the internet for English Language teachers
this is the annotated version (site still in progress):
click here for the simple version (site names & URLs only)
using the list
click on the blue text in order to go to a website
you need an internet connection in order to do this
downloading and reading pdf files
you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader® installed in order to download and read any pdf files that are available on the various sites
(pdf = portable document format)
you can download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader® free:
click on the icon below
or go to www.adobe.comon-line video and audio
to view on-line video, or listen to on-line audio, you may need to install RealOne Player® from www.real.com
or Windows Media Player® from www.microsoft.com
still learning how to use the internet in teaching?
help is at hand - get Macmillan’s excellent i-teach booklets 1 & 2 from the onestopenglish web site at www.onestopenglish.com
overview
the websites are arranged in the following categories
course book support/resources/companions
examinations (ELT)
language
learner-oriented
literature
media
on-line learner dictionaries
publishers (ELT)
songs
teacher development
teacher resources (ELT)
teacher resources (non-ELT)
teacher-training & teacher-development institutions (UK)
teachers’ magazines & journals
travel related
webguides
course book support/resources/companions
Cutting Edge companion
www.longman-elt.com/cuttingedge
free resources for learners and teachers, at 5 levels. Plus links to all Longman’s other companion websites and learner dictionaries.
Get Real! resource site
www.getrealenglish.com
classroom activities with teacher’s guides, plus archive of materials & activities. You have to register - it’s free.
Gold First Certificate
Gold CAE
Gold Proficiency
www.longman-elt.com/gold
for FCE there’s a range of resources for learners and teachers, while for CAE there are unit-themed links to external, non-ELT, sites. Not very much for CPE.
Inside Out resource site
www.insideout.net
you have to register (free) to receive e-lessons. There are resource packs of activities at 3 levels, plus a very useful web guide and links to external non-ELT sites.
Longman Companion sites
www.longman-elt.com/cws/index.html
this gives links to all Longman’s companion sites, many of which are AmE (= American English). There are almost 50 sites in all.
Market Leader
www.market-leader.net
this Business English site provides free resources and tests, plus links to more Business English sites
Objective First Certificate
http://uk.cambridge.org/elt/objective
I could find very few activities or resources here
Opportunities companion
www.longman-elt.com/opportunities/
you have to register (free) in order to access 5 levels of activities and materials for teachers and learners. Lots of activities available to download.
Ready for First Certificate
www.readyforfc.com
downloadable exam papers and worksheets in pdf format. A strongly teacher-oriented site, with good webguide to external (non-ELT) sites.
Reward resource site
www.reward-english.com
another very useful site with a lot of downloadable and useful worksheets at five levels
Super Bus (YL)
www.the-bus-stop.net
activities and resources for teachers of YL (Young Learners)
Way Ahead (YL)
www.wayahead-english.com
teacher resources and monthly e-mailed worksheets for Young Learners, plus links to external sites
examinations (ELT)
ALTE Association of Language Testers in Europe
www.alte.org
this organisation represents the testing of 24 European languages - see the site for comprehensive information
Cambridge ESOL On-Line
www.cambridgeESOL.org
the home of “Cambridge exams”. A must-have site for anyone teaching for these exams (KET/PET/FCE/CAE/CPE/BEC) as it provides detailed information in the form of downloadable exam handbooks (for each exam separately), sample papers, statistics, research notes, exam centres world-wide, etc). Plus information on their teacher-training schemes (CELTA, DELTA, CELTYL, ICELT). Essential site for exam teachers.
IELTS International English Language Testing System
www.ielts.org
these exams are mainly of interest to learners who wish to study in an English-speaking country. IELTS is recognised by universities in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, and increasingly in the US.
LCCIEB
www.lccieb.com
I found the opening pages hard to navigate and rather user unfriendly. Once I’d worked how how to access the site, I found information about their range of vocational and language qualifications. The homepage and site navigation need a redesign, in my opinion.
