Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

April 30, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Another Site For Online Polls

 (Since I posted this, Sonja Phillips pointed out that being able to use multi-media is a two-edged sword — some images inappropriate for classroom use were on the site.)

Webware just posted about a new site called Polls Boutique that lets you create online polls for free. Yes, there are a zillion of these kinds of sites now, and you can find a lot of them on my website under Student Polls.

However, Webware says Polls Boutique is different because you supposedly can easily add other media to your poll.

I haven’t tried it yet, so can’t report how accessible it might be to English Language Learners. As I’ve written before, though, I think the creation of polls, responding to them, talking about them, and writing an analysis of their results is a great language development exercise for students.

I’ll eventually be putting together a “The Best…” list of online poll creation sites.

April 30, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Kiz Club Is Back!

Kiz Club, which has great “talking stories” for beginning readers, was off-line for quite awhile. I had thought it was going to be permanent, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they’re back.

I’ve placed a link to it on my website under Favorite Sites.

April 30, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Peace Corps Training Manuals

Darce Osler was kind enough to let me know that the links to the Peace Corps training manuals I included in The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers weren’t working anymore.

One would figure that the Peace Corps to have a website that was working, but even their contact form is broken.

However, I was lucky enough to track down yet another site that has the manuals available.  Go there quickly and download them, in case those also disappear!

The two excellent manuals are:

TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As a Foreign or Second Language

Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Large, Multi-Level Classes

April 30, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

New Version of xTimeline

xTimeline has been a decent timeline-making web tool, though I don’t think it’s been the best or most accessible one for English Language Learners. However, they’ve just released a new version that might have fixed some of their shortcomings.

A post in the Mashable blog gives a pretty good summary of xTimeline’s changes.

You can find a link to xTimeline, and many other online timeline applications, on my website under Student Timelines.

April 30, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Word Morph

(Note: The game’s host just changed the url for Word Morph after I wrote this.  This post now has the correct address.  Sorry.)

Word Morph is another one of those “Making Words” type of games. Players are shown a word, and you have to come up with other words that can be made from the same letters.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games. You’ll find several similar games in the same category. This one is a little more visually attractive than some of the others.

Even though I’ve placed it on my Intermediate page, it would be accessible to all levels of English Language Learners.

April 29, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Create Your Own Yard

Lowes lets you create your own yard. Users develop and maintain their virtual backyard, and can add all sorts of stuff to it (coincidentally, Lowes sells all this “stuff.”).

It’s nice interactive that provides a number of opportunities to English Language Learners for vocabulary development. You can save your creation, but you don’t get a unique url address that you can post. Instead, you have to input your email address to access it. Of course, it would be pretty easy just to have students make one up and post the link to the Yard Creator along with the pseudo email address so others can access it. Students could then write about their yard, too.

You can read here about how I use viral marketing applications like this one to help teach English Language Learners.

I’ll be placing the link somewhere on my Examples of Student Work page.

April 29, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
13 Comments

The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers

Here’s another “The Best…” list, and this time it’s one that is specifically targeting ELL/ESL/EFL teachers.

And that’s why it’s called The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.

Of course, strategies, resources and teaching tools that are effective with English Language Learners can be equally effective with native-English speakers. In fact, I’ll soon be sharing an article that the principal of our school and I co-wrote detailing how we think implementing English Language Learner teaching strategies school-wide helped us get out of Fourth Year Program Improvement Status.

I’ve been going through a stretch of finding it very difficult to rank sites in the recent lists I’ve put together. This one is no exception. I think all of them are excellent, and they offer different resources. Near the end of this post I share good sites that were recommended by other readers, too.

Here are my picks for The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers:

Even though it’s hard for me to rank the sites on this list, I have to say that one of my favorites is EFL Classroom 2.0. Begun by David Deubelbeiss, it’s an extraordinary collection of every imaginable ESL/EFL resource. David also has some strong feelings about ESL/EFL Teacher Resource sites that I generally share. I’d encourage you to read what he wrote.

I think the Peace Corps has developed some of the best materials on how to teach English Language Learners. Unfortunately, their website is usually not working so you can’t download them from there (I updated this list in March, 2010, and it was working at that time. You can download the documents here). Fortunately, the manuals are available elsewhere. The two best ones are TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As a Foreign or Second Language and Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Large, Multi-Level Classes.

