NAU CALL

This site provides lessons for differing level of English speakers (as well as some other languages) They are free and happen at the same times every week. The downside is that there are not very many different lessons and they work through Second Life which is a free virtual world. You have to make an avatar and then go to the virtual site of the lesson in order to participate. This could be very fun for some learners because it is kind of like playing a video game that also has language lessons.

"Learn English online and prepare for IELTS with Languagelab. Practise with a qualified English speaking teacher, students from more than 70 countries, and learn English online." This is the selling pitch for Languagelab.com. It is a good resource for learners who aren't able to get to a classroom or have very limited availability because they have classes 24 hours. The courses are all online, but they do cost money, although not as much as a university class would cost.

StumbleUpon is a website that was not created with language learners in mind, but it can be a useful tool in the language classroom. You can sign up for free, and then you pick interests, such as English, humor, cats, politics, etc. When you hit "Stumble," you get new pages generated based on your interests. There are articles, videos, memes, blogs, pages dedicated to motivating writers, and so on, and most of the content is in English. Though not everything is authentic, there are pages on here that would be useful for reading, listening, and writing especially. The website is fun to use and based on students interests, which should increase student motivation. One activity that can be done with it is to ask students to share with the class (in person or perhaps on a discussion board) one or more websites that they stumbled upon. It would get students to use English to describe what they came across. One downfall for the classroom, though, is that you never know what you will get, so the content may not always be useful or level appropriate. Content is sometimes also more appropriate for teenage or older users.

iTunes has a plethora of podcasts available for free, many of which are for language purposes. Podcasts are audio shows, so to speak, which are uploaded in an episodic fashion. I browsed through some of the language podcasts, including ElementalEnglish.com's "English Pronunciation and Language Lessons," the VOA's "American Stories--Voice of America," and BBC World Service's "English at Work." In the podcast descriptions, the authors usually list language level, and the speakers tend to modify their input so listeners can understand. These types of podcasts are useful for listening practice and for supplementary material in the classroom. There are other podcasts available as well, ranging from Mugglenet's MuggleCast (a Harry Potter themed podcast) to podcasts dedicated to comedians. These podcasts can be useful in the language classroom, as they present more authentic listening material, especially for more advanced learners. Podcasts are a great way for students to engage in their interests while practicing listening, with just one potential set-back: the set up. To access the podcasts, students must download iTunes (if they do not already have it) or it needs to be downloaded onto school computers. From there, one can access the Apple Store (though podcasts are mostly free), and then they can browse the selection. It can be tricky at times to find a good one, but once you do, the podcast can be downloaded onto mp3 players, so students can listen to them on the go, if they want. Note: Because the iTunes store is accessed through iTunes, I could not put a URL. The one above does, however, provide more information on what goes into making a podcast.

At ESL Video, you can create your own quizzes and use other peoples quizzes. You can access beginning, intermediate, high Intermediate quizzes for videos. It was free to sign up, but it is a limited source for borrowing quizzes. These are the guidelines for making quizzes: - If you suspect the video or thumbnail-image violates copyright law, don't use it. ( - Read the "Top 10 Distractors" article by Sharon Yoneda. ( - Read the "Real (Teacher) World Application of ESLvideo.com" article by Sharon Yoneda. ( - Base your quizzes on shorter videos rather than longer videos. ( - Create your quiz first in a Word or text document, then copy / paste into the quiz builder. - Create quizzes with more than five questions. - Check your questions and answers for typos. ( - Music video quizzes - don't skip lines in the lyrics and be sure to add the transcript (often easily found with a Google search). ( - Design distractors that demonstrate mechanical, structural, phonological or othographic relevance. When you create your quiz, you add title, description, tags (past tense, WH questions, Directions), Question for Comments, Thumbnail Image, Video Embed code, level, language, and quiz type.

This site has ideas, printable materials, discussion forums, and employment opportunities. It shows how to teach Film and Video, teach with the Internet, and using songs and music. You can sign up for free and download a limited amount of worksheets per month from www.education.com/worksheets. You can select by Grade or Subject. These are mostly useful for homeschoolers or in regular children's classrooms. It offers content-based ideas with integrated skills including conversation, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and Vocabulary. The Grammar is practiced in communicative settings. ESL PartyLand is a nice home base for Internet tools including up-to-date addresses for Dave's ESL Café, EF Englishtown, Kent's ESL Wonderland, On-line TOEFL Materials, and Randall's CyberListening Lab. It funnels all these sites into one page for easy reference. Other sites it observes as interesting include The All Music Guide, The Discovery Channel on-line, Earth Alert, and Lonely Planet On-line.

