Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Last year, I ranked the Student Sites of the Oxford University Press at number three on The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2007 list. They have hundreds of great online EFL/ESL activities for all levels of learners.

Since that time, they’ve added several additional excellent activities for English Language Learners.

They include a bunch of online exercises from their Project 1 textbook and from their Engage series.

I especially like their “Listen and Write” exercise, where words are spoken and students need to write what they hear.

I’m adding the links to my website under Favorite Sites.

Nature Detectives have a series of quite engaging and educational games about….nature. You can create your own nature scenes and learn their impact on the world around us. Or you can learn about tree rings. Or you can play several other games.

The activities are accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Nature.

Just a reminder that voting for the top ten The Best Online Learning Games — 2008 will close on November 1st.

I ranked twenty of the games in the order I thought they earned.  Now it’s your chance, and your students chance, to agree or disagree.

I had my summer school students vote on them, and next week I’ll be asking my new students to do the same.  I’m sure it will be a fun, and educational, class activity.

A couple of hours ago I posted about a word game that has apparently just been taken off-line — great timing!

Here’s another game that is very similar to that one. It’s called Play Blocks With Letters On, and you “push blocks” around to create words. It has many levels, including ones accessible to Beginning English Language Learners; it provides hints if you’re having problems figuring it out; and it has audio that shouts-out (pretty loudly) the word after you get it correct.

I’m placing it on my website under Word and Video Games.

I’ve already posted a list of sites where both teachers and students can make more sophisticated online games that would be useful for language development — The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games.

Today, I’d like to create another “The Best…” list, this time focusing on more simple and “old-fashioned” word games like crossword puzzles and hangman. I’ll share places where you can create these games for free and have them hosted online so anyone can play them at anytime and will also list sites that allow you to easily create the games, but for printing out hard copies only.

Either way, the only way I think these activities provide occasional useful learning opportunities is when students create the games themselves.  Then, they can share them among their peers.  A speed competition can be a lot of fun. Personally, though, I don’t think anything beats a game of hangman on a classroom whiteboard with students divided into groups. In fact, you might find my article Games Students Play useful. In it, I share my (and my students) favorite classroom learning games.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games:

Just Crosswords is an easy way to create an online crossword puzzle. No registration is required — just plug in the words and clues and the site hosts it for you.

Linguaspectrum is pretty easy, too, plus it lets you make hangman games, too. The only slight negative is that you have to register, but it’s quite fast and easy to do.

At APTE, you can create crosswords, as well as a number of other word games. One advantage is that they can then either be played online or printed out.  Here, too, you have to register.

You can create online hangman games (and do a lot more) at My Language Exchange. Registration (again, free and easy) is required).

There are several sites that allow you to create crossword puzzles you can print-out for free. They include EdHelper and Puzzle-Maker.

The well-known Puzzlemaker from Discovery Education lets you make a lot of other word games for print-out, but not crossword puzzles.

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Heifer International, the widely-respected nonprofit that assists low-income people throughout the world, has just unveiled an online video game that helps players understand a bit more about Third World poverty. The game is called Heifer Village — Nepal, and you can learn about it from reading a post in the excellent blog Future Making Serious Games.

In addition to learning about issues related to Social Studies, the game offers some language development opportunities for Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

Even though I wouldn’t add it to the list, you might also want to check-out The Best Online Video Games For Learning Language & Content Knowledge.

Plant Tycoon and Risk are two games that recently have had online versions become available.

Plant Tycoon would be a good language-learning exercise related to gardening, particularly its tutorial. Risk would be an enjoyable activity for English Language Learners who are learning about World War I and/or World War II. An added benefit is that it has audio support for some of its text.

I’ve placed links to both on my website under Word and Video Games.

Secret Files is an exceptional game that Intermediate English Language Learners can use to develop vocabulary and higher-order thinking skills like categorization.

In the game, falling words have to be placed in the correct file drawers, which are the categories. You can adjust the game’s level of difficulty.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

Midnight Messenger is a simple online video game from the Colonial Williamsburg site. It’s has lots of opportunities for language development when you have to make the characters “talk” to one another, and students can learn at least a little bit about early colonial life.

I’ve placed the link on my website under The Early Settlers of America.

