| Dave's ESL Cafe is an amazing site that includes the ESL Quiz Center & the ESL Help Center (both for students), the ESL Search Page (to help you find ESL resources), and the ESL Idea Page (where both teachers and students can share ideas). Still the premier ESL web site on the Internet The Internet TESL Journal A rich resource site with information on CALL, culture, world-wide associations and conferences, and job information. TESL Electronic Journal TESL-EJ provides on-line information on the teaching of ESL, as well as reviews of CALL materials and resources. Linguistics/ESL @ CSUN This site is for researchers and educators. It is brought to you by Cal State University, Northridge. Cutting Edge CALL Demos Demos of grammar and listening quizzes on-line with results. This site requires the various multimedia plug-ins, including Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, and Real Player. Closed Captioning Web Many ESL teachers are finding the use of Closed Captioning with television programs and movies very useful in their instruction. Our link is directly with the page that has information for teachers on how to use Closed Captioning in their classrooms. grammarONLINE Five units: passive voice, adjective clauses, noun clauses, comparatives, and verb participles. Includes structure, recognition, and proper usage. The Newbury House Online Dictionary This online dictionary contains over 40,000 entries and is based on the Newbury House Dictionary of American English. Providing simple and clear definitions, this online tool provides a wealth of sample sentences, idioms, and a wide array of cultural facts and figures. John and Sarah's TEFL Pitstop Sarah provides several ideas for games that ESL/EFL teachers can use to reinforce language learning. Directions and gameboards to print out. Peak English An interactive English learning site that customizes instruction for students based on their progress through guided exercises. The exercises include reading, listening comprehension, and grammar. There are online references including a dictionary and grammar information. Visitors can try out all the different components, but full access is only available if a complete course is purchased. Center for Applied Linguistics ERIC is gone, but CAL provides access to most of the products that ERIC used to provide, including digests. The general CAL website is a valuable resource on language acquisition. Antimoon.com: Learn English Effectively This is an English learning site like none I have encountered. The focus of the site is motivation and techniques for effectively learning English. The authors of the site do not see grammar exercises as the way. There are reviews of techniques, pronunciation guides, and accounts of how the authors learned English. Requires an intermediate reading level. Developing Teachers.com Listed as a web resource for the developing language teacher, this site provides newsletters about teaching, teaching methodologies, lesson plans, and weekly teaching tips. Newsletters and tips are archived, but you can also subscribe to receive these by email. Developing Teachers.com is a commercial site that also offers email courses for language teachers. everythingESL.net Good things for elementary ESL classes. Includes lesson plans, teaching tips from a variety of sources, the owner's pick of ESL resources, and discussion boards. There is also a discussion board where you can ask the site owner questions. LinguaPress Online A variety of reading materials divided into beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. Includes glosses and vocabulary and comprehension exercises. A mix of British and American materials. For use in class and for outside independent reading. English-Zone A huge array of activities for English learners and teachers. There are online activities as well as lessons that can be reproduced for classroom use. There is way too much on the site for me to list it all here. All skills are covered, and there is also a phrasal verbs and a preposition dictionary with exercises for reinforcement. Check it out. Real English On the one hand, this is a commercial site advertising an English learning program available on videocassette and CDs. On the other hand, ten of the beginner-level units are available for free. Requires use of Real Player, and some of the downloads are pretty large. Includes a video clip, exercises, and vocabulary work. 1-Language.com An extensive selection of resources for the ESL teacher, from flashcards to grammar lessons. There's realtime chat, for students who want to chat with others, and forums (although somewhat sparse in postings as of this listing). One of the best things are current news articles, which are available as readings and audio recordings. Each article is accompanied by various exercises. Medical English Resources A unique resource for ESL students who may be specializing in medical fields. An extensive selection of online exercises, including cloze, passage reconstructions, vocabulary, and grammar. If a student wants to practice his/her English in the context of a medical diagnosis, this is the place. Using English.com A compendium of quite a lot of different things. There are discussions, a bulletin board, a grammar reference, online tests, and more. Many more materials than when the site was first reviewed several years ago. (updated 10.26.04) Aardvark's English-Forum.com Yikes. The URL is only one letter different from the previous listing, but the content is much different. Many exercises for language practice, resources for teachers and students, guides to schools, message boards, and lots of links. ( Mark's ESL World A site with lots and lots of links, organized into resources for teachers, students, and job seekers. There are also chat and discussion pages. Nothing unique to this site, but it pulls together many things into one place. ESL Webquest Projects Webquests