"Teaching English with Technology (TEwT) is an online peer-reviewed journal that seeks to disseminate work mainly focused on how technology is being used, or could be used, in TESOL." A journal solely dedicated to teaching English with technology. This is obviously a great resource for our class, but also for our current and future classrooms. From what I've seen, I like this journal because it features ideas and research done in this setting. Very interesting!

"LyricsTraining is an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills, through the music videos and lyrics of your favorite songs." This is another site that is based of the students repeating what was said, but this one uses lyrics of the most popular songs. You can pick between beginner, intermediate, and advance for the settings. It's a nice way to introduce culture as well as language skills. BUT, this is really hard! Thankfully, the music stops if you haven't filled in the blanks. However, this takes away the authenticity. Having taught high school, I'm certain this would be something that age group would be interested in. Something to consider.

"A free website to teach children to read with phonics. For preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Exciting phonics games and online interactive books." I used this site when I was teaching preschool. It could also be used to teach language learners. However, because of the content, it should be used with beginners who are young. When I used this site it was mainly with children between 4 and 5 years old, and they absolutely loved it. Not only were they using a "big person toy" by being on the computer, but they were truly learning valuable language skills.

"ESL, English as a second language, teaching materials and resources for speaking, study and learning. TESOL teachers, schools, and programs." This source is useful for both students and teachers. Students can practice their skills. They can do anything from talking to someone in English or studying for the TEFOL exam. For teachers, this site is an excellent resource. Teachers can find anything from sample lessons to specific textbooks to use in the classroom. I used this site last semester for my practicum, and it almost always had something useful or lead me in the right direction. It's truly a great resource to take advantage of!

Some of the versions of TEDict are free, but others cost anywhere from $0.99 to $2.99. This app plays sections of TED talks and has the user dictates what was said. This is a very drill based app. This would be helpful for advanced students because it relies on knowing every word in the sound clip. TED prides itself on featuring English speakers of all different backgrounds. For the language learner, this means they will have access to sound clips from many different accents. Although it a drill-based activity, it can be useful for advance students wishing to travel because they will also encounter several different accents. It will build confidence in knowing they can understand several different speakers.

This is an interesting slideshare about someone's experience using the Nintendo Wii in their classroom. It definitely seems like it could be beneficial, but also distracting. It's limited because only a certain number of students can be on it at one time. This could be a serious distraction for other students in the classroom. Not to mention, if there is only one teacher in the classroom, it might be difficult to keep both groups on task. There is also the concern with being able to afford this device for your classroom. However, the slideshare mentions that the teacher can apply for grants to purchase one.

"Make a newspaper clipping with your own headline and story. In example to surprise friends and coworkers, send a birthday greeting or to give your next blog entry a special look." This could be a creative way for students to summarize a story or a movie. They could use this tool to write a review including main ideas and a recommendation. The fact that it generates into a mock newspaper clipping is a fun and creative way to share their findings.

I read about WebCorp in Dubravac's chapter 3, and it is definitely worth checking out. You search for words or phrases, and the website pulls up concordance lines (key word(s) in context) for the words as they are found on webpages. The search results also include links to these websites.

Hi, unfortunately, this Google lab seems to be defunct, at least at the moment. However, it really has some great potential for ESL teaching. Essentially, the idea was for Google to go through some of its videos about politics and transcribe the text. Then, someone looking for a video with specific content, phrases, or words could search through the videos without having to rely on the way in which the video was tagged or its title. It's almost like corpus linguistics meets Youtube. You could pick a word or phrase and show a lot of clips about how "real" speakers use it.

This is an excerpt from an International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) publication that shares some case studies and a lesson plan for employing cellphones in the classroom. Students use texting, blogging, QR codes, and call into a Talk Radio style voice blog (podcast/webcast kind of thing).

Simple English Wiki is in the same format of the Wikipedia we know and love, but entries are written in a somewhat simplified manner, making them more accessible to ELLs. It also encourages article creation and editing, without the much higher linguistic/stylistic standards of the mainstream Wiki. I've recommended this to ELLs before as a resource, and I've modeled searches on it in class to show that they really can digest the material.

Memrise is a site similar to Quizlet. For language learning, you can build vocabulary decks and then the site gives you a variety of quiz-type activities to review them. There is some multimedia support (pictures, and sound, if I remember right). It uses a metaphorical "garden" for you to track your progress with each item. An instructor (or individual) can compose a custom deck and share it with students. Also, students (or any other learner) can add information to the vocab item- more definitions, mnenomics, example sentences, etc. I haven't had the chance to use it with a class, but I've played with it for my own language learning. Like most flash card type schemes, if you can make it a habit, it seems to be effective.

A PDF chapter where Son explains the 15 criteria in this model for evaluating language learning websites. Checklist at the end of the document.

Checklists for evaluating language learning software by the National Foreign Language Resource Center in Hawaii. The focus is on courseware, but the information is still valuable.