Madame Fate is what is called a “hidden object” game. You’re shown a list of words describing items that are “hidden” in the picture, and have to find an click on them. A timer is ticking down as you play.

It’s a fun way for English Language Learners to learn some new vocabulary.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

I posted in February about a group of neat new games great for language-learning. However, just as I posted about it, Fit Brains removed the games from the site.

However, they’re back again. So go to Fit Brains games and you’ll see several unique ones.

I’ve posted them on my website under Word and Video Games.

I’ve found the “Spot The Difference” pictures on paper to be a fun exercise now and then to use with my Beginning English Language Learner students. They have to find how two similar pictures are different and then, in writing and/or speaking, explain the difference.

There are quite a few of these kinds of games online, but there’s no language development activity really associated with most of them.

However, now I’ve found a nice online game called An Eye For Detail that uses this kind of game strategy, and also provides an English learning opportunity.

Basically it has a bunch of variations on this theme, and the player has to read the instructions each time in order to know what he/she is looking for.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

Thanks to the Langwitches blog, I just learned that Free Rice, the great English vocabulary game that pioneered the now-popular idea of having advertisers make a contribution to a worthy case for every correct answer to a learning game, has gotten even better.

It now has questions related to grammar, geography, art, foreign language and math, too.

Besides the social contribution students make by the playing the game, I particularly like it because the questions change depending on the success of the player — if they’re doing well, the questions get harder; if they’re getting a lot wrong, the questions get easier.

Free Rice was listed in The Best Online Learning Games — 2007.  You can also find it on my Best Websites page, which is designed for student self-access.

I don’t know if you’re a science or agriculture teacher who has a unit on genetically modified seeds but, if you are, you’re probably not going to find a more accessible way to help students learn some of the issues involved than the Profit Seed Game.

It’s a combination of play and relatively simple English text that discusses the dangers of using genetically modified seeds.

This is certainly not my area of expertise, even though our own University of California at Davis is heavily involved in this kind of research. However, it did seem engaging.

I’ve placed the link on my Science page.

I’m continuing to add online video games to my website at a pretty fast clip. In fact, I add many more than I post about here. My English Language Learner students love playing these games with the “walkthrough” (instructions on how to win). They are great for reinforcing speaking skills when they are playing in small groups where the only common language is English. And, boy, nothing beats having to understand directions to win a game for providing a purpose to reading.

The latest one I’ve added to under the Word and Video Games section is called Space Station Tokio. As Jay is Games writes:

“You play a restaurant cook who fell asleep and woke up to discover he’s trapped! In a space station! Bummer!”

Here’s a link to the Walkthrough, too.

Audio Puzzler is a listening game where hear sections of a video, then have to type out correctly what you hear, and then put them in order.

It’s a pretty cool activity, and would be great for high Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Listening.

Thanks to Water Cooler Games for the tip.

Cambridge University Press has extraordinary online support activities for their ESL/EFL textbooks, and they’re freely available to anyone. Several of their sites are on The Best Listening Sites For English Language Learners.

Now they’ve just come-out with a site for adult learners (which I think would also be fine for high school students).  It’s called the Ventures Arcade, and it’s really top-notch.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Favorite Sites.

Klondike: Rush For Gold is an online game from the Virtual Museum of Canada. It’s in the “Choose Your Own Adventure” genre, and the player puts him/herself in the position of being part of the Gold Rush frantically heading to the Yukon.

It’s a nice game, though it’s not animated and has a fair amount of text. However, it should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page under The Beginning of Modern World Problems.

Playing Big Bob’s Burger Joint is probably the most fun way for Beginning English Language Learners to gain food vocabulary that you’re going to find.

It’s an online video game where the player is a server in a fast-food restaurant. All the items are labeled.

The instructions are probably at an Intermediate ELL level, but, as I’ve said before, I’m amazed at how much my teenage students understand when it comes to video games.

I’ve placed the link under Food on my website.

Travelogue Paris is the online version of a popular “hidden object” game. These are like “I Spy” activities, where a list of objects is given and the player has to find them. The twist in this game is that you have to find the objects while you’re visiting the landmarks of Paris.

These kinds of games are nice ways for Beginning English Language Learners to reinforce vocabulary.  In addition, in this particular game, they get exposed to a little bit of geography.
I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.