There are many places that have teaching materials you can print-out. English Raven, though, I think offers particularly engaging materials and ideas about how to use them. Using their site has made me a better teacher.

The Internet TESL Journal may be the “grand-daddy” of ESL/EFL resource sites. It continues to provide a wealth of constantly updated materials.

Teaching English from the British Council is another “oldie” but “goodie” site (and it’s just been revamped). The countless resources, ideas, materials, and interactive online content make it an easy choice for this list.

The Ideas Index at Dave’s ESL Cafe has been a source of numerous lesson plans for me. They’re short, sweet, free and numerous!

All the sites on my list offer resources for free….except for one. Alta Books is THE place to find the publications and multimedia that are worth paying for.

Unfortunately, as of December, 2008, Alta began only distributing books they publish.  It seems pretty clear to me that there are two viable alternatives.

One is Delta Publishing Company, which seems to have almost as much of a selection as Alta did in the past. Delta was recommended by several people in the ESL/EFL community.

Just ordering from Amazon was the other primary recommendation. And, for that, there’s nothing better than the EFL Classroom 2.0 Bookstore. One nice benefit of using this service is that the books listed there are actually recommended by ESL/EFL teachers, and you’re not buying them “cold.”

These next two aren’t exactly websites. In fact, they’re listservs. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, though probably haven’t contributed as much as I should have. The two are Teachers Of English As A Second Language (TESL) and the National Institute For Literacy (NIFL). Going to both of these links will offer you the chance to sign-up for their numerous “sub” lists.

Tools For ESL Lesson Planning: A Book of Techniques, Lesson Plans, Activities and Resources For Teaching ESL is the name of a free downloadable book in PDF form. It was compiled by the ESL and Citizenship Programs of the Los Angeles Unified School District.   I have to admit that I haven’t had a whole lot of time to review all of it, but from what I’ve seen so far it looks pretty good.  I’m tentatively adding it to this list.

EFL Teaching Recipes is a brand new site that immediately joins The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.  It’s an extremely accessible site where ESL/EFL teachers can share their lessons, including video and images.  It’s just beginning, and I’m sure it’ll be filled-up with with ideas quickly. Go over and contribute some, as well as read the excellent ones that are already there!

Of course, it’s not unexpected that EFL Teaching Recipes would be so good after you learn who’s behind it — David Deubelbeiss, who’s blog is on The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list and who began and continues to guide EFL Classroom 2.0, which is on a ton of “The Best…” lists.

Finally, I obviously think that the Web offers a lot of possibilities for English Language instruction and learning. In one of my previous lists, The Best Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics — 2007, I highlighted three sites as the best for helping both beginners and more advanced technology users learn how to use all the Web tools that are constantly evolving. One was Sue Waters’ Mobile Technology In TAFE Wiki. Another was Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Wiki. And the third great site was Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos. Russell’s is particularly relevant to this list because he has a number of videos showing how these tools can be used in the ESL/EFL classroom.

(Editor’s Note: I should add The Tapestry For Teachers of English Language Learners. You can read my post about it here.)

One of my favorite ESL/ELT periodicals is the online journal “Humanising Language Teaching.”  I’ve decided to add their main site, where you can access past (as well as current) issues, to this list.

Nik Peachey has written a very helpful post describing the different online communities that ESL/EFL teachers might want to consider joining (for free) and connect with other teachers. I’d strongly encourage you to read Blogging as part of the community.

Readers also had some other suggestions.

Chris Cotter suggested his own site, Heads Up English, as well as Breaking News English and ESL HQ.

Laura recommends One Stop English, Boggles World, and Nik Peachey’s fine blog. She also has nice words for this blog, too.

Learning About Learning has been added to The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers. It’s not specifically for ESL/EFL teachers, but it has an enormous amount of resources about teaching in general. Eventually, I’ll put together a “The Best…” list of broader resources for teachers.

The ELT Journal, from The Oxford Journals, is a very nice collection of articles that teachers of English Language Learners would find useful. The collection, titled Key Concepts In ELT, is described this way on the top of the webpage:

‘Key Concepts in ELT’ is a feature of the Journal that aims to assist readers to develop an appreciation of central ideas in ELT, and to approach the content of articles from a perspective informed by current debate on aspects of theory and practice.

The list given below is an up-to-date guide to all ‘Key Concepts’ that have been published in the Journal. The list contains links to the original articles, which are available to download free of charge (PDF file).

