Listen to English around the World. Click on any of the flags below to hear accents from some of the main English-speaking countries. Hear more English accents. One of the best ways of improving your English is to listen to radio news and discussion in English on your computer. Using the links below you can get instant access to English language radio news programmes wherever you are in the world, without a radio. Perfect for listening practice and improving your listening skills. Listen to the Bible in MP3 format Listen to film soundclips
Giving Opinions Four Corners ESL/EFL Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 25 Minutes In this fun class activity, students practice expressing and defending their opinions. The teacher places a different sign (Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree) in each corner of the classroom. Then, the teacher reads a statement that requires the students to give an opinion, e.g. Celebrities earn too much money. Four Corners.PDF Our Opinions ESL/EFL Writing and Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 40 Minutes In this productive teaching activity, students practice expressing and giving reasons for opinions, and writing simple sentences summarizing the results of a questionnaire. Our Opinions.PDF How to improve your English ESL/EFL Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 30 Minutes This engaging teaching activity helps to teach students how to express opinions and ask others for their opinion. How to improve your English.PDF I Think That ... I Think That....PDF The Cycling Holiday The Cycling Holiday.PDF
e-Books from Bill Zimmerman Words I Wish Someone Had Saidto Me As a Kid I wrote this book of encouraging words to help young people as they make their way in the world. Every girl and boy needs to hear such words. Growing up, I tried hard to imagine the things he would have said to guide me if he were around. Writing the letter helped me that day and I continued to write more letters in the voice of a father talking to a child. If you’re a young person reading this book, think of each page as a personal letter of caring words from me to you, like the ones an older friend or relative might say to you. CLICK ON COVER TO READ Words I Wish Someone Had Said to Me As a Kid.
Learn 46 Languages Online for Free Open Culture How to learn languages for free? This collection features lessons in 48 languages, including Spanish, French, English, Mandarin, Italian, Russian and more. Download audio lessons to your computer or mp3 player and you’re good to go. Amharic Foreign Service Institute Basic Amharic — Audio — TextbookLessons with dialogues, drills, exercises, and narratives will teach you the basics of this language spoken in Ethiopia. Includes samples of speech, explanations of basic language structures, and a variety of practical exercises. Ancient Greek Ancient Greek Introduction — Web SiteThe UT-Austin Linguistics Research Center provides an overview of Ancient Greek and 10 lessons based on famous Greek texts. Arabic Bookmark our free Arabic lessons section. American Sign Language Introductory American Sign Language Course — YouTubeBy the end of this course you should have a basic bank of ASL words that you are able to use to form simple sentences.
Intro to debate inklewriter - Education Education inkle is looking to bring interactive stories to the classroom, and give teachers free and simple get-stuck-right-in software to use with their students. From within a web-browser, the inklewriter will let students make and play interactive stories with no programming required. Why make stories interactive anyway? The way our stories work is simple: the reader is given the text of a story in a small chunks, and after each, they get to make a decision about what happens next. Our first project, Frankenstein, uses interactivity to explore the different facets of Mary Shelley's original novel - allowing the reader to discover different aspects of the world, follow up hints and allusions in the text, and maybe even take some narrative paths that Shelley herself considered. How can students get involved? In the classroom, interactive writing offers an innovative, fun environment in which to write stories. Oh, and it's all free. Sign-up and email addresses That's no problem!
Log into Facebook Teaching Your Students How to Have a Conversation I was recently in a third grade classroom and was struck by the presence of rules that were posted for how to have a conversation. The poster said, "Each person must contribute to the discussion but take turns talking. Ask each other, 'Would you like to add to my idea?' or 'Can you tell us what you are thinking?' Ask questions so that you understand each other's ideas. Having visited many middle and high schools, I think these same rules could -- and probably should -- be posted there as well. Maybe you have also observed how common it is nowadays for students to not know how to have a conversation. 8 Tips for Speaking and Listening While it is impossible to know all of the reasons, there is no doubt that learning to listen and talk is an extremely important way to broaden knowledge, enhance understanding and build community. 1. Make a point of having one-to-two minute interactions, one-on-one, at least a few times each week with students who struggle conversationally. "Really?"" 2. 3.
