VOA

Voice of America (VOA) is a U.S. government-funded international radio broadcast source. It serves Learning English materials through the multimedia source of news and information for millions of English learners worldwide. Similarly, BBC learning English is a part of BBC world service that offers free audio, video and text materials to English language learners and teachers around the world. Both of these websites aim to provide learning materials to international learners and teachers. As their goals are quite similar, they adopted many similar features to teach English. But they also have different features that show their own uniqueness in their teaching methods.

However, after exploring both of these platforms, I have found some similarities between VOA learning English and BBC learning English websites. They are-

Aim: Both of the websites’ aim is to provide materials for learning English. They provided videos, audios, written documents, news articles to make English learning easier.

Transcript: VOA learning English website and BBC learning English website provide transcripts of the videos.

VOA learning English not only gives transcripts after every video, but it also adds subtitles in the video.

Radio station: Both the websites have a radio station and the learners can listen to the audio clips on current issues.

Test and quiz: Both VOA and BBC learning English take a small test/quiz on the content of the videos to ensure learners’ productivity. VOA provides quizzes with almost every video.

 But the BBC provides quizzes only with the lessons. 

Representing own culture: VOA learning English website represents U.S culture. It provides mostly American news, history, the documentary on American parks and important places. It also has a section for the US constitution and people of America. 

Similarly, BBC learning English gives preference to U.K culture. 

The topics and contexts of the videos and articles mostly refer to British manners and etiquette.

Sign up option: Both of the websites have signup options. In VOA one can sign up easily by giving their email address so that he/she can get newsletters from them.                                                

                                                                                                                 

Similarly, in BBC learning English a user can register by providing their email address, age, country, etc. they keep the track of a user’s age to notify them with appropriate content.

Comment option: It is easy to sign up, but both of the websites do not have the comment option for the users. In VOA the users can only news articles.

But the BBC has an option where the users can send feedbacks by contacting them.

Pronunciation: Both of the websites teaches pronunciation through videos. VOA teaches American pronunciation whereas BBC focuses on U.K pronunciation.

But in VOA they give extra emphasis on pronunciation by adding ‘speaking practice’ segment where the learners would be taught pronunciations of the same vocabularies of the lessons. But both VOA and BBC learning English platform does not have any voice recording option. In VOA, they ask to record in the learners' own device to compare their own pronunciation with the given one.

News words: VOA and BBC learning English provide news articles for the learners in a way so that the learners can learn difficult words along with the news. VOA only provides those vocabularies with the transcription. They have a different section named ‘news words’ which only focuses on a new trending word from the news and teach the word by explaining its meaning.

But in BBC learning English they teach difficult vocabularies at the beginning of the videos and throughout the videos, they highlight those words so that the learners can easily learn and reflect on what they are learning.

Receptive skills: VOA and BBC learning English emphasize on receptive skills. Most of their learning materials are based on listening and reading skills. As the component of the courses are standalone and can be studied on their own, it cannot moderate a learner's productive skills neither do they aim to do it.

Grammar: grammar is an essential part of learning any language. So VOA and BBC give special care to grammar by teaching structures and confusing grammatical items through videos.

In VOA they have ‘English in A minute’ and ‘Everyday grammar tv’ along with their courses to teach grammar.

Similarly, BBC learning English has ‘6 minute English’ which is an additional section along with their courses to teach grammar.

Introducing new words: Both of these learning websites introduce new words to the learners.

Access to the content: VOA and BBC learning English give free access to their contents to almost everyone. The learners can download the audio, video clips, pdf file of the transcripts from the direct links. 

I have found some dissimilarity between VOA learning English service and BBC learning service-Targeted learner: VOA learning English’s programs are designed for beginning English learners whereas in BBC learning English the targeted learners are not only the beginner level of English learners.

Courses: In VOA the courses are designed for beginner level learners and the courses are divided into four stages.

But in BBC learning English service has organized courses starting from lower intermediate courses to towards advanced courses.

Learners’ need: In VOA I did not find the courses organized according to the learners need. Though the courses are categorized as level-1 or level-2, these levels do not provide any clear direction for the learners’ to start their learning following their needs and levels.

But in the BBC learning English website, the courses are well organized and the learners can easily understand which course is suitable for them.

Strategies for teachers: In VOA there is a separate section for teachers to teach them new strategies for their teaching.

Sitemap: BBC learning English provides a course sitemap for the learners to give them a clear idea about what they are going to learn.

‘LingoHack’ and ‘News Words’: ‘LingoHack’ and ‘news words’ are two different sections of VOA and BBC learning that focuses on the words of the news. But their features are different and though they are created for the same purpose, they do not function similarly. In VOA ‘news words’ section contains videos that only show the single word in every video and the length of every video is near to one minute.

But in BBC learning English ‘LingoHack’ section contains videos that focus on a particular news item and explains every difficult word of that news. The length of those videos is longer and they are near three minutes long. LingoHack not only focuses on words and phrases, but they also provide interesting information to the learners.

Latest English words: language reforms with time and many new terms and words are included in the dictionary. BBC learning English not only provides existing terms and words to its users, but they also introduce the learners with the latest words and terms through the section ‘the English We Speak’.

But in VOA learning English, there is no feature similar to it.

Wordbook: VOA learning English has a word book for its users and anyone can download this book. It has some frequently used words that can help the learners to learn English easily.

Games: BBC learning English has a games section for its users which makes learning fun and keeps the learners glued with the website.

Literature: BBC learning has a different section to introduce learners with its roots. It teaches words and phrases with famous literary works through dramas. It also has a section ‘Shakespeare speaks’ to teach popular English phrases and expression coined by William Shakespeare.

English @ the movies: This special section is created by VOA learning English to learn through American movies. It contains frequently used phrases and words and teaches through movie clips which are quite fun to learn.

VOA Learning English and BBC learning English are amazing platforms for English language learners who want to learn English on their own. Their videos, audios, games, and articles make learning easier for the students around the world and helped the learners not only to learn the English language but also familiarized everyone with their culture.