Group items tagged

A huge list of materials online related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, and general study skills. Teachers need to review and select from sites to use them effectively in an academic program. Prepared by Christine Bauer-Ramazani for her Academic Skills courses.

This is a set of online tutorials and exercises for academic writing students. They explain the nature of the academic paragraph, including the importance of the topic sentence, how to order a paragraph, and typical transition words and signals within the paragraph. Written by Elizabeth Hanson-Smith.

This discussion of a very important aspect of academic writing is one of the most explanatory I've seen. Please refer also to the tutorial and exercise, "Constructing the Paragraph" .

"If we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. By incorporating students' strengths and weakness into authentic learning experiences from the beginning of each unit, while at the same time including opportunities for feedback, metacognition and revision, we promote a variety of cognitive and emotional benefits that can lead to academic success. " A thoughtful description of ways to successfully integrate learner feedback into the assessment process.

Prezi allows you to create stunning presentations online. There is a free version, or a better quality academic free version with more features. Excellent for teaching content, and it is more like a video than an ordinary old ppt.

"What strategy can double student learning gains? According to 250 empirical studies, the answer is formative assessment, defined by Bill Younglove as "the frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding in order to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately." A great short article to make one aware of the nature and value of formative assessment. Unlike summative assessment, which evaluates student learning according to a benchmark, formative assessment monitors student understanding so that kids are always aware of their academic strengths and learning gaps. Meanwhile, teachers can improve the effectiveness of their instruction, re-teaching if necessary. "When the cook tastes the soup," writes Robert E. Stake, "that's formative; when the guests taste the soup, that's summative." Formative assessment can be administered as an exam. But if the assessment is not a traditional quiz, it falls within the category of alternative assessment."

A helpful guide to using Wikipedia and other resources for beginning researcher-students. Also mentions EducationWorld and the use of search engines.

This might be an improvement over Google Docs for collaborative writing, as revisions are clearly labelled by color for each participant. The teacher could keep track of who was doing what.

R. Byrne: "One of the most useful new Add-ons for Google Documents is the EasyBib Bibliography Creator. The EasyBib Bibliography Creator makes it easy to properly cite resources and format a bibliography in APA, MLA, or Chicago style. The screenshots below provide directions for the process." This can also be a learning process, as the student will have to figure out what format is most appropriate -- and collect the resources first.

Another good article in the series by R. Cayley. Be sure to follow up with Constructing the Paragraph , which has good exercises for your students on transitions.

"A range of ELT publications available in pdf to download. These include Milestones - a series of classic ELT texts published online as part of the British Council's 75th anniversary celebrations." A real bargain if you have ink and printer--free books in pdf.

Describes ways to use images, video, music, voice, and text in teaching literature with advanced level students to improve writing and pronunciation skills. Students engaged in online discussion through commenting and VoiceThread. By Jane Petring.

A fabulous tool for socio-cultural studies of any country. Click on a country to look at a wide variety of factors: population, social indicators, economy, technical networks, environment, and millenium goals. Fascinating place for students to do comparisons and get info for reports. Or for teachers to learn more about their country of residence.