| Websites
for ESL/EFL Learners & Teachers
Collected by: Anh Le |
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Name
of Website |
Description | |
Reasons for Recommendation |
| General Interest | ||||
| Language
learning
in different academeic areas |
Summary of current news accessible to students from K-12 grades.The site is a mine of educational resources.Here are some few topics:--News summary with news quiz (daily and weekly)--Discussion topics--Vocabulary with definition and used in contextual textsUnder “Student Navigator”,User can find educative resources for different academic areas with lesson plans and interactive activities. | This is so far my best site, highly recommended to students and teachers.It is very well structured and instructive for all audiences. It is free to use and I am glad to find it! | ||
| Language learning from the news | The site has a summary of national and international news. The teachers can choose from different academic areas.The site presents a particular topic and has suggestive ideas to teach in their field.Under mathematics:I found ideas to teach art/math. Using a mosaic piece of art, the teacher can teach algebraic (finding the areas), geometry, symmetry, proportions (estimations of proportion of colors and body parts), and measurement | This is an interesting site (see also http://cnn.com ) because it includes current political events. It contains audio and video features that allow the users to watch and listen to the news. The audio feature can be useful for non-native speakers who want to listen to authentic speech. | ||
| Language through Geography and traveling | Many useful topics for educators and students are offered in this site. The topics vary from traveling (text and photography of specific places in the world), maps, and news. The Education section has lessons for different grades for Science, Geography, and social studies. | I think this is an informative site for students and educators. The disadvantage is there is no audio device that allows the user to listen to the news. | ||
| How Stuff works | This site provides all answers to how thinks work. The questions answer to all topic areas (chemistry, computer..). | The texts in this site are very technical, it is appropriate for students who are focused on technical field of study. I think students should be exposed to different types of texts. | ||
| Listening | ||||
| Listening Lab | This site has from easy to difficult readings and activities. Once the user chooses their reading level, s(he) can listen to the message and read along the messages. Then, s(he) can answer to multi-choice comprehension questions. The site also offers listening practice on English sounds. | I think this is an interesting site for English language learners who live abroad. They can use this site to improve their listening skills and self-test their understanding and answer correct phonetic sounds. | ||
| Language learning with radio station | Clark Howard offers financial advice in different areas (money savings, customer service complains, advice for consumers...). The users can also listen to his live talk show and ask questions. | I really enjoy his talk show on radio. It is sometimes hard for me to take down the information he gave on the radio so the site allows me to get the accurate information. It is also a good listening practice when I listen to his show. | ||
| Listening
to NPR
(radio station) |
In this site, the users can listen to tapes and read transcripts of radio shows and news. The news is national and international. | I really like this radio station. I want to be able to listen to it or share it with my students when I will be abroad. | ||
| Listening Samples | In this site, there are some free samples of passages with activities (questions-answers and script). | I think this is a friendly use site except that the user has to pay to use it. Natives and non-natives speakers read the passages, which gives the users the opportunity to hear English in different accents. | ||
| Listening to Folktales | The Moollit Road site allows you to read and listen to interesting folktale. | I think this is a very helpful site for ESOL students who want
to improve their listening and reading.
The tales are always my fovorites. |
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| Prediction and listening activities | In this site, the user can listen to free passages from the radio. Before listening to the passage, the user can predict what the passage is going to be by answering to multiple choice questions. | I think this is a good listening practice because users can predict what they are about to listen by reading the title. The disadvantage is that the passages are not current. | ||
| Radio station: BBC | The BBC site has the current international news on audio-texts with explanation of the vocabulary. | I think this site has more political news than NPR. The topics in BBC are not as diversified as the ones in NPR. | ||
| Car talk | The site offers advice on car (car problems, buy, sell cars…) | One of my favorite talk shows in NPR. The show is funny and I can hear different accents of native speakers from all over the states. I did not see any script of the talk show, do the listeners need it anyway! I think listeners should just enjoy listening to the talk. | ||
| ESOL ressources | ||||
| Technology in Classroom | The site provides articles about successful use of technolgy in the classroom. It also includes grants, contest, and other useful sites for teachers. | The site provides interesting information on how to get grants. I like the detailed lesson plans on how to introduce technology in classroom. | ||
| Teacher resource | The site presents articles that teachers and textbook developers can use to develop their materials. It includes educator opinions, anecdotes, and problems that occur in education. | I found interesting articles that report problems and experiences that other educators share with the users. | ||
| Educator resource | The site presents journal with lesson plans, ideas, and issues online for ESOL teachers. It also provides recommendations for textbook writers in the field. | This site has multiple ideas
and lesson plans for ESOL teachers. I really enjoy reading the lesson plans
that can use with my students.