If you’re looking for more resources, you might want to look at the Teacher’s Page on my website.

And if you’ve found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

April 29, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
4 Comments

Twitter For ESL/EFL Teachers

Frank, who also coordinates the Mexico English Teacher’s Alliance (both his blog and the META site are worth checking-out), has begun an ESL/EFL Crowd Status site for those who have Twitter accounts.

He writes that the idea “is that inside of twitter we can now monitor tweets from those that identify as ESL/EFL teachers and form a sense of twitter community and share and communicate with each other.”

I haven’t gotten involved in Twitter but, if I did, the first thing I’d do is join Frank’s group.

If you’d like to join, Frank writes, you must have a twitter account, be an ESL or EFL teacher and send him a DM (direct message) or @reply on twitter to his account at “metaweb20.”

April 29, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Stories and Songs

I’ve recently added links to some new stories and songs that would be helpful to Beginning English Language Learners.  They all have text with audio support, and can be found on my English For Beginners page.

The two stories join the literally thousands of talking stories that are already there.  Katrina the Caterpillar and Julia and the Big Wave are from Reading Is Fundamental, are large literacy organization.  You can find links to many of their other stories in the same section.

Noodles on my Back is a short and fun little song that’s in the Music section.

I learned about all three from Kindersite, a quite impressive site with links to all sorts of activities for young children and beginning English Language Learners of all ages.

April 28, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Nile Guide

I’ve posted before about online sites that allow you to decide where you want to go, search for things that you would do and see there, and then easily “drag and drop” an itinerary that can be posted on a website or blog.

Some of these travel sites are very accessible to English Language Learners and are great tools to use in Geography classes.

Mashable posted today about a new site that might be the most accessible of all of them (though I still have to check it out a little more carefully). It’s called Nile Guide.

I’ve placed the link under Student Trips on my website.

April 28, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Part Fourteen Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly

I’ve accumulated a number of new sites to write another part in my series about the Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly.

Just to review, in order to make it on this list a site needs to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners.

* free

* available to use without having to register.

* provide an opportunity to create engaging online content that is hosted by the site indefinitely.

* easy to post on an online blog or journal.

This list is the latest in my “The Best…” posts, which now number nearly sixty.

Here, now, are new additions to The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (by the way, I’m particularly excited about Nota, the last site on this list):

CREATE A QUIZ, SURVEY, OR POLL: I’ve listed a couple of similar online applications in previous posts in this survey, but I think Go To Quiz might be the best one of the bunch. It

MAKE A WEBNOTE: Webnotes lets you make…notes and organize them into multi-colored boxes that you can move around. They’re super-easy to create. One potential problem is that anyone with the url address can edit it. That issue is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can easily access different versions of your page by the date it was created.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR FACE (OR SOMEONE ELSE’S): You can upload your own photo or choose from a variety on PhotoFace. Then, you can “age” it, make the person heavier or lighter, and make a number of other edits. Once you’re done you can email the link to a friend or teacher for inclusion in an online journal or blog.

SEND A MEMORIAL DAY E-CARD: With Memorial Day coming up next month in the United States, students can write and send a Memorial Day E-Card for posting on a blog or online journal. Here are some direct links to good Memorial Day E-Card sites: American Greetings, Blue Mountain, and egreetings.

PREDICT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: As part of a discussion on the U.S. Presidential elections, students can use this map to predict which states will vote Democratic or Republican and either link or embed their predictions.

DESIGN YOUR OWN WEBSITE: Regular readers of this blog know how positive I feel about the online tool Jottit. It’s made a number of my “The Best…” lists and my students use it to create a website where they can display their online projects. I’ve got to play around with it a little more, but it’s possible that Nota might displace Jottit as my website-creator of choice. Nota is also extremely easy to use, but looks more attractive to Jottit. I’d encourage you to explore it and let me know what you think.

If you’ve found this post helpful, you might want to consider subscribing for free.

April 27, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
5 Comments

The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections

Since I’m teaching a Government class this semester for Intermediate English Language Learners, I thought it would be helpful to identify accessible websites that might help students learn about the U.S. Presidential elections and the candidates. And, so, another “The Best…” list is born!

Here are the best ones I’ve found and used:

There’s no question in my mind that the National Mock Election Game is the best site for English Language Learners. It has a fair amount of audio support for text. Intermediate ELL’s should be able to play it.

