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This site, though the interface is about as awesome as Compleat Lexical Tutor, provides a simple self-study tool for academically-oriented students. This resource is appropriate for TOEFL and IELTS preparation, as well as advanced IEP courses. The benefits of this website are the inclusion of a pronunciation and definition for each word, as well as gap-fill exercises to practice using each word in context. The major limitation of this site is that the exercises are only gap-fill.

English Daily is an interesting site for English learners because of its vast array of resources. For learners who have an interest in learning about English idioms, learners can discover the definitions of idioms and read examples of them in context. To learn about English language culture or for practicing reading fluency aloud, the Movie Lines section of the site contains portions of dialogue from popular movies. To practice comprehension questions, the comprehension section allows learners to read a passage and to answer questions about it. While the website has many advantages and may appeal to younger learners and business professionals alike, the presentation of the content is not very aesthetically pleasing, and the site is full of advertisements that may distract learners from the content they are attempting to learn. Additionally, the site is not very interactive beyond the news section that allows learner to listen to a news story and to complete cloze exercises. Furthermore, the answers to exercises are presented on the same page as the exercises themselves, so clearly a learner would need to be rather autonomous to use the site effectively. To fully incorporate the site into a classroom, a teacher would benefit from creating supplemental materials such as a learning log in order to track student learning.

My English Lab by Pearson is a supplemental site to the North Star Listening and Speaking and Reading and Writing textbooks. With an access code provided in textbooks, students can access a class website. Similar to BlackBoard Learn, My English Lab provides students with a calendar for assignments and enables teachers to upload content. More than that, My English Lab has many related and supplemental resources pertaining to each unit in the corresponding textbooks. For example, when covering unit one in NorthStar 3 about Advertising on the Air, My English Lab gives students access to all of the recordings from the unit that a teacher might use in class. It also gives students flash card decks with the vocabulary for the unit and sometimes has extra exercises for the students to complete. Depending on the exercises, My English Lab will score these exercises to give students grades. The disadvantages of the site primarily relate to logistics. When students by used copies of their textbooks, the books might be missing the access code. Also, students must have access to computers to make use of the site outside of class time.

English-Guide.org is an incredible website, albeit it looks like it is designed for children. That said, if you're teaching children English learners, great; you're all set to go. If you're teaching adults, this site could be used as a respite from the intensity of intensive English programs. While many of the resources on the site are language learning games that take the form of drill-and-kill exercises, not all of the material is so rudimentary. For instance, the Career/Business section under Listening links to many listening passages at elllo.org (another useful site for listening and speaking teachers). On elllo, learners can listen to business passages, such as one on personality traits and answer comprehension questions. It would be tempting to let a class full of learners loose on this site to see what resources they would gravitate toward. The major categories of resources Vocabulary, Listening, Grammar, and Others, and within these categories, like I mentioned, there are both games and more sophisticated exercises at the learners' fingertips.

Claire Siskin's site gives a rather comprehensive list of mobile apps for language learning. The apps categorized according social networking apps, instructional apps, repurposed apps, make your own exercises and general references. For anyone interested in Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), this is a great place to begin experimenting with different applications.

Sorry, this resource isn't free, but if your ESL program decides they can spare just $5-6/week, then both students and teachers can use the same password to access news stories as well as features such as audio recordings of stories, exercises, crossword puzzles, and definitions of key vocabulary. I taught a weekly current events ESL class for adults, and students loved News For You. Each week there are 7 new stories, and several students would read/listen to all the stories before coming to class. I would pick one or two stories to focus on during the 90-minute class. I made my own activities, but students who wanted to could do the online exercises at a library or community center computer. However, because the stories are written for adults who are learning to read (either ABE or ESL students), the content is not as authentic as a regular newspaper. But the fact that it is motivating and accessible to students and encourages lively discussions in class makes it a nice resource.

This website has many games for grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, as well as games that teachers can use to get all classmates involved at once (e.g., Jeopardy). The games are meant to be supplementary. Some disadvantages to the website are that the pronunciation exercises require that students be familiar with the IPA, that the exercises are largely drills, and that there are many ads on the website that could be distracting. However, if students need additional practice with a specific grammatical, vocabulary, or pronunciation item, then this website could be useful.

