Web Resources for Language Teaching and Learning

This site provides listening activities for the begining, intermediate, and advanced ESL learners about several topics such as university life, daily activities, field trips, family gatherings, etc. Each of the activities provides the learner with a 'pre' listening activity in which they are asked to reflect about the topic: guessing what the listening selection will be about, and what type of information to expect. In addition, each activity is accompanied by a multiple-choice quiz that students can complete while they are listening to the recording. Scripts to the recording are available and they are shown on a separate window. Post-test activities provide related information in form of a 'closure' activity. Links to websites with related information are listed in this section.

Although the recordings cover a great variety of topics, some of them sound a little artificial. This site is an excellent resource to expose ESL students to native-like listening samples while providing them with opportunities to test their understanding in an online environment.

English Listening Lab, or ELLO is a "free online listening resource of over 1,000 listening activities designed especially for ESL and EFL students and teachers". The activities in this website provide visual support to all listening activities in the form of an image or a video. Interactive quizzes accompany each of the activities. These quizzes are cloze quizzes that students can complete as they listen to the recording. The missing words in the quizzes are given in some cases as multiple choice items. The quizzes are very engaging in that they keep the student's attention at all times since the quizzes' items are spreaded throughout the listening activity. An important feature in this website is the identification of the dialect spoken by the participants in the video or recording. A flag of the speaker's country of origin appears along with a picture of the speaker.

With the increasing popularity of podcasts, Grammar Girl is an excellent resource to provide ESL learners with a fun and exciting resource to improve writing skills and language use in general. Although originally created for native English speakers enrolled in high school English courses, Grammar Girl has rapidly gained popularity in ESL and EFL courses as well. This website provides advice on the usage of particular words (i.e. explaining the meaning of words and its proper usage) or clarification on grammar points (e.g. definition of parts of speech, common grammar mistakes). The podcasts are intended for inexperienced writers who make common mistakes for that school level. The podcasts are available for free to download. Users can also subscribe to the podcasts so that they can have access to any new files. Transcripts of the recordings for each of the podcasts are also available. A highlight of this site is the opportunity given to subscribers and followers to submit questions they might have on a topic related to language use, writing conventions, or grammar that are later addressed in one of the podcasts.

In this interactive website, children ages 8 to 12 discover the challenges that bilingual (Spanish - English) and bicultural children have while living in the US. The website portrays the lifes of Maya and Miguel, hispanic descendant twins who are eager to learn from the two cultures in which they are immersed: that of their parents, and the American culture. This site provides a very valuable source of information for the teaching of cultural values and cultural awareness. The site provides interactive games that are intended to develop awareness of cultural differences while promoting acceptance of other groups' ideas, customs, and language. The site includes resources for teachers and for parents with ideas on how to integrate some of the activities in the classroom and ideas for family activities.

A remarkable feature in this site is the integration of blogs. Users can post comments and reactions to the various activities and episodes. The sharing of ideas in the blogs allows for users to learn about the way other people think about given topics. Another interesting feature is the use of Spanish words along with English. In addition, the Spanish version of the site is available for parents who do not speak English, or for children who have little proficiency in English or who prefer to use the site in Spanish. Furthermore, the Spanish version may also be used by non-Spanish speakers who want to learn some Spanish.

Exploratorium is one the world's most visited sites. The site contains a collection of 18 thousand award winning webpages that cover a wide variety of topics related to the science of art and human perception. The site was created out of the desire to expose museum visitors to a more engaging, realistic view of natural phenomena. Most of the pages in this site are highly interactive: they provide the user with visual (imagery, video, text) and audio representations of the discussed phenomena. The site focuses on providing the user with an exploratory resource that utilizes state-of-the-art technology to promote informal learning. Most of the information reported dennotes a scientific explanation of common phenomena: playing sports, weather conditions, etc. The explanations are supported with video recordings made by expert scientists in the field.