Where I go to listen

I love languages and I try to keep the ones I know alive by listening to different radio stations and websites. I believe that you have to be able to hear the language to be able to reproduce it. I think that having your English language learners hear other languages helps them isolate English and maybe tune them in early to the language they are studying.



Radio France is one radio station that I like to listen to. They usually have interesting conversations about current topics. I often listen and repeat phrases that I have never heard.

http://sites.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture2/sommaire/


Radio Catania is fun to listen to. You can listen to Italian pop music and spontaneous conversation from announcers which is great. I especially like commercials.

http://radiotime.com/station/s_49808/Radio_Catania_1049.aspx


Catalunya Radio great place to listen to conversations of all kinds and interviews in Catalan. At the moment I am listening to Peret a famous Catalan rumba singer, who lived in my neighborhood when I lived in Barcelona.

http://www.catradio.cat/reproductor/audio.htm?ID=CATRADIO


Spanish? This is very interesting you can listen to different Spanish radio stations from practically all Spanish speaking countries with Spanish lesson to boot.

http://www.e-spanyol.hu/en/radio.php

Irish radio. You can listen to different regional radio by clicking on map of Ireland.


http://www.live-radio.net/ireland.shtml

Speaking exercises

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html

This a good website for beginners and some intermediate speakers. It has good survey/interview exercises that make for good student centered activities. It helps create community in the classroom.

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/pronex/pronex.htm

The Learners Dictionary is good for pronunciation exercises it is especially helpful for drills and specific sound discrimination exercises, good or all kinds of pronunciation activities and different student levels.


http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Another excellent website for visuals for place of pronunciation. It helps give students a good idea of where sounds are produced. It should be used in combination with other sites to augment pronunciation, for example the Learners Dictionary.


http://www.englishclub.com/speaking/weather-vocabulary.htm

The English Club provides good vocabulary lists for speaking about certain topics, such as the weather. Perhaps best suited for intermediate students.


http://www.eslgo.com/resources/sa/role_plays/personal-questions.html


A good site for ideas on speaking exercises, especially role play. It appears to be a good site for teachers to find templates for conversations activities.

Reading and Writing

http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Reading/

This site seems quite complete. Syllable stress anyone? This a great little site for specific pronunciation problems while teaching reading.

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/pronex/pronex.htm

This is one is good for beginners to start slowly, with
senetences.

http://www.manythings.org/listen/

I like this site, it is very complete you can find all kinds of resources. Listening and following along as you read is a good exercise for beginners.


http://www.stickyball.net/adult.html

This one has good writing exercises for beginners. A lot of repetition with chunks of language.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

A good typing/writing site where beginning students can learn keyboarding/typing and writing and it is fun.

Listening Sites

USA Learns is a good site for Adult ESL learners. It has three levels: Beginning, Low Intermediate, and Intermediate. It has real life situations on video with respective language listening exercises. It is particularly interesting that it provides a way for students to record themselves and playback the utterances that they make. It is a good pronunciation tool as well. It is community/real world oriented which gives students useful chunks of langauge that they can use right away. However, it is slow and a bit difficult to navigate, otherwise worth visiting.

www.usalearns.org/index/welcome.cfm?CFID=131927&CFTOKEN=25395022&jsessionid=1a303f9b84775751614227314b447697c1a4TR


Reepworld is a good civics real world beginning visual aid for Adult ESL learners. It tells short stories with picture cues and some words. Good for Beginners. You can also read the story in small chunks. Then do a matching exercise. Many other possibilities for adults, how to use a mouse as you prepare for doing computer work with your students, etc.

www.reepworld.org

Many Things also a great site for many things. Listening exercises that let the student read and listen along. Good for high beginning and up. There is listening with dicatation and many other ways to listen short stories. I would pre teach some of the vocabulary and then have them do a dicatation exercise or let them watch a video for homework and present depending on level, appropriate task.

www.manythings.org


ESL Lab good resource for listening to real life dialogue and practice for adult students of different levels. Like leaving a message on an answering machine, or just understanding the message on the machine. It has pre listening activities and practice. There are also post listening activities that would help reenforce the language.


www.esl-lab.com


Activities for esl students: Also a great site for podcasts that you can listen to in different languages. A good source for language recognition (English), or distinction from other langauges.

www.a4esl.org/

Teaching Adult English Language Learners

Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of blogging. The purpose of my blog is to share ideas and approaches to practice on how and what to teach adult English Language Learners.

This particular adult context involves immigrants from different parts of the world, many of whom are here in search of a better life. Most of the students want to be able to participate more at work, their children's school, and to be able to function better in the new culture.

I would like each student to take something useful everyday that they come to class and come back each day wanting to learn something knew.

Share your anecdotes and favorite lessons and why they were successful. I too want to learn something new everyday. Thank you for you input.