are cooperative Internet-based research activities that usually culminate in a written or oral research report. They involve research, critical analysis of sources, and organization of information found. This web site focuses on webquests and resources to support them. The author tries to break down webquests into its various components, and while the information is not always easily processed, it is comprehensive. These particular webquests are targeted more to secondary and higher. Grammar Grabbers Grammar can be deadly serious, so a little levity might be useful. Bill Cutler provides humorous but practical grammar and style advance on his website. Since it's humor, many ESL students will need to be somewhat advanced to get all the jokes, but teachers may find the points useful. English Daily An ESL site with a distinctively Asian bent. Grammar, idioms, folk tales, and lessons using advertisements. I contacted the owner to find out more about the site, and apparently it is just a work of love. Vocaboly This is a website for a shareware program called Vocaboly. Using this program, you can review vocabulary through a variety of exercises, tests, and games. Of specific interest to EFL students is its TOEFL vocabulary. You can download the program for free and then pay for it if you find it useful. Teachers and learners can customize the program with their own vocabulary. The program is only available for Windows. English Maze A very technologically sophisticated site, using lots of Flash and interactivity. There is a diagnostic test, and you can choose from general or business English. The free lesson that I sampled had a very good cultural component (good reading practice, too), some grammar explanation, and a less than satisfying listening exercise where you have to spell-out idiomatic expressions (somewhat frustrating because of the speaker's pronunciation). I didn't sample the whole site, so I don't know how much is available for free. There is a fee for general access. Still worth a look. English Monkeys Part job resource, part teacher/learner resource, English Monkeys provides a bit of everything for the ESL teacher and learner. Not the largest job board (under 100 listings on the day I visited), and the variety of resources are a compendium of links and submitted lessons and plans. However, it is a general purpose resource that you may find has what you are looking for. Rong-Chang Li's ESL Resources Lots and lots and lots of links. There's a smidgen of original content. The usefulness of this site is in its categories of links. I found things I had never crossed before, so you will probably too. Covers everything ESL from jobs to listening exercises. Lots of Google ads. Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun There are five online games for students to practice vocabulary: word search, crossword, hangman, matching, and multiple choice quiz. The vocabulary is grouped in categories. Since the items are fixed, you would need to check that your lesson includes the vocabulary used. The interfaces are very good, with cute graphics and sounds. UnivSource Vocabulary Builder Another vocabulary builder, this one definitely geared for a much higher level. Students review vocabulary with contextualized sentences and then choose an appropriate antonym. Basically vocabulary drills. Hosted by a website that gives information about US universities. Breaking News English Ready to use lesson plans that address speaking, reading, and listening skills. Each lesson plan has a reading (intermediate and a low-advanced version of each reading is available), which serves as the basis for discussion, word development, and a variety of listening exercises. A Word/PDF version of each lesson is available (formatted for duplication) as well as an MP3 of the reading to use for the listening exercises. Comprehensive and ready to use. MES English Unlike many of our other resources, this site focuses on ready-to-print games that focus on younger English learners. The games include variations on Pokemon, Monopoly, and Battleship. There are also materials to work on Phonics. The materials are in PDF format and need to be printed out for classroom use. Instructions for use are provided, but some of the materials, such as the Big Town cards, can be easily adapted by a teacher for his/her own classroom needs. Mark Cox also has a series of Flash grammar games at his companion site, http://www.marks-english-school.com/games.html. ESL City Another site that focuses on younger learners. There is a large compendium of worksheets on topics such as months, holidays, and vocabulary (a la picture dictionary workbook sheets). I found two very interesting things. First, you can email the author to create customized worksheets from your ideas. I didn't do this, but the author emphasizes that this is a "free" service. Second, under "Writing - Beginning," you can create customized printing practice using your own text. For flash card sets, you need to register. Includes job information and singles match-ups! Learn English with Teacher Joe Teacher Joe looks like a very nice guy (you can see his picture in the conversation section), which, coupled with the enthusiasm and slang, gives this site some of its appeal. Nothing flashy on the surface, but the site makes a lot of use of audio files (dictations, readings, jokes) and some programming to provide timed readings. There are quotes, advice about taking the IELTS (International English Language Testing System), and quizzes. The grammar stuff is nothing to write home about, but the extensive use of audio files is a definite plus. Fun Spelling Facts Humor is not an easily taught topic, but students can readily relate to the frustration and absurdity of English spelling. Espindle is a fee-based spelling tutor site, but it also provides this compendium of poems, sample sentences, and absurdities that you may find a fun way to broach