Live Mocha is an online multi-language community that can be used in a number of ways: Members can write and/or video chat to speakers of their target language, complete practice exercises in all skill areas, and record themselves speaking so other members can review submissions and offer suggestions (if they do not want to do a live video chat). As a teacher, I believe this website is a great resource, especially to supplement in-class materials. Students can sign up (membership is free) and communicate regularly with native speakers of their target language. For a reading and writing class, this website would be a fairly easy one to use in order to set up pen pals. For a listening and speaking class, the role plays and video dialogues could be useful.

Livemocha is a site I personally use to improve my L2. You can learn for free through an exchange program of helping others and in return they help you. On the other hand you can sign up for a personal tutor for a fee.

A resource for free online English lessons and exercises. A place for learning English in class or at home! Grade school (K-12), General Educational Development (GED), English as a Second Language (ESL), and all interested in advancing their knowledge of the English language should be able to benefit from this website. We offer a large variety of accurate and concise skill building resources geared towards a range of ability levels. We hope you find our resources visually appealing, straightforward, easy to locate, and able to capture the essence of the English language. No registration is required to access these resources.

This website is free for students and schools across the U.S. and around the world. There are seven levels of instruction: blue, red, yellow, green, purple, orange, and violet. LearnAmericanEnglishOnline.com has been providing videos, lessons, exercises, quizzes, and advice since 2003.

My blurb: I checked out this site based on Heidi Wright's recommendation. You do have to pay for a subscription, unfortunately, but the newspaper is very readable, the layout is nice, and it comes with teacher resources and activities. Heidi's blurb: I have just finished a research project on a ESOL suitable newspaper called Newsademic. I send my PPT to the company and they sent me a free subscription. They also sent me a link to pass on to friends so they can get a free two month subscription. For those of you beginning to teach or those going overseas, it is cool. The newspaper, which is written for 9-16 year old native English speakers, works with intermediate level and above (we have used articles in level 4 at PIE ) and covers lots of current international topics. No pop culture and intentionally balanced opinions. British or American edition available for spelling. The newspaper comes with two sets of exercises and is delivered every two weeks. The Flesch-Kincaid level runs from 6-11 with an average of 8.3 and the Lexile level runs from 860 to 1150 with an average of about 950-1020. You can make as many copies for your school as you want. To buy a year subscription is $32. Their blurb: Newsademic - a Children's newspaper used for educational resources, home schooling and English study

Eview.net is a site for ESL teachers that could be helpful in a listening and speaking class. The site has stream-able mp3s of interviews with speakers who have various English accents. Each exercise comes with a gloss and comprehension questions as well. This might be a good way to emphasize English as a global language.

"Quizzes, tests, exercises and puzzles to help you learn English as a Second Language (ESL). This project of The Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org) has thousands of contributions by many teachers." This site offers quizzes and crosswords for students learning English as well as bilinbual quizzes that take the students first language into account. It has a pretty large bilingual quiz base that uses many of the worlds languages from Zulu to Spanish to Arabic. It seems to be a little childish looking and there aren't a ton of quizzes to choose from but it could definitely be a good resource for extra practice for students.

When I opened a lesson on grammar, it had a lesson with a Q & A section below it where students can check their own answers. A daily vocab word is also on the page. Lessons include grammar, reading, vocab, listening, pronunciation, slang/idioms. From the Website: "Learning English as a second language (ESL) is not always easy, but it should be fun. 5 Minute English has been designed to give you short and easy explanations and exercises. You can also find answers to questions that other students have had about confusing things in English. This is under the Question and Answer section. Take your time and come back to 5 Minute English often. You'll be surprised at how much English you can learn with a little dedication."

Lots of free explanations and exercises to help you perfect your English grammar.

These are really interesting videos that you could assign. Students have the option to read subtitles (sometimes up to 30 or so languages in subtitles). They could listen and read in their language and then in the target language. Comprehension could improve because students already know the content. Good listening exercise, too. This video is called "What adults can learn from kids." One of my favorites is about dance - of course, it's called "Dance vs. powerpoint…." That title makes me smile! http://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal.html Another one on teaching: http://www.ted.com/playlists/11/the_creative_spark.html