TOEFL OnLine
www.toefl.org
TOEFL = Test of English as a Foreign Language: their site gives information about the exam, where it can be taken etc
TOEIC Online
www.toeic.com
TOEIC = Test of English for International Communication: their site gives information about the exam, where it can be taken etc
Trinity College London
www.trinitycollege.co.uk
find out about their ESOL exams and TESOL certificates (= English for Speakers of Other Languages, and Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages respectively)
language
Ask Oxford
www.askoxford.com
here you will find good resources and helpful information on language-related topics (eg global English, the history of English), plus very useful links to other sites
A Word A Day
www.wordsmith.org
a very nice site for advanced language users - rare, weird, and otherwise interesting words. Increase your wordpower!
British National Corpus search page
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html
a great site that allows you to check collocations quickly by accessing the BNC free search facility
Common Errors in English
www.wsu.edu
focuses mainly on lexical confusions, and does not set out to be a guide to grammar. The accent is on American English.
Dictionaries
www.dictionary.com
provides links to dictionaries, translating tools, writing resources etc
Heinle grammar
http://eslgrammar.heinle.com
US-English on-line grammar resources
Internet Grammar
www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar
free (for the moment) and a very thorough academic grammar of English designed and written exclusively for the web. Recommended.
Macmillan web language links
www.macmillandictionary.com/weblanguage
very good collection of links to sites relating to language and language issues - also recommended
Onelook Dictionaries
www.onelook.com
searches for 4,877,206 words in the 842 dictionaries that are indexed
Online Style Guide
www.ece.utexas.edu
guide to spelling, punctuation and more
Plain English Campaign
www.plainenglish.co.uk
excellent site (non-ELT) which promotes clarity and simplicity in language - very good advice on writing business letters and reports, plus glossaries of jargon “translated” into simple English. Highly recommended.
Verbatim
www.verbatimmag.com
an online magazine of language and linguistics for the layperson. Archive of past issues, and good links to other sites.
Vocabula Language links
www.vocabula.com
fabulous site which will keep you busy for hours - great range of articles and resources (including dimwitticisms), and a truly stunning links site here. Very highly recommended.
Word Detective
www.word-detective.com
is the online version of The Word Detective, a newspaper column answering readers' questions about words and language, written by Evan Morris
Word Origins
www.wordorigins.org
site that will help you to trace where words come from - often fascinating and very informative. Provides good links to other resources.
World Wide Words
www.worldwidewords.com
register (free) in order to receive a weekly e-mail covering current language issues, queries, neologisms etc. Good archive. Helps you to keep in touch with English around the world and across the centuries.
learner-oriented
ARELS
www.arels.org.uk
ARELS is the Association of Recognised Language Services - learners (and their teachers) can search here for a private accredited English language school in the UK
BBC WS - Learning English
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
a very useful site indeed. Highlights include Words in the News and Business Words in the News - the transcript of a current BBC news story, plus explanations of key vocabulary, and an audio link so that you can hear the actual broadcast. And there’s an archive of hundreds of these.
Bell English
www.bellenglish.com
register first (free) in order to access the site, which includes FCE help, online practice activities, discussion forum etc
British Council (learners)
www.learnenglish.org.uk
free resources include vocabulary, songs, games, YL
Dave’s ESL Café
www.eslcafe.com
this site provides a directory of web addresses, divided into categories - it helps learners & teachers to find a particular type of site rather than immediately providing any activities
English Club
www.englishclub.com
resources include grammar, vocabulary, games etc
English Listening
www.englishlistening.com
there is a free guest area, but the main site is members only - and very pricey ($60 for just 3 months!)
English Live
www.englishlive.co.uk
another pay site
English Page
www.englishpage.com
free, with lots of resources for learners. Recommended.
TEFL Farm
www.teflfarm.com
this is also a directory, helping you to find more specific ELT sites (see Dave’s ESL Cafe)
literature
Penguin Classics
www.penguinclassics.com
very wide range of titles, though the resources are sometimes rather meagre. The comments are pitched at high school/university level, so it’s really a site for teachers to get background information and critical insight rather than anything immediately applicable in the ELT classroom.
SparkNotes
www.sparknotes.com
very useful indeed - covers a reasonable range of titles (including many favourites), and gives good support to these - plot and chapter-by-chapter summaries etc. There’s a separate section for Shakespeare. Explore the rest of the site for other subjects.