There are a number of short online “quizzes” that users can complete to identify which candidate or political party is the best fit for them. The ones related to the candidates also includes ones that have dropped-out, but I still think the exercise is an educational one. The most accessible ones are the Political Party Predictor from Channel One and USA Today’s Candidate Match Game.

Here are a couple of sites that help you determine what kind of President you would be: PBS’ President For A Day and Are You Presidential Material? from Channel One.

All About Electing A President Of The United States is a very simple guide to the presidential election process. Ben’s Guide To The Election Of The President provides the same type of information, as does a summary from Enchanted Learning. Channel One’s Election Playbook provides a more detailed explanation accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Time For Kids has a freely available Brainpop movie about Presidential elections.

English Page has some interactive vocabulary lessons related to presidential elections that would be helpful to English Language Learners.

After students develop some background knowledge about how the Presidential elections work, it might be useful to spend a little time on the electoral college. 270 To Win has a lot of information displayed graphically about previous Presidential elections and what polls are saying now about the upcoming election. In addition, The Washington Post has an Electoral College Prediction Map where users can predict what the 2008 results will look like and save their predictions for posting on a blog or online journal.

Lastly, I should at least mention an excellent online game developed by Cable In The Classroom called eElections. However, it’s probably only accessible to very advanced English Language Learners.

(Editor’s Note: I’m adding the Biography Channel’s Election Videos to this list. They provide good, and accessible, background materials on the candidates.)

(I’m also adding Scholastic News Online: Election 2008)

Here are some more late additions:

CNN has a nice comic-book-like interactive called Eight Steps To The White House. It’s an overview of the election process.

Ask A President is also from CNN. Four virtual presidents answer basic questions about the Presidental election process and how the U.S. Constitution works.

The New York Times has good interactive slideshows on the lives of Barack Obama and John McCain.

I’m also adding Glass Booth to this list.

Time Magazine has a slideshow on Joe Biden that should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Readers know that “Brainpop” has made many of my “The Best…” lists and is one of only two sites I recommend that is not free-of-charge. However, they’ve just made a collection of their movies available related to Election 08. They are free and don’t require any registration.

Time Magazine has an accessible slideshow on Sarah Palin.

Yahoo’s Political Dashboard is a very well-designed and accessible electoral map for this year’s U.S. Presidential elections. It has a number of neat features worth checking-out.

Inside The Issues is an excellent and very accessible resource from Time For Kids that describes various issue positions held by the two presidential candidates.

USA Today has a great online activity called The Candidate Match Game. It’s a very visual and accessible way for users to indicate their position on a variety of issues and then be “matched” with the U.S. Presidential candidate who most reflects their positions.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has teamed up with MySpace to create a great site called My Debates. It’s an exceptional interactive and educational tool to help users identify positions held on different issues by the candidates and assist people to identify which candidate is closer to their own beliefs. It’s a wonderful place to learn about the U.S. Presidential election,

Too bad it’s on MySpace. Even though you don’t have to be a MySpace member to use it (there’s a place to click so you can use it as a “guest”), it’s connect to the MySpace domain. That pretty much eliminates most public schools in the United States from accessing it, since content filters won’t allow it through.

Compare The Candidates comes from The Boston Channel and is an accessible interactive comparing the two main U.S. Presidential candidates.  On that same page you can find additional features about the election.

Where They Stand… is an online interactive from The Sacramento Bee which compares and contrasts the various positions of Barack Obama and John McCain.  The language is short and simple. The display is helpful, too, since it’s done in the form of a Venn Diagram and demonstrates where they share common ground, too.

A Common Craft video on Electing A U.S. President In Plain English. It goes fairly fast, and might be difficult for ELL’s, but it’s short, has good graphics, and there’s always the pause button.

An Electoral College Primer is a bit dry, but makes a good attempt at explaining this crazy system of ours.

The Washington Post has a great Interactive Timeline on The Lives and Careers of Obama and McCain.

Reading A-Z has some excellent leveled readings related to the Presidential election available for free. They’re very accessible to English Language Learners, and can either be read online or printed-out.

Time Magazine has a slideshow on The Voting Machines of America.

Cast Your Vote is an interactive where you can simulate casting a vote in a voting machine.

