Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The British Council has a nice listening activity where you have to pick the correct dragon that is being described.  You can also read and listen to a story called The Princess and The Dragon.

They are both accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.

I’ve placed these activities on my World History page under The Middle Ages.

That might seem like a strange place to put those links.  But I have activities related to the legend of King Arthur in the same section, and it just seemed like a good fit.

Mingoville is an exceptional site from Denmark designed to teach Beginning English Language Learners. There are many interactive exercises and games, it’s very colorful, and there are both listening and speaking activities. I haven’t explored the site fully, but it has an easy voice recording feature.

You can experiment with it as a guest for a few minutes, but then you have to register. It’s completely free, and registration took about twenty seconds.

It’s so good I’ve placed in on my website under Favorite Sites. In fact, if your students are a little intimidated by having 8,000 categorized sites to choose from on my site, going to Favorite Sites is a good place to start.

I highlighted MyStudiyo in my The Best Ways To Create Online Tests.

David Deubelbeiss from EFL Classroom 2.0 has created some great quizzes for English Language Learners using MyStudiyo. You can check them out here. They’re just a small sample of helpful teaching resources you can find there.

This “The Best…” list was initially a difficult one for me to compile. A number of my previous lists, including the ones on reading and conversation, can also be characterized as “listening.”

I finally decided on the following criteria for sites that would appear on this list. They would need need to:

… be free.

… be accessible to English Language Learners.

… let English Language Learners listen to pretty much anything they would either write or anything they could find on the Internet, OR

… have a wide range of listening options that would be combined with comprehension assessments.

Other links that didn’t make this list can also be found on my website under Listening.

I’m not listing these sites in order of preference, as I’ve done with a majority of my previous “The Best…” lists. Instead, I’m just dividing the list into the two categories that I’ve shared in my criteria.

Here are my choices for The Best Listening Sites For English Language Learners:

SITES THAT LET USERS LISTEN TO ANYTHING THEY WRITE OR FIND ON THE INTERNET

YAKIToME lets you copy and paste pretty much anything you want and the convert the text to speech.You can choose the type of voice (it uses ATT technology, which I’ve had a link on my website to for a longtime because it’s so good), the rate of speed (there are numerous settings), and even customize pronunciation for certain words. You choose to see the text when you’re listening to it being spoken. And you can create private groups if you want. Most importantly, it seems to work without any technical difficulties. Plus, it’s free.

Read The Words lets you convert any text - from a document, blog, or website - into audio with your choice from a variety of voices. You can then embed the voice player into your site. English Language Learners can easily copy and paste an essay they’re writing to hear if it sounds “right.” They can complete a story or essay, paste it into a Jottit page, and then embed a Read The Words audio player that will speak what they wrote. The site had some technical glitches when they first began, but it seems like those have been worked out.

Scribd lets you upload anything and then provides audio of the text. It’s particularly useful when students want to write a “talking story” with illustrations, like these student samples. Just this month Scribd eliminated all adult content from their site, which makes it much more feasible for classroom use.

The above three sites all require registration and log-in to use (though they make it easy to do so). These next few don’t allow you to save what you’ve written, or text that you copy-and-paste. And you can only use it for relatively small amounts of text. However, they don’t require any registration at all so you can use their services immediately.

They include ATT, Voz Me, Oddcast, and Cepstral. You’ll find links to them at the top of many of the pages on my website.

SITES THAT HAVE A WIDE-RANGE OF LISTENING OPTIONS COMBINED WITH ASSESSMENTS

This section of sites itself is divided in two — first, I’ll share excellent resources that offer specific listening exercises that are then generally followed by questions to measure comprehension; then, I’ll share links to sites that provide online dictation activities.

Even though I said earlier I wasn’t going to list sites in order of preference, I have to say, as I’ve said before, that I believe Henny Jellema’s Online TPR Exercises are not only the best online listening activities. I believe they are the best online ESL/EFL activities — period. If you have not tried them out, I would strongly encourage you to do so and have your students do the same.

ELLO provides hundreds of listening activities that are well-designed and engaging. Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab does the same — it has great activities, though I just don’t think it’s as user-friendly as ELLO.

