Traditional end-of-year news quiz for your first lesson of the new year
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| By ibex73 via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 4.0] |
It’s that time of year again – News Quiz 2024 is here! Continuing the tradition that started with this blog, this annual quiz is back to help you kick off the new year in your classroom with an engaging, language-rich activity.
This year’s quiz follows the same (post-Covid) multiple-choice format, designed to let you quickly cover the questions while leaving time to dive into discussions about the stories and explore new language.
As always, the quiz is full of common lexical chunks and vocabulary your students can learn, practice, and reuse.
What’s different this year?
Well, not much really. As before, the quiz is available in two levels: Advanced (B2+/C1 or higher) and Intermediate. The difference is that this year’s Intermediate level quiz has been slightly simplified compared to previous editions:
- Questions are shorter making it more accessible to learners at B1/B1+ level
- Lexical coverage: 93% of the words in the B1 quiz fall within the the first 2000 most frequent words in English (K1-K2)), with only a small percentage (around 20 tokens) at K3 or higher.
- Higher-level vocabulary items like collapse, spectacular and shortly after are pre-taught or easily inferable from context.
Formats
The quiz is available in three formats, all of which can be edited if you wish to adapt them:- Google Slides presentation. For the Advanced version only. To edit, click on File -> Download.
Note: If you’d like to create Google Slides for the B1 version, feel free to share them!
- Google Doc (both levels). Editable and ready to use. To edit, click on File -> Download -> select the desired format.
- Quizziz - interactive quizzes (both levels).
Teacher’s Guide
The accompanying Teacher’s Guide (8 pages) offers a wealth of ideas for:
- Pre-teaching essential vocabulary.
- Post-quiz activities for reviewing and consolidating language.
- Ideas for class discussions on the stories behind the headlines.
As always, I’ll be sharing follow-up activities next week, designed to help students review and consolidate the language introduced in the quiz.
Wishing you a Happier New Year !
Google Slides
Advanced (B2+/C1) level followed by language focus
Preview below or click HERE to download
Google Docs / PDF
Can be printed for a paper-based activity in class or sent to students for review after the lesson. Please Note the Advanced version also includes a non-multiple-choice format.
Intermediate (B1/B2-) level with answers
Preview below or click HERE to download the editable Google doc
Teacher's Guide
Note
The advanced version has 17 questions; the intermediate (B1+) version has 15 quetsions.
Credits
Some questions have been adapted from the Year in Review News Quiz 2024 on the CNN website.
Thanks a bunch. I created a worksheet based on your quiz to use with my students. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gulmira. Would you care to share it with us?
DeleteThanks! A welcome quiz every year!
ReplyDeleteHappy to hear!
Deletethanks a lot. It's lovely
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteThank you so much , Leo. We do enjoy it so much every year. I greatly appreciate your effort to bring more light into language teaching and learning.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Leo, for this enjoyable and educational new year activity
ReplyDeleteThank you. Check out the follow up:
Deletehttps://leoxicon.blogspot.com/2025/01/news-quiz-2024-follow-up.html
Thank you so much as always, Leo. This is a fantastic resource and I always look forward to using it in my lessons.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Steven. I'm happy to hear it. I hope you enjoy the follow up activities just as much: https://leoxicon.blogspot.com/2025/01/news-quiz-2024-follow-up.html
DeleteSame here! I just want to show my gratitude for this news quiz which every year turns out to be a fun way to start the lessons again after such long Xmas holidays.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Comments like this make my day!
DeleteThank you so much for this quiz, I've looked it up in the beginning of January for years now and used it with groups of 15-year-old EFL learners in Finland.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your loyal support. Do check out the follow up activities: https://leoxicon.blogspot.com/2025/01/news-quiz-2024-follow-up.html
DeleteThis quiz is something I and my students look forward to every year.
ReplyDeleteI've already tried Intermediate Quizziz.
The advanced Quizziz link doesn't seem to be working, though. Do you think this might a problem on my side?
I'm happy to hear this, Aga.
DeleteThank you for bringing it to my attention. There was indeed a problem with the advanced version - perhaps something to do with the way it was initially set up (public visibility?). I've made a copy now. Can you please let me know if it works for you?
https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/677e4eb20ee2584d077d7f49
If it does, I'll update it in the body of the post for everyone.
Awesome! This link works. Thanks a lot for sorting it out.
ReplyDelete