York Notes Online
www.yorknotes.com
vast range of study guides in both book and e-book formats - around £4 per title. You can download some sample materials, but essentially this a pay site.
media
you may have to register, but the services are free - and The NYT, The Independent, The Guardian and the BBC will send you a daily e-mail of headlines on request
Arts & Letters Daily
www.aldaily.com
a wonderful site with superb links to newspapers, magazines, book reviews and broadcasters from around the English-speaking world. Plus featured articles, comment, editorials, columnists, op-eds etc etc. Enough to keep you reading for a year and a day. Highly recommended.
BBC Online
www.bbc.co.uk/home/today
links to all BBC’s programmes - never again will you wonder what you’ve missed in Eastenders...
BBC News
news.bbc.co.uk
a wonderful site for the resourceful teacher - the stories are written in a spoken register (since the BBC is a broadcaster!) so you get a different kind of English to that found in the press. Fabulous archive - you can trace stories back over four or more years in some cases. Enormous range of topics - not just “news” but health, education, business etc. And don’t neglect the visuals - download these to brighten up your reading texts etc. A top ten site.
BBC Radio
www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
homesick for Radio Oxford? Radio 1/2/3/4/5? Miss the M25 traffic reports? No longer ... listen live, on-line. Essential.
BBC World Service
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice
a section of the main BBC site, the World Service site provides a rather different range of stories and gives a non-Anglocentric view of the world. Essential.
CNN
www.cnn.com
extensive links to CNN’s various news categories
Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk
comprehensive site, with a lot more than just news - travel, books & authors (a very useful resource) plus a photo archive. You can register to have a daily e-mail of news headlines. Link to The Observer, its sister Sunday publication. Free, and recommended.
Independent
www.independent.co.uk
a wide range of categories, including travel, books and a photo archive, in addition to news and comment. Free.
New York Times
www.nytimes.com
another very comprehensive site - again, a lot more than simply news. And again, you can ask to have a daily e-mail of headlines. You have to register. Free - but note that you have to pay to read/download any item a week after its publication date. Recommended.
on-line learner dictionaries
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
http://dictionary.cambridge.org
on-line word search, plus worksheets and activities
Longman Dictionary Online
www.longman-elt.com/webdictionary.html
on-line word search
Macmillan English Dictionary
www.macmillandictionary.com
on-line word search, plus worksheets and activities for learners, as well as tips for teachers and language-related resources. Impressive.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
www.oup.com
on-line word search, plus downloadable exercises and worksheets, and thematic crosswords
publishers (ELT)
CUP
www.cambridge.org/elt
perhaps it’s me, but I’ve always found their site to be slow, buggy, and with a number of dead links. Disappointing, especially from a major publisher.
Delta
www.deltapublishing.co.uk
a small publisher with some interesting titles
Longman
www.longman-elt.com
mega-site with masses to explore - lots of resources for learners and teachers. Recommended.
Heinle
www.heinle.com
this publisher has taken over LTP, whose titles are therefore now found here
Macmillan
www.macmillaneducation.com
wonderful site with vast range of resources for learners and teachers. Link to onestopenglish. Top ten site - very highly recommended.
OUP
www.oup.com/elt
free resources for learners and teachers. Link to the Oxford Teachers’ Club.
Penguin
www.penguinenglish.com
good range of free downloadable materials and resources
Summertown
www.summertown.co.uk
another small publisher some BEC and business-oriented titles, and useful downloads
songs
Lyrics World
www.lyricsworld.com
this sites provides a quick and pretty successful search for song lyrics
SongFile
www.songfile.com
seems to focus on song titles than lyrics - useful for that, nevertheless
Song Lyrics
www.songlyrics.com
appears to be Google in disguise - my searches for lyrics simply used Google to find web pages. Perhaps I’m missing something.
teacher development
British Council
www.britcoun.org
Developing Teachers
www.developingteachers.com
Digital Education Network
www.edufind.com
Education Guardian
http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl
ELT Forum
www.eltforum.com
ELTECS
www.britishcouncil.org/english/eltecs
English as a 2nd language
http://esl.about.com/mbody/htm
IATEFL
www.iatefl.org
Teacher Development
www.teacherdevelopment.net
Teachers’ Club
www.oup.com/elt/global/teachersclub/products
resources, and links to Oxford product sites (= support sites for OUP titles etc). You have to register, but it’s free.
teacher resources (ELT)
BBC
www.teachingenglish.org.uk
Bell English
www.bellenglish.com
British Council (teachers)
www.britishcouncil.org
Cambridge ESOL Teaching Resources
www.cambridgeESOL.org/teach
a brand-new site from Cambridge Examinations, with numerous practical activities for use with exam classes. At the moment, only the FCE site is live - others, including BEC, are scheduled to go live soon. Recommended for exam course teachers.
