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Printable resources for EFL / ESL - easier than PDF

Printing documents from the Linguapress archive of graded English texts

Index :

Use on any screen or print on paper

When Linguapress first began putting resources on line in 2002, the Internet was still young, and the only way to make sure that a text printed out properly as a document for use in class, was to use PDF. Things have changed, and today internet resources can be designed to print correctly or coherently directly from a web page.
Being both responsive and printer-ready, pages on Linguapress are not just "cross-platform" and "responsive" – meaning that they can be viewed equally well on a PC, a laptop or even a smart phone; – but they are also easy to print.

Interactive documents - no need to print

A majority of the classroom resources on Linguapress.com are now interactive, and work on any PC, Mac or smartphone. And since they're quite free to use, this means that you, the teacher, can open them up in your classroom, and your students can open them up on their phones when outside the classroom (or even in it, if needs be). Texts and worksheets can be projected onto a whiteboard, or displayed on an interactive whiteboard, for optimum in-class use. Students can work on interactive exercises collectively as a class, with you, the teacher, keying in the answers proposed by your students, or else independently by students on their workstation (desktop computer or tablet), from which they can save their answers. Obviously this requires individual mastery of techniques such as exporting to a pdf or screensaving a modified text. Interactive exercises, word games and worksheets can even be done on a smartphone, though the small size of the screen and the absence of an independent keyboard can make this complicated.

Printer-friendly documents - better than PDF

Pages on which you see a message such as "Page ready for printing" (as on this page, top left) can be printed out by simply sending the document to a printer. This will print out just the actual article or short story, plus the student worksheet and teacher notes. Nothing else.... which is generally more useful for teachers than PDF documents or screen saves that may print out everything on the page.
In as many cases as possible this will produce classroom-ready documents, with the article, the student worksheet and teaching tips all printing on separate pages. For a demonstration, just tell your browser to print this file, and check out the print preview that shows up.
However, since there is not complete standardisation between Internet browsers, the result will be slightly different depending on the browser you use. Linguapress's "printer-friendly documents" are optimised for the Firefox browser, which is generally popular in the world of education. They will print with the printer options set to show colour, and at 100%. They will also print with the printer options set to "shrink to fit" and in black and white.
They will also print well from the Chrome browser; however, the Chrome browser may not support the "page-break" instruction, so for many documents the student worksheets simply print at the end of the article, as seen on the screen, instead of starting a new page.

In due course, all of the Linguapress reading resources will be made fully printer-friendly.
In the meantime, most other articles will print successfully as a printed version of what you see on the screen – complete with the side columns.

Grammar topics

Disponible aussi en français

Linguapress Grammar pages are specifically designed for viewing on-screen : they are all "responsive", so students can view them on smartphones as easily as on a PC in the classroom. While they are not designed to be printed, they can be printed using standard browsers.
Alternatively the Linguapress Descriptive Grammar of English is available worldwide from Amazon as an e-book, as a paperback, or in a hardcover edition from major bookstores worldwide. This compact reference grammar has been the subject of some great reviews in specialist EFL and ESL magazines worldwide, including IATEFL's flagship "Voices" magazine, TESOLANZ magazine, the EFL Magazine, and others. To view the title on Amazon, just click the ad to be taken to your local Amazon store. The hardback edition is available through Barnes & Noble in the USA, and Waterstones in the UK, and main bookstores in many other countries. The Linguapress Grammar is also available in French
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Using articles and stories in the language class

For more about how to used printed articles and short stories in the language class, see the Linguapress guide to Reading comprehension : working with written texts