When I was talking to some students the other day I was surprised to find that some of them didn’t know or had misconceptions about what RSS is and how it can be helpful in their efforts to improve their English. I thought that I had better write a quick post explaining what it is, how it works and how it can be used.
What is RSS?
RSS is a simple way of getting updates whenever your favourite blogs or news sites add new information to their web pages.
How does RSS work?
Here is a short video that explains the basic concepts behind RSS.
How can RSS be used to practice English?
The thing about learning to speak another language is that there are two main things that you need. The first is something to talk about, and the second is someone to talk to. Now that you have watched the video and are an RSS expert you can set up RSS feeds from all of your favourite blogs and websites. Reading these feeds should give you plenty to talk about. The next step is to find someone to talk to. If you live in an English speaking country or have lots of English speaking friends then you are in luck. Now go out there and get talking! If you are looking for people to speak English with, then have a look at languagelab.com. This is a school that you can attend from anywhere in the world. They have built a virtual city which is populated with teachers and actors who are all native English speakers. To look at their website click here.
Here are a few sites that I recommend you subscribe to. I’m sure that you will find many more as you continue to browse the web and learn English.
1) My blog - Salsita Says 
Just click here.
Languagelab is an online school that has students attending from all over the world. Their blog keeps the school community updated about the lessons, activities and events happening each week.
Englishbaby provides free daily English lessons. This is what they say about themselves,”Our ESL lessons help you study English slang, basic English, business English and have streaming audio to listen to natural conversations.”
The BBC learning English website has so many different English lesson feeds that I can’t list them all. Try subscribing to their general and business English feed first of all. Then have a browse around the rest of the site and see if you can find anything else you like.
Do you have any web sites or blogs that you would recommend to other students of English? Answers in the comments please.
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