English Trailers puts a brilliant idea into practice. It shows tons of trailers to popular movies, and then follows them with various exercises. And, even better, you can set-up a virtual classroom to monitor which ones students have completed. Plus, it’s all free!

Cambridge Publishers has excellent online listening activities that support its textbooks. These exercises are usually called “What Do You Hear?”. Here are links leading to them:

Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Introductory
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book One
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book Two
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book Three
Touchstone Arcade
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book One
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Two
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Three
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Four

Now I’d like to list some excellent online dictation sites, where student listen to audio and have to type what they hear:

Listen and Write is a new web tool that I think has a lot of potential for English Language Learners. A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated. Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type, only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.

English Online has a series of Interactive English Listening Exercises that provide numerous dictation opportunities.

Teacher Joe also has quite a few. I like his site because they seem particularly geared to Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

Feedback and other suggestions are always welcome.

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Listen and Write is a new web tool that I think has a lot of potential for English Language Learners.

A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated.

Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.

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

In response to my last post, readers sent in suggestions for other “chatbots” — artificially intelligent avatars.

David Deubelbeiss, the founder of EFL Classroom 2.0, recommended Dave. He also wrote:

“I’m working with another person to develop a bot for students where you don’t have to type! This is a significant drawback for ELLs. The model is to have a menu of selected questions/replies which the students click . This is converted into speech and then Dave replies. ”

By the way, there have been a lot of recent upgrades to EFL Classroom 2.0, so if you haven’t gone there recently I’d encourage you to make a visit.

Alicia Rey, an EFL teacher in Argentina,  also sent in a link to George.

English Language Learners would find both useful.

Thanks to David & Alicia for sharing the links!

Students can communicate with an artificially intelligent avatar.

It’s really quite impressive — type in a question and it will vocalize a pretty reasonable response.

I’ll probably put it on my website under Listening.

Students creating online videos can be an excellent language-learning experience. Certainly, students can film their own videos, edit them, and then post their finished product online. For me, though, that’s just seemed too time-consuming and technically-complicated (however, I have convinced my school to purchase three Flip video recorders next year, so I might change my mind).

There are many online applications that allow you to create your own videos using content that’s already on the Web. For English Language Learners, these can be great opportunities for developing listening, reading and writing skills. All of these sites are very easy to use, and finished products can be developed in one class session.

I’ve decided to make a “The Best…” list highlighting these video-creation sites.

Links to these same sites can also be found on my Examples Of Student Work page.

In order to make it on this list, these online tools had to be free, accessible to English Language Learners, easy to use, use video content from sites other than YouTube (since that’s blocked by so many School Districts), and not have content available that would be inappropriate for classroom use (at least, not that I could see). This criteria really eliminated a lot of potential sites.

I haven’t necessarily listed them in order of preference, though I have saved my second-choice and my absolute favorite for the end (and believe me, they’re winners!).

Here are my picks for The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content):

Blink Box is a site I’ve posted about previously. The site is designed to sell DVD’s of movies and TV shows, but you can cut-and-paste scenes and add a short text message to your own creation. It’s pretty neat. However, it appears that some content is limited to only residents of the United Kingdom.

Harvest Of History helps you explore what agricultural life was in New York over 150 years ago, save video scenes from the site, and then create an online presentation comparing life with how it is today.

Who can resist making your own Star Wars clip? You can mix-and-match hundreds of scenes and add titles and audio, plus you can even add your own media.

Make a shark video from the Discovery Channel. Use sound, music and graphics to relive the movie “Jaws.”

Make a wildlife film at National Geographic. As the site says: “Make a custom nature film with animal clips, sounds, and more. Then share your masterpiece with your friends.”

Graspr is different from the other sites on this list. It’s an instructional video site. You can skip around the videos to get to the scene you want and actually write notes which can be saved and shared. It’s an intriguing site, though I’ve been having some difficulty signing-in lately and don’t know if this is indicative of larger technical issues.

You can make your own United States history movie at Digital Vaults from the National Archives. It’s super-easy, and is clearly my second-favorite site on this list.

