video. Increasingly, however, more and more television content is becoming (legally) available. Recently CNN changed their website to allow visitors easier access to video content. It’s a good, clean website that teachers can easily search to find topical video to use in classes (http://www.cnn.com/video/).

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Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Hello. I hope everyone is doing well coping with the hot summer weather. This month I’d like to go back to listening sites. I think one of the best things about the web for students in Japan is the large number of great places where they can go to practice listening for free. Of course, the web has many places where people can find interesting listening. At YouTube, for example, students can find just about any type of content they want, including music videos, TV shows, movie scenes, and news videos. Recently, more and more of my students are spending time watching videos on YouTube, and I think this is a good thing. But sometimes I want them to practice listening with more structure and some support, and that’s where the sites I’d like to introduce this month can help.

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Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Hi and welcome to the June Treasure Hunt. This month we are really going to look at some real treasure. The 11h annual Webby Awards were recently announced and this month I’d like to introduce some of the winners to our readers. The entire list is available at http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=11 where all the nominees and winners in the dozens of categories can be found. I’ll pick up a few that I thought could be used to make interesting language lessons (or interesting experiences for students).

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Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Hi everyone. This month I have a couple of different things to introduce.

First, I’d like to continue on with some more games and fun activities for young learners. For very young learners who are able to listen very short stories, there are some good activities at Noggin, http://www.noggin.com/ This site has some interactive games and short stories taken mostly from television in the United States.

I recently came across a web page listing hundreds of games made with Flash. Most have little educational value, but some of the interactive stories in the Choose Your Adventure section could be good listening exercises for some of our more advanced students. Take a look at the whole list and hunt around for something you might want to use with students. http://flashchild.com/all-games/

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Marcel Van Amelsvoort
（Kanagawa Prefectural College of Foreign Studies）
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Hello everyone. I’m sure everyone is very busy this month, including me, so I’m going to make this month’s column very short. Last month I introduced several online games that I thought could be fun ways for some of our more advanced students to interact in English. Well, this month I’d like to introduce some games that are suitable for our younger and less proficient students. Brain Connection has a large number of letter identifying, listening discrimination and memory games suitable for our very young students. These games are great for kindergarten and elementary school students or anyone we might want to use phonics activities with. There are about 20 games on the site and they require Shockwave to view and play. Have fun. http://www.brainconnection.com/teasers/