How Design Can Save Democracy is an interactive graphic from the New York Times that shows a sample Presidential ballot and how it can be designed to be more user-friendly.

The Harford Courant has an interactive graphic demonstrating the voting system in that state.

The Sacramento Bee has a series of twelve excellent photos of election day from across the country.

See How They Run is a very accessible and informative interactive from ABC News. Based on their recent polls, it shows what percentages of likely voters from various groups (race, religion, etc.) would vote for which candidate.

Here’s another excellent slideshow from Time Magazine about what’s happening in the United States on election day.

Here’s yet another slideshow from Time Magazine — this time about Barack Obama’s Victory Celebration In Chicago.

Here are some additional resources documenting election night that I’m adding to The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections:

* An audio slideshow from the Cable News Network on President-Elect Obama’s speech after he won the election. It’s entitled “This Is Our Moment.”

* How Obama Won, a New York Times slideshow documenting important aspects of the Presidential campaign.

* Election Day Voting is a slideshow from The Washington Post.

* In Pictures: America Votes, is a slideshow from the BBC.

* The Las Vegas Sun has an “Obama Speaks As President Elect” slideshow.

* Election Day Images from CBS is particularly interesting because of the photos it shows from around the world.

* Here are nineteen more images from The Sacramento Bee showing reaction to Obama’s victory from throughout the world.

The World Celebrates Obama’s Win is another Time Magazine slideshow, and this one highlights reactions from around the world.

The New York Times just put a video and, most importantly for English Language Learners, an “in-sync” transcript of Barack Obama’s Election Night speech.

I’m making two addition to The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections, and I suspect these will be the last ones I make to it.

One is the Newseum’s display of zillions of front pages from different newspapers the day after Barack Obama’s election.

The other is slideshow sampling of a few of those front pages from Politico (thanks to The English Blog for this resource).

The excellent Famous People Lessons site has a new Barack Obama Lesson Plan.  You can listen to the information about President-Elect Obama first, and then students can click on “Online Exercise.” It also has a number of activities you can print-out.

“Obama’s Nation Of Hope” is the title of a new slideshow from TIME Magazine.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has  some good slideshows about President-Elect Obama during the campaign.

Please feel free to suggest additional sites.

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April 27, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

The Black Death

I was trying to find some sites about The Black Death that would be accessible to English Language Learners.  We’re covering that topic in our World History class.

Here is what I’ve found and added to my World History page:

The Bubonic Plague from Mr. Dowling.

The Plague from the History Channel.

The Black Death from Awesome Stories.  By the way, if you haven’t signed-up (it’s free) yet for Awesome Stories, it’s a great site.  You can read more about it here.

April 26, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

Future “The Best…” Lists

I thought I’d share what my upcoming “The Best…” lists will be and invite readers to submit their own recommendations for any of them. As I always do, even if your suggestion doesn’t actually make “my” list, I’ll still include it in the post with credit to you.

Of course, one key criteria to make most, if not all, of the lists is that the site has to be accessible to English Language Learners.

Feel free to offer suggestions for other topics for “The Best…” lists, too.

Here are some I’m planning over the next few months (though not necessarily in this order):

The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers

The Best Sites To Create Online Quizzes

The Best Websites To Teach And Learn About The Environment

The Best Sites To Learn About Natural Disasters

The Best World History Websites

The Best United States History Websites

The Best Sites To Learn About Money & Life Skills

The Best Online English-Language Learning Games

The Best Sites To Teach And Learn About Space & The Planets

The Best Math Games On The Internet

The Best Sites To Learn About California

The Best Bilingual Sites For Learning English

The Best Sites For Making Online Slideshows

The Best Sites For Students To Use For Researching Demographics

The Best Sites For Students To Make Online Videos

Part Two Of The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games (this list will include sites that let you create good games, but don’t have the variety that the sites which made my first list, The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games, have.

I’m looking forward to hearing recommendations!

April 26, 2008
by Larry Ferlazzo
9 Comments

The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL

Movies and television shows can be an effective tool for teaching and learning English (or, for that matter, any academic subject) if used strategically and not as a “babysitting” device.

I thought it might be useful to prepare a “The Best…” list sharing resources that teachers might find useful related to using video in the ESL/EFL classroom. I’ve appreciated the suggestions that readers have offered and, even if they didn’t make my list, I’ve shared the titles that they have recommended near the end of this post.

