NAU CALL

This is a free concordancing program that you can use for your own work or with students. Other paid concordancers include MonoConc (http://www.athel.com/mono.html) and Wordsmith (http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/)

The tags to use w/ the BYU corpora can be found here: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html

This is an intersting website as it offfers Ss opportunities to learn new vocabulary using their L1

This article discusses the different ways that you might use QR codes in the classroom. There is also a tutorial video explaining how to create qr code stickers that students scan to recall what homework they are assigned.

It looks like the site busyteacher has lots of resources and links for...busy teachers. There are articles, worksheets, and links to seasonal activities. I'm posting this particular list of photo activities because (a) I think a lot of our students take pictures anyway and we could include them in the photo-gathering aspect of these projects, and (b) I think a lot of these activities can be adapted and incorporated into digital stories or grockit videos (or other CALL activities). Photo activities can provide context for teaching grammar or situational uses of language.

If you were in listening/speaking last spring, you may remember this website I shared. It has lots of videos for learning American English pronunciation. I used it all the time while I was teaching pronunciation classes in Nebraska. At the time I didn't have any background in phonetics and was trying to teach myself. I found this site to be helpful for students as well as for novice teachers like myself. I used the videos to supplement our textbook (Clear Speech or Pronunciation Pairs). Students who had access to the internet could practice at home too. The videos show some close-ups of her mouth while making the sounds, so I brought small mirrors to class for students to use and watch their own mouths (not all students were comfortable doing this though). The site is well organized and you can easily find the sound/topic/skill you're looking for. You could also use the videos to create Grockit activities.

online resources for CBI

I love this website. Here's why: to use many online resources, you have to provide an email address. And then you have to check your email to validate that you gave the company a real email address. If you are a teacher, simply looking at resources and you don't feel like submitting your re email address, just use 10 Minute Mail. I used it today to sign up for Grockit and Socrative. The website gives you an email address that lasts for 10 minutes. If you have to wait for another website to email you, just wait for the email to show up. (The page autorefreshes, I believe.) Then you're all set.

Virtual tourist allows you to plan trips all over the world. DuBravac chapter 5 discusses consensus activities on pages 92-93 and lists a trip-planning task as one example. After choosing a continent, learners could choose a particular country (or, the teacher could assign each group a country), and then the site offers pictures, pros and cons of traveling in this country, lists of attractions, reviews of hotels and restaurants, etc... The interactive maps, pictures, videos, and comments/reviews from other users make this site pretty engaging. I could see it being a bit overwhelming for some learners, though, since there is so much information. But if a teacher wants to use one website for a trip-planning task, this one looks good!

"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.

This site has a list of hundreds of the most common mistakes that learners make when learning English that students could reference when they get feedback from their teachers. It is a little messy looking as a website so I wouldn't use it as a teacher or use it a lot but it is a good quick reference if students can't remember the difference say between explicitly and implicitly.

"These video chapters and web resources will assist students with their written and verbal communication skills. Content areas included are grammar, composition, and mechanics from Kindergarten to Grade 12." This site can also help supplement classroom material for students still in the k-12 grades who need to get better at their English language proficiency. This could especially be helpful for students who enter the American school system who speak a different L1 at home.

"Learn English with our free tools for ESL students, including English language references, activities including tests and polls, and articles on English usage. Our ESL forum is the perfect place get help learning English, where people are online to answer your questions 24 hours a day." This site can be very useful for students who need to practice English for Specific Purposes because it has like a Business English section and common idioms section. I don't feel that this site would replace a classroom very well but could easily be used as supplementary to a classroom and a place where students can ask questions if they don't want to bother their teachers.

This site is a good resource for listening practice. The site offers a proficiency test so that students can figure out what level of listenings they should start with. Then they have a page full of different recordings from English speakers all over the world so that students can get more familiar with different accents. Finally the students can take a test that will tell them whether or not they understood the passage.

This website has multiple things to hep both students and teachers. Students can work on different skills from grammar to pronunciation on this website and teachers can get ideas and connect with other teachers through forums. Also this site posts ESL jobs so if a teacher is looking for a job this website is a good resource.

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.

Wordle isn't necessarily ESL focused, but it does do fun things with language. Teachers can use this application to create vocabulary word splashes that are visually appealing to students, or teachers can let students play with their own words. For example, students can input an essay and world will pick out the most frequent words and put them into a cool design. It's a simple and easy way to manipulate language.

Jena, I'm glad you posted this. I think that this has some great potential for introducing vocabulary in the pre- or -post phases of a lesson for different skills or content classes. I like that you can choose different fonts, # of words that can be displayed and the direction of displayed words. You can also embed this into blogs and wikis. For a good blog post on using word clouds in the classroom, you might want to check out Nic Peachey's post on this subject: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-word-clouds-in-efl-esl.html As an aside, in my opinion this guy is perhaps one of the most active technology/CALL ESL people on the web. I get a lot of great ideas from reading his blog posts and other resources.

This is very interesting.. It can be used by teachers of vocabulary and writing.. I like the fact that it can be used ina number of ways. Thanks Jena

Jennifer ESL could be used in the classroom or for self-study. I really like her videos because she goes into detail about pronunciation. I think she gives explanations that are thorough, but comprehensible for beginning students. I would suggest that students use this resource outside of class for additional practice.

While browsing the language learning resources from various universities, I came across these links for international broadcasts on Indiana University's website. There is also a link to SCOLA, a non-profit that provides authentic foreign language learning resources. You can get a SCOLA app or web subscription. In terms of evaluating foreign language news sites, I'd say to use similar criteria as you would in evaluating other classroom activities. Does the content relate to class material and/or student interests? Is the level appropriate (vocabulary, pace, etc)? Is the length appropriate, and can you justify using class time to watch or read this material?