How to Write a Short Story: 15 Steps Steps Part 1 Brainstorming Ideas 1Come up with a plot or scenario. Think about what the story is going to be about and what is going to happen in the story. Consider what you are trying to address or illustrate. Part 2 Creating a First Draft 1Make a plot outline. Part 3 Polishing the Draft 1Read the short story out loud. Community Q&A Add New Question How do I create a good title? Ask a Question If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know. Article Info Featured Article Categories: Featured Articles | Fiction In other languages: Español: escribir un cuento corto, Deutsch: Kurzgeschichte schreiben, Português: Escrever um Conto, Nederlands: Een kort verhaal schrijven, Français: écrire une nouvelle, Italiano: Scrivere un Racconto, Русский: написать короткий рассказ, 中文: 写一个小故事, Bahasa Indonesia: Menulis Cerita Pendek, Čeština: Jak napsat povídku, العربية: كتابة قصة قصيرة, ไทย: เขียนเรื่องสั้น, Tiếng Việt: Viết truyện ngắn
Experimenting with English (Part 2) – Activities for learners to do outside the classroom [26 and counting!] In my blog post Experimenting with English: scaffolding learner autonomy, I discussed how I approached helping my learners to use English outside the classroom, drawing on learner autonomy theory and methodology (e.g. Benson, 2011; Oxford, 2003; Smith 2003). Central to that project, alongside the very important element of discussion, was a handout I created for my learners. Here is a screenshot of a sample page, taken from the listening section: Sample page from my Experimenting with English activities handout, listening section. As you can see, the handout consists of a series of activities for learners to try, with space for them to record when they tried it and what they thought of it. In my experience, as I mentioned in the Experimenting with English blog post, simply giving the learners this handout is insufficient. Of course, my learners are busy people and the time they have for out-of-class study is limited. Here are the handouts: This one is for learners who use Edmodo Like this:
useful interview expressions game useful interview expressions: Practice useful interview expressions game using this ESL fun Game.This game is also excellent for classroom teaching. Teachers can engage students in a classroom vocabulary or grammar review. It is suitable for intermediate and advanced esl learners. Games are great for motivating students to learn. More Games Halloween-themed Writing Lessons from BoomWriter While doing my grocery shopping last night I noticed Halloween candy for the first time this fall. If you're starting to think about Halloween-themed lesson plans, BoomWriter has new offerings for you. BoomWriter has released new Halloween-themed vocabulary lesson plans that you can conduct through their free WordWriter service. WordWriter allows teachers to create vocabulary lists that they want students to incorporate into a writing assignment. The new Halloween-themed lesson plans include pre-made lists of Halloween-themed words for your students to use in the writing assignment that you distribute to them. If you haven't tried BoomWriter or WordWriter before, check out my demonstration videos embedded below. Disclosure: BoomWriter is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com
Liven up a listening | Recipes for the EFL classroom Not sure what to do with a listening text coming up soon in the unit? Don’t like the comprehension questions in the book? Want some ideas to liven it up? Pre-listening Prediction work can be a really useful pre-listening activity, preparing the students for what they are about to hear. KWL charts This is an idea I took from JJ Wilson’s excellent book, How to Teach Listening. The basic procedure: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Bingo A fun and engaging vocabulary prediction task. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. You can try this with the weather forecast below: Whilst listening Giving students different tasks When we listen to many things in our day to day life, we are not interested in understanding everything, but just the salient points. An example: Using the text above, the teacher could think of a number of situations, write these on cards and give them out to the students. You can try this out if you like: choose a situation and listen to the weather forecast above. In summary Like this: Like Loading...