Before I list specific movies or shows, I’ll begin by sharing some ideas, and sites, where you can get more recommendations on how to use video in the classroom.

I’ve hardly ever shown a video clip for more than ten minutes during one class period. There are many ways to use them, but I’ve primarily done so in two ways. One is just to show a clip connected to the theme we might be studying at the time, and then have students write what happened chronologically.

The other is a technique called “Back To The Screen” that I adapted from Zero Prep: Ready To Go Activities For The Language Classroom by Laurel Pollard and Natalie Hess. I pick a clip from a movie (the highway chase scene from one of the Matrix movies, for example. I then divide the class into pairs with one group facing the TV and the other with their back to it. Then, after turning off the sound, I begin playing the movie. The person who can see the screen tells the other person what is happening. Then, after awhile, I switch the groups around. Afterwards, the pairs need to write a chronological sequence of what happened, which we share in class. Finally, everyone watches the clip, with sound, together. Students really enjoy this activity.

Two excellent sites that offer countless other ideas about how to use videos in teaching and learning English are Ressources pour le College and The English Learner Movie Guide. The resources they offer are just too numerous to list here. In addition to teaching activities, you can get suggestions for which movies might work best for specific purposes.

You might also be interested in The Best Movie Scenes To Use For English-Language Development.

Now I’ll list what I believe to be The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (by the way, links usually are connected to Amazon). I’m doing this ranking a bit differently from my past lists. All the ones I list I think are comparable in terms of usefulness in the classroom. However, there are two that I think are stand-outs. I’ll save them for the end.

Here are my picks:

I like Brum , a little talking car that has all sorts of adventures. Younger and older students find it entertaining.

Animated Tales Of The World from HBO is an excellent series of folktales from throughout the world. I’ve used them to teach geography, history, and writing.

The Pink Panther series of movies have been great, specifically the parts where Peter Sellers fights his man-servant Cato. These hilarious slapstick scenes are wonderful times to teach vocabulary related to home. However, I offer this recommendation with some hesitancy, since some could view it as perpetuating stereotypes and find it offensive. I’d be interested in hearing opinions on this issue. Certainly, none of my students, who are mostly Asian, have felt that way. I’ve engaged students in this kind of discussion everytime I’ve shown the movies.

Father Of The Bride with Steve Martin (and its sequel) provides some hilarious and teachable scenes about family, food, and home.

David Deubelbeiss, from EFL Classroom 2.0, and I agree that the movie Big is a great one. In fact, David is going to upload a bunch of classroom activities related to the movie on his site. (Since I originally posted this list, David has shared more ideas and resources here.)

The Bear provides a lot of opportunities to discuss serious topics. It doesn’t have a whole lot of dialogue, so it’s very accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.

Globe Trekker has a ton of excellent travel videos. I’ve used them in all of my English, Geography, and History classes, and they’re very accessible.

I’m ranking two collections of TV shows as the Top Two videos for teaching and learning ESL/EFL.

Number two is America’s Funniest Home Videos. It has so many editions — family, pets, sports, animals — that you can find something to teach just about anything. They’re already divided into short clips. My only caveat, though, is that a few of them seem cruel and/or disgusting to me. So I screen them before I use a clip in class.

My absolute favorite show to use is Mr. Bean — The Whole Bean. Mr. Bean is very accessible to even Beginning English Language Learners, and he is involved in so many situations that you can find a clip that will support whatever unit you’re teaching. And he’s so funny! David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has collected the best Mr. Bean videos for English Language Learners.

Readers made a number of other suggestions. I didn’t include some of them in my list just because I haven’t seen the shows.

Sebastian recommends Seinfield and Joey, specifically the episode called Joey and the ESL. I definitely want to see that — how often is an ESL class shown in a TV situation comedy?

EFL Geek recommends several movies, including An Inconvenient Truth, Almost Famous, and Stand By Me. For TV, he likes Lost, Corner Gas, Prison Break and Smallville. I did a quick and informal poll of my students, and they agreed that Smallville helped them with their English a lot.

I regularly use Connect With English, a video series that’s designed to help students learn English and be engaging. It seems to be one of the better ones of its type out there. Though the supporting materials are good, you do have to pay for them. I thought readers might be interested in this one page worksheet that we use instead. Students have to make predictions based on the title of the episode, explain if their predictions were correct, write several questions about the episode that they ask a partner afterwards (who then writes the answers). It’s good listening, speaking, and writing practice.