And now, for, unquestionably the very Best Way For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s Content)… it’s Bombay TV. You can write subtitles, or actually dub with your own voice, over-the-top Bollywood movies. It’s a ton of fun, and a great language development exercise for English Language Learners. Russell Stannard, who has a site that is the gold standard for how-to Web 2.0 videos called Teacher Training Videos, has a couple that give clear instructions on how to maximize using Bombay TV.

Let me know if you have any feedback or other recommendations.

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I learned about a great site from France that teaches English idioms through the use of cartoons, audio, and games.   Because I couldn’t really figure out what to call the site in English, I settled on Cartoon Idioms.

I found this link through the Resources For The College site, which I’ve posted about before.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Idioms and Analogies.

In a continuing effort to broaden the content in the Religion section on my English Themes For Beginner page, I have added a link to Animated Buddhist Stories.

It has animation and audio, but no text, so it’s not ideal for English Language Learners.  But they can certainly get a sense of Buddhism from the site.

It joins links on my pages about Krishna, the Old and New Testament, and Islam.  I would like to add more links about the world’s religion, so please share any content that you think would be accessible to English Language Learners.

The blog Insights Into TEFL just posted about a bizarre, yet potentially (I’m not fully convinced yet) useful site to help students develop better pronunciation skills. It’s called Dictionaraoke.

To quote the site itself:

Audio clips from online dictionaries sing the hits of yesterday and today. The fun of karaoke meets the word power of the dictionary.

“Insights Into TEFL” highlights the Dictionaraoke version of James Brown’s “I Feel Good” as an example. (Oops, I don’t really know why you can’t hear the song when you click on the link in this post. However, if you go to Dictionaraoke’s main page you can access all their songs, including this one).

Tone Mine lets you use music and sound effects on the site to create your own ringtone. You can then email and/or post the url of your creation on a blog or online journal.

There are actually quite a few ringtone makers out there. Many of them allow you to mix music that is inappropriate for classroom use. I took a quick look around ToneMine and didn’t see anything like that, though I have to admit I didn’t spend much time on the site.

However, what really makes this application useful to English Language Learners is the sound effects. One of the ways I teach vocabulary in the classroom is by using sound effects (animal sounds, etc.). You can integrate a lot of these kinds of sounds into your ringtone with ToneMine, and they’re labeled. It’s a good vocabulary-building exercise.

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

I had to make a lot of difficult choices to come up with this latest “The Best…” list.

One decision I made was to focus this list more on Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners, or for more advanced ELL’s who primarily would use these sites more to “brush-up” or review some basic pronunciation skills. I am developing another list that I’ll call The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills. That one will probably be geared more towards Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners, and will include more of the sites I received from readers in my call for recommendations.

Several readers recommended sites using the phonetic alphabet. I’ve included them in the second part of this post, but didn’t include any in my Top Ten list. I know some very gifted teachers have been able to help students learn through using this alphabet. I, however, have generally thought it was too confusing for my students, so I don’t feel comfortable including them as one of “The Best…” sites.

In addition, I had a very difficult time ranking this particular list. All ten seemed pretty good to me and, unlike on my other lists, I just couldn’t pick one over the other. So these ten are not listed in order of preference, though I’d be interested in hearing from readers which ones they particularly like.

As with all my “The Best…” lists, links to these sites can also be found on my website.

This list is also linked to the The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. Those sites could certainly be used in conjunction with using the ones on this list.

Here are my picks — not in any order of preference — for The Best Websites For Learning English Pronunciation:

Susana Canelo and Crystal both recommended Ship or Sheep, and I agree with them. The site offers excellent practice using minimal pairs.

English Online has a good pronunciation course that’s worth having your students try.

I recently blogged about Spoken Skills. If I have a favorite out of any of the sites on this list, it’s this one. Spoken Skills provides good, clear, listening practice, and also provides users the ability to easily record what they hear and play it back for comparison.

Minimal Pair Practice and Quizzes from Charles I. Kelly is one of the many extraordinary activities he has created over the years. This is also one of the sites I might slightly favor in this list.

Simple English News has short and current news stories spoken very clearly and very slowly. It’s great for pronunciation practice, and it has engaging content.