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| ESL cafe | This site is for ESL/EFL students and teachers from around the world. It has interesting ideas to teach language, math and other subjects to ESOL students. It also offers audio-text. | The sections on phrasal verbs, idioms are not very interactive. | ||
| ESL partyland | The site has diversified lesson plans for teachers to teach language through conversation, w/video and film, with Internet, with music, grammar, listening, speaking, and reading. | I read some lesson plans and got inspired by few ideas but I can not really follow the same instructions to teach a lesson. I think it is more beneficial if I can see how the lesson is presented in real life. I think each teacher has a different way of presenting his or her lesson plan because each class has different setting and different types of students. | ||
| Teacher and students exchange | IECC is a free teaching.com service to help teachers link with partners in other cultures and countries for email classroom pen pal and other project exchanges | I think this is a great site for non-native speaker who wants to exchange emails with native speaker of target language. Through this site, students can have email-friends and exchange cultural and language interests. | ||
| Lesson plans-activities | Classbuilder has a variety of handouts and games: texts, audio-texts from grammar practice, and vocabulary, and projects for all levels (K-12). | I am so glad to find this site. It has numerous handouts for all academic areas. When you click on vocabulary, you can find worksheets to work on vocabulary (K-12, SAT). You create your own crosswords play interactive games to enrich your vocabulary. | ||
| Education world | There are myriad of sites for teachers covering everything from K-12 schools online to education topics. The headings include lesson-planning, books in education, and administrators. | This is a great site for teachers. I found topics that I would not expect to see such "errors in translation". In "errors in translation", I found hilarious translations of commercial brand names or expressions from one language to another language. Translating literally something from one language to another can sometimes be very offensive. | ||
| FunBrain.com | This site includes math games, spelling, and other subjects. | I enjoy working on different types of activities such as filling the blanks, multiple choice answer questions in different subject areas (geography, grammar…) | ||
| Discover all academic areas | This is a very exciting site for both teachers and students. Teachers can access to a broad range of lesson plans organized by subject and by grade level. Students have very interactive games and study aids in all areas. | I wish I had time to explore this
educative site. I looked at lesson plan for "Scarlett Letter" and I could
hear and read the definitions, answer the questions of the text, and play
interactive games related to the book!
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| Language with pictures | ||||
| Language with comics | This site has a variety of comic strips with or without dialogues. Educators can use this site with their students to enrich the vocabulary and idioms. | Dialogues in comic strips can be use in many ways: highlight an important message, bring up new thoughts, and reveal social and cultural characteristics of a target culture. Students can create their own dialogues by using strips without dialogues. | ||
| Language with movies and music | This site has a multi-media tool for language learners. It has videos, movies, music, and interactive games… . | I particularly like the Looney
Tunes site because it is so animated. Young audience can really enjoy listening
English and interact with the computer by playing the game.
The music site is also useful because students can listen to the music and write the lyrics. It is a very good practice of language listening. |
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| Cartoonist index | This site offers a cartoonists index homepage with lesson plans. The objectives of the lessons are to allow students to form and express (in speaking and writing) an opinion about current news events. | I really enjoy reading the cartoons. I think the cartoons give students an opportunity to express their opinions. They may not interpret the cartoons the way native speakers would interpret. | ||
| Educational Games | ||||
| Educational game site | Quia has educational games and quizzes. It has quizzes and games in all subject areas. Users can create different types of online games with flashcards, matching games, concentration, and hangman. | I think this site is very interesting because the activities are very instructive and interactive. The user can learn a lot of vocabulary by playing different games. | ||
| Quizzes and games | This site gives quizzes and info on geography, punctuation, grammar, science, history, and world culture. | This site has limited quizzes of different academic areas but it is a good start of ESOL students. It has links of other sites that students can explore | ||
| Grammar | ||||
| Grammar Safari | This site offers explanation of grammar points with examples. | I think this site has limited but useful grammar lessons. | ||
| Grammar explanations and practice | This is a great site for grammar practice. It includes explanations and quizzes and games. | I highly recommend this site to students who want to practice their English grammar. It is well organized and friendly used designed for students. | ||
| Poetry | ||||
| Archive of poetry | This site has an archive of poetry with text and audio text. Poems are usually read by the author. | I think users can use this site to practice their speech. They learn rhythms, pauses, and pronunciation of English language. | ||
| Speeches | ||||
| Great Speeches | There is a decade of historic speeches and sound clips. | I think teachers can use the speeches in this site for listening, transcribing the speech, text analysis, and speech practice. | ||