(I’m adding Movie Lens to The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL.  It’s a new recommendation/search engine for movies, and it’s by far the most effective tool — for teachers, at least – I’ve found to search for movies.

The other typical sites that let you search for movies do it by genre (adventure, romance, etc.).  Movie Lens is the first that I’ve found that, in addition to searching by genre, lets you search by what they call “tags.”  For example, I searched for “World War II” and got an extensive list of World War II-related movies — a list that I would not have found through Amazon, Netflix, or any other tool on The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, , Book, Movie, & Music Recommendations list.

This is particularly helpful to me in the Social Science classes I teach to English Language Learners, where I often use short snippets of movies. )

Nanocrowd has been written-up by Read Write Web, and their post is probably worth a look.  It’s another way to find good movies for ESL/EFL.  Basically, you start typing in the name of a movie that’s similar to what you’re looking for (as you type letters, movie titles will appear). Click “enter” and you will be led to a page filled with similar movies and descriptive “tags” for those movies, too. Click on the tags, and you’ll see more of the same.

The Internet History Sourcebook Project is an extraordinary collection of history resources.  I’m particularly impressed with their Modern History in the Movies, Ancient History in the Movies, and Medieval Movies. In those three collections, movies are categorized by era and described. It’s a gold mine for any Social Studies teacher, and especially for those of us who teach English Language Learners. I use very short clips of movies, following by a writing/thinking prompt, all the time.

American History Film Resources also offers a good listing of film resources for different periods of American history.

Movieclips has immediately become an indispensable website in my “teachers’ repertoire” of links.

It has thousands of short video clips from movies and they’re not blocked by our content filter! And they’re available without registering — except for clips that have “mature” content.

That in itself makes it a wonderful resource. But that’s only part of why I like this new site so much.

What makes it a real winner is that that clips are categorized by theme, character, setting, mood, and more. They’re incredibly detailed.

This kind of organization makes it a gold mine for English Language Learners and their teachers. A ready-made video to teach vocabulary or an academic concept is at your finger-tips. Plus, they’re easily used for an activity like “Back To The Screen.”

In addition, users can create questions about the clip that the site will host. That’s a nice feature, and an opportunity for students to write for an authentic audience. The only tricky part is that in order to do so you have to register for the site, which is easy enough. However, that also gives you access to the mature content clips, so you’d only want to have students use it under supervision.

AnyClip has indexed and categorized scenes from twenty movies, and will soon be doing the same with 200 more this month. It’s categorization system is not nearly as sophisticated as Moveclips, but it could still be useful.

David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 has given us all a gift by compiling his Top 100 Youtube videos for EFL. You might find The Best Ways To Access Educational YouTube Videos At School helpful to use with his list.

Using film and moving image to enrich ESOL teaching and learning is a very nice listing of different ways to use film with English Language Learners. It was written by Cormac Conway and Michaela Salmon.

Meltinpop is a new site dedicated to what they call “free association.” Users identify “themes” related to anything they are interesting in — songs related to food, movie scenes with car chases, scenes from television shows about doctors, etc. Other users then respond with their suggestions. It’s got quite a few “themes” already started. This could be very handy for ESL/EFL teachers looking for multimedia to connect to the thematic unit or specific lesson they want to teach. You can only log-in through Facebook, so it probably wouldn’t be workable for student use.

David Deubelbeiss shares some nice resources and ideas in his post, Using Silent Video in the EFL Classroom.

I’ve always asked students to watch English movies or television programs as part of their weekly homework, but David Deubelbeiss writes much more thoughtfully about the idea in this post on what he calls Extensive Watching.

WingClips has organized a huge number of short clips from movies thematically — perseverance, responsibility — and then lets you show them from the site or embed them elsewhere. Important caveats to keep in mind before checking it out are that it clearly comes from a religious, and Christian, perspective, so a number of the themes — adultery, for example, you probably just want to skip. In addition, it appears to have an exceptionally large number of war-related movie clips (“Machine Gun Preacher”?), but that might be a false impression. As in any website, you just have to pick and choose what’s useful.

Inspire My Kids has short video clips and descriptions of people that are designed to inspire students.

Learn English Through Movies is from clubEFL.

Feel free to offer reactions and other suggestions in the comments sections.

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