TESL : Teaching with Technology

"Interesting Things For ESL Students" Review

Name of the Website:

http://www.manythings.org/

Skill and Level: All Skills and All Levels

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? ESL

What Makes it Good? This website is an excellent online "ESL activities" resource for teachers. The home page has a menu on the left that provides teachers and learners with a list of tasks to chose from and there's a little bit of everything for everyone! There is a specific section for beginners, individual sections that cover each of the language learning skills, as well as games, podcast, songs, and jokes/tongue twisters. If you click on the "daily page" section, you will find dictionaries, search engines, the game of the day, and the proverb of the day as well. Another useful section is the "slang and idioms" section where students can work on activities that help them learn how and when to use specific expressions and it gives them their meanings. This website is extremely easy to navigate through and very well organized. The activities are functional for students of all levels and consist of English language exercises that will help improve their conversational language use. I recommend this website to ESL teachers, as it is fun, educational and free!

"Picture Dictionary" Review

Name of the Website:
www.pdictionary.com

Skill and Level: [Level 1] Reading and Writing

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? Both

What Makes it Good? This website is an excellent resource for ESL learners. It is easy to use and navigate through and uses great visuals that promote vocabulary building. The words included in the dictionary are functional for everyday language use and there are many options for the learner to chose from, such as word length and category. Included on this website are a few vocabulary building games as well such as, word scramble and flashcards. I even showed this online picture dictionary to an ESL instructor at my practicum placement and she has been using it with her class and finds it quite effective. It is an excellent supplement for classrooms that can not afford a class set of picture dictionary books.

"Rosetta Stone" Review

Name of the Website:

www.rosettastone.com

Skill and Level: [Level 1-4] Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? Both

What Makes it Good? I feel that this language learning program has many useful aspects. It is easy to use and navigate through. It explores all of the four language skills and gives an excellent introduction to any language on its list. I attempted the Spanish lessons and found that I quickly began learning new vocabulary and some simple grammatical concepts within minutes. One downfall with a program like this one is that there is no teacher-student interaction, and therefore, no constructive feedback given to the learner. This is an important part of the language learning experience. Also, this program is very expensive and probably unaffordable for newcomers to Canada.

"Interactive English Language Exercises" Review

Name of the Website:

http://www.englishforum.com/00/

Skill and Level: [All Levels] Grammar and Vocabulary

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? ESL

What Makes It Good? This website provides links to a plethora of great activities for ESL learners of all levels. Most of the activites are for grammar, vocabulary building, etc., but there are some great ones that deal with idioms and slang too. The site is quite easy to navigate through as well. All you have to do is click on the "exercises" section at the top and all of the activities offered are distplayed in organized boxes. There are tons of games and fun learning exercises for ESL learners to work on as well. On the right side of the web page there is a yellow section that offers students links to the latest world news, the weather, and other tools such as currency converters, etc. These may be a little distracting, but i found a couple of useful things in this yellow section as well, such as a quick search dictionary/thesaurus and a quick ESL/ELT book search. Overall, I feel this website could be very useful in the classroom, as it provides ESL learners of all levels with links to excellent online activities that are relevant and easy to use.

"Takako's Adventure" Review

Name of the Website:
http://international.ouc.bc.ca/takako/

Skill and Level: [Level 3+] Listening

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? ESL

What Makes it Good? This website is a great interactive resource for ESL teachers. The stories are interesting for ESL learners and the topic is one that international students can easily relate to. The site is easy to navigate through and includes audio in mp3 file format that is quick to download. Fun, but educational activities are included with each part of the story. I would use this website as an excellent vocabulary builder for my learners. The stories even come complete with a PDF version for each. I would definitely recommend this website to ESL teachers!

"Wacky Web Tales" Review

Name of the Web Site: http://www.eduplace.com/tales/index.html

Level and Skill: [Level 1-2] Identifying parts of speech

Interactive? Yes

ESL or Non-ESL? Non-ESL

What Makes it Good? Although this website is intended for young, non-ESL learners, it would be a great online resource for reviewing parts of speech for low-level ESL learners. Essentially, it is an online equivalent to Mad-Libs. It is easy to navigate through and very clear to understand. It helps the students understand what nouns, adjectives, and verbs, etc. are and even offers detailed explainations of the terms. There are also different topics to chose from every month. Another aspect of this website that ESL learners may enjoy is the humourous aspects of the exercise. Students will read their finished story and realize that the story they have written doesn't really make any sense and sounds silly! One problem with this website is that such an exercise could cause confusion for the learners and they might not understand at the lower levels.