Dave’s ESL Café
www.eslcafe.com
this site provides a directory of web addresses, divided into categories - it helps learners & teachers to find a particular type of site rather than immediately providing any activities
Dave Sperling's Internet Activity Workbook
http://cwx.prenhall.com
ELT web
www.eltweb.com/liason/
rather like Dave’s ESL Cafe, this site provides links to ELT sites in a range of categories
English Club
www.englishclub.com
in addition to the learners’ zone, there’s a zone for teachers with free resources
English to Go
www.english-to-go.com
Longman Business
www.longman-elt.com/business
One Stop English
www.onestopenglish.com
a great site - extremely easy to use, lots of good, useful and practical materials to download, constantly expanding: one of the top ten sites!
Penguin Readers
www.penguinreaders.com
teacher resources (non-ELT)
About
www.about.com
a vast site with a whole spectrum of categories (which in turn have their own subdivisions) - you could spend your whole life here! Sections range from background resources for literature through ELT to a list of internet hoaxes to beware of. Plus the incomparable urban myths section (drying the pet rabbit in the microwave - is it really true?).
Classroom Clipart
http://classroomclipart.com
clip art for teachers: use the clips to brighten up worksheets and handouts, and to help teach/practise vocabulary items
Corbis Picture Library
www.corbis.com
some of the pictures might be too small, so that when you enlarge them digitally there’s a drastic loss of quality. However, there are lots of images to choose from and download, in dozens of categories.
Discovery School
http://school.discovery.com
a US education site for school teachers - not specifically for ELT
Disney Clipart
www.disneyclipart.com
very specific - but great for both YL and adult classes. (NB: there’s a reading activity on Disney at onestopenglish.com)
Encarta Online
http://encarta.msn.com
an encyclopaedic site - not designed for ELT at all, but with a wealth of material and there is enormous potential for creating your own theme-based lessons
Famous people
www.biography.com
another non-ELT site, with similar potential for making your own lesson materials
www.google.com
simply THE best way to search the internet - but do be specific when entering your key word(s): typing in simply English will generate a list of 61 million web pages. Note that Google provides not a list of web sites per se, but a list of web pages = pages on the internet containing the selected key word(s)
Macmillan web reference links
www.macmillandictionary.com/webreference
a handy site from Macmillan with very useful suggestions
Microsoft® Design Gallery Live
http://dgl.microsoft.com
more clip art is included in this very extensive Microsoft site. You need MS Word or Office installed in order to download clips.
Puzzlemaker
www.puzzlemaker.com
you’ll have to register (it’s free) in order to use this very handy site - make crosswords, word mazes, word squares etc. Clever!
ThinkQuest Library
www.thinkquest.org
another non-ELT site with great potential for the creative teacher
Web Clip Art
http://webclipart.about.com
even more clip art
teachers’ magazines & journals
English Language Gazette
www.elgazette.com
English Teaching professional
www.etprofessional.com
ELT Journal
www.oup.co.uk/eltj
teacher-training & teacher-development institutions (UK)
Bell Schools
www.bell-schools.ac.uk
International House
www.ihlondon.com
NILE
www.nile-elt.com
Pilgrims
www.pilgrims.co.uk
travel related
British Tourist Authority
www.visitbritain.com
Lonely Planet on-line
www.lonelyplanet.com
Rough Guides
www.roughguides.com
Time Out
www.timeout.com
web guides
BBC WebGuide
www.bbc.co.uk/webguide
a very extensive set of links to web sites in a wide range of categories. This is the site that opened my eyes when I first logged on to the internet in 1999... recommended.