Voice of America Special English News, also recommended by Crystal, is probably for students who are closer to being Intermediate English Language Learners than Beginners, but it is an excellent resource because of its interesting content.

I like WordBuilder because it has a zillion exercises and helps students learns both spelling and pronunciation simply in context.

Kids R Cool teachings pronunciation of words through the form of a game my students like.

Spoken English has a lot of examples. The lay-out can be a little confusing, though, and sometimes the words are spoken too quickly.

Lastly, I think WordBuilder from I Know That is the best site out there for phonics practice. And, yes, it has the same name as another “WordBuilder” site on this list. Like with all I Know That activities, when you click on it, an annoying pop-up asking you to register shows-up. Just click on “Maybe Later” and you’ll automatically proceed to the exercise.

That’s my list. As I mentioned earlier, though, some readers had other recommendations. I’m going to list some of them here, though not all. A few will be included in The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills that I’m working on.

Susana Canelo has an extensive list of good sites for English speaking practice.

Laura suggests Pronunciation Tips From The BBC and Cambridge English Online to gain familiarity with the phonetic alphabet.

Ronaldo Lima recommends a Guide To English Phonetic Symbols and New English File Pronunciation Practice.

In addition, both Ronaldo and David Smailes thought Howjsay was a good one. David also suggested Free Resources For Learning English.

And EFL Geek likes the Sounds of American English.

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Sparky’s Look and Learn is a series of games related to emergency preparedness. It’s excellent for English Language Learners — simple English, good visuals, and audio support.

I learned about it from Alice Mercer.

I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Health.

Susan Gaer has a nice collection of ESL games.  I particularly like one called Consonant Match.  There is audio of a child saying a consonant letter, and then the player has to correctly choose the letter that is being said.

I’ve placed that game on my English For Beginners page under Alphabet.

“I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” was the title of Martin Luther King’s last speech.  It was given the night before his assassination.

American Rhetoric provides the audio and text of this powerful speech, an appropriate post as we celebrate his birthday and his legacy today.

I’ve placed the link on my Geography & United States History page under Our Changing Nation.

Sound Guide is a French site with many good English language-learning activities.  I like its dictation exercises, especially the sentence and phrase ones.

In these dictations, you hear a sentence from a movie, and then have to “drag-and-drop” words to recreate the sentence.

I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Sentences. 

I’ve had links on my website to the Voice of America’s Special English News and another site called Simple English News for quite awhile.

Now, an article in The Columbus Dispatch gives some interesting background to how the vocabulary used in these simple English versions have been developed.  I found it interesting.

I heard about the article through the NCTE In Box.

I’ve recently added two very different online video games to my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.  As regular readers know, I use online video games as language development exercises for students. 

In fact, Future-Making Serious Games just wrote a post that included some examples of how my students use these games.  TechLearning will have a more extensive article about it in January.

One new game is from the ASPCA called The Dog House.  It helps users understand dog-owning responsibilities.

The other is the Patriot Adventure, which is being used to introduce a new Jeep model to the market.  It’s a fairly entertaining game where the player has to regularly choose what the people in the adventure should do next.

Both games are probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, though the Jeep game might be a little difficult because it involves a lot of listening.

Soundboard allows individual users to add audio clips to their own “Soundboard” (collection of sounds); describe their collection, and then post it with its own url.

Its main focus is obviously music, but its Historical clips are what particularly drew my attention.  My English Language Learner History students, after having gotten some background on modern history, could certainly benefit from listening and creating their own group of Martin Luther King audio clips, for example.  Then they could describe why they chose the clips they did.

Unfortunately, even though its a small part of the site, there’s also a section called “Mature” that would be inappropriate for student use.

The site also has an extensive sound effects and animal sound collection.  I’ve played games with Beginning English Language Learners listening to sound effects CD’s and then they have to guess what it is.  Teachers could certainly use this site as a source for those sounds.

I originally placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page.  However, after thinking about the mature content accessible on Soundboard (again, even though it’s a tiny part of the site), I decided to move the link to my Teacher’s Page under Audio.

I still think it’s a good activity for students.  Teachers are just going to want to carefully monitor it.