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Printable resources for the ESL or EFL class - English for speakers of other languages

Printing documents from the Linguapress archive of graded English texts

Index :

On screen or on paper

Though updated and upgraded whenever necessary, most graded English documents in the LInguapress archive began life on paper. Linguapress newsmagazines were used in schools in many parts of Europe for over two decades before the Internet came along and provided teachers with a wealth of material at the click of a mouse.

When Linguapress first began putting resources on line in 2002, the Internet was still young, and technology was not what it is today. Things have changed, and today Internet teaching resources can be much more than just pages to view on a PC. With this in mind, the Linguapress archive is being upgraded and updated to make our ESL resources 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 also easy to print.

Printer-friendly documents - better than PDF

Pages on which you see the "Printer-friendly document : click to print" button (as on this page, top left) can be printed out by simply clicking the button. 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.
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 does 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

Linguapress Grammar pages are specifically designed for viewing on-screen : they are all mobile-compatible, 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 the Chrome or Firefox browsers.
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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