spelling (and by extension pronunciation) in your class. ESL Independent Study Lab While many sites organize links by topic, this site goes two steps further. First, it focuses on links that allow students to work (somewhat) independently. Second, it organizes the links by level. Includes links for all skill levels and TOEFL, plus the site creator's favorite picks for content area instruction. Exam English Exam English provides information and practice sessions on the major language tests required by American and British colleges and universities for non-native English speakers. These include the TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS, CPE, CAE, FCE, PET, KET and BULATS. While a good overview of what the tests are like, the feedback is simply correct or incorrect, so a prospective student doesn't know why the answer is correct or incorrect. Podcards This listening resource combines the concept of an audio "postcard" with playability as an MP3 file on an iPod to form its title. The "postcards," or short audio samples, cover cultural aspects of various English-speaking countries - a bit of history, celebrities, and city tours. Each audio sample comes with a worksheet that includes comprehension exercises and a transcript. The samples are divided into high and low level. The samples are British English. Room 108 The site creator provides a wide range of materials for primary age students, from worksheets to sing-alongs. There are also games to work on parts of speech and phonics. I can't judge the usefulness of the site, but there are not as many sites focused on the lower grades, so I'm including it. The music can be a bit distracting, so you'll want to lower the volume on your computer. English Daily The focus is largely on vocabulary, with a little bit of grammar thrown in for good measure. The reading selections provide glosses for vocabulary items, with translations into German when you click on the words themselves. The abbreviation of the day was unfamiliar to me, so I suspect the site orginates from a non-US English-speaking area. I don't know now often the site changes, and as far as I can tell, there is no archive of previous items. Easy English Times CATESOLers are probably familiar with this newspaper dedicated to ESL learners. While the newspaper itself requires a subscription fee (including online access to the issue itself), the web site to support the newspaper provides some useful resources. One of them is an archive of Susan Gaer's technology columns. Another is a large selection of student letters and writing. The site also has tips for how to use any newspaper with a class. Short Story Radio Not exactly an ESL site, Short Story Radio provides audio versions of original soft stories in small chunks of a few minutes each. Definitely for a more advanced listening class, and for the teacher, the disadvantage is the lack of a printed text of the stories. Two new stories are added each week, and there are two months' worth online now. The readers are British. Learn English Feel Good I can't say I really like the name of the site, but the contents of the site are quite worthwhile. There are exercises, worksheets, video clips with listening comprehension questions, idioms, and a discussion of differences between UK and US English. ESL Genius This website is largely a collection of ideas to stimulate classroom communication. There are role-plays, discussion topics, ideas for debates, and other activities. As the website states, the ideas are not your typical "safe" ESL topics, and while they may not be for everyone, they provide something beyond what you find in every ESL textbook. There are also some materials for students - essentially short dialogs with a variety of responses. However, given that there are no explanations, these are not really materials for students to use on their own. Kan Talk I don't use Skype, so I wasn't able to avail myself completely of the features of this site, but Kan Talk looks like it takes good advantage of current technologies to facilitate the learning of English through conversation. Lessons make use of You Tube videos and web articles as the basis for discussion questions. Users can then set up online conversations using Skype to work through the discussion questions. Users are also encouraged to submit recordings of themselves doing oral presentations and readings and to practice comprehension through transcription of video clips. There seems to be a sizable community to interact with. Learn English with Pictures In general, when I need a picture for my classroom, I use an online image search engine. However, the picture resolution varies widely, and aside from the issue of finding a suitable picture, finding one that can be reproduced at an appropriate size is also a challenge. The author of this site has taken his own pictures and provides them for your use. There are approximately 400 nouns on the site, each photo at 600x800 resolution - not great for printing a page-sized flash card, but very good for filling a computer screen in a powerpoint presentation. cloZure: Cloze Tests Made Easy Peter Shanks has created a web tool that generates cloze exercises from articles in Wikipedia. The student is presented with a Wikipedia article with random words removed. The word list is provided to the left. The student must click on the words in order to fill in the cloze, which I consider overly restrictive - dragging a word to a later blank does not work. Clicking on a word briefly shows its correct location (I call these hints). A score reflects correctly added words minus the hints needed. You can search by keyword for pertinent wiki articles, and it is important to note that the quality of wiki articles vary both in content and writing. There are some shortcomings, but this could be a useful reinforcement tool for any language class. |
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