Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

This is latest in my “The Best….” series of lists. Like the resources on most of the others, the sites on this list can be helpful to both English Language Learners and native-English speakers alike. Certainly, all my mainstream students need assistance in developing a mastery of academic English.

One way this list is different from the others is that I don’t rank them in terms of which ones I like the best. They’re all pretty good, and I’ll leave it for you to decide which one works better in your situation. Most of the online activities are accessible to either high-intermediate or advanced English Language Learners, though teachers can use the information on the sites to develop their own classroom activities accessible to students with a lower English proficiency.

Here are, in my opinion, The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary:

Academic Vocabulary not only provides you with Academic World Lists based on their frequency of use (which I’ve found very useful for determining which words I should prioritize in class), but it also provides you with tools to create your own online exercises.

Kate Kinsella is a professor at San Francisco State University who does a lot of excellent training on how teachers can best help their students learn academic English. Clicking on her name will take you to a page where you can download many of the great materials she uses. It doesn’t substitute for taking one of her workshops, though, which I’d encourage you to do if you ever have the chance.

Academic Vocabulary Games has lists of academic vocabulary words for each content area from K-10. These lists were developed by the state of Tennessee working with Dr. Robert Marzano. You can print them out as cards to be used in games, and resources are also provided to develop your own online versions.

Vocabulary Exercises For The Academic Word List has a ton of online exercises to help students learn….academic vocabulary.

An Academic Writing Module: Paragraphs is designed for student self-access, and has many interactive exercises.

Using English For Academic Purposes has a lot of good online activities. I found it a little confusing to navigate, though. This page has a lot of direct links to exercises. Also, you’ll find a more accessible index for this site on another entirely different site called Free Online Academic Reading and Writing Exercises. You’ll also see a number of other links to other resources there.

One of Sacramento’s own, Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, also has developed a nice interactive tutorial with a long name: Constructing The Paragraph: A Tutorial and Self-Testing Program For American English In Academic Settings.

I’m adding the Academic English Cafe.

Carolyn Zierenberg, a talented teacher at our school, put together a simple multilingual (English/Spanish/Hmong) glossary of academic vocabulary. She’s given me permission to share it on this blog and website.

This Glossary Of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary — English/Spanish/Hmong. took an incredible amount of work to complete.

Of course, a list like this is only effective as a supplement and follow-up to multiple classroom activities where these words are used in a meaningful way in context.

WordSift is a new visual tool to learn vocabulary.  Mary Ann Zehr has written an excellent post describing it and its benefits for English Language Learners who need to learn “academic English.”  I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and describe it here, so I’d encourage you to read her post and try the tool yourself.

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions for adding to this list, or what you think about the ones already there.

Also, drop me a line if you have ideas about other topics for future “The Best…” lists.

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