Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

ESL Tower has quite a few nice interactive vocabulary exercises. They include clozes (gap-fill), crossword puzzles, and “drag-and-drop” activities.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Vocabulary. 

Catch and Save is a game from the Marine Stewardship Council in the United Kingdom.  In it, players have to “save” certain fish from being caught-up in fishing nets.

It’s a nice little game to reinforce vocabulary for Beginning English Language Learners, and to also learn some environmental lessons.

I’ve placed the link on my English Themes for Beginners page under Animals.

There’s been an explosion in the number “social network” language learning sites that have started over the past year or two. A primary purpose of these web applications is for native speakers of a language to connect with others who want to learn their language and help them do so.

I have a number of pedagogical and safety concerns about using these sites in the classroom. However, a very small number of them — most notably the excellent Live Mocha site — offer exceptional interactive teacher-created exercises and activities that are unique and beneficial.

A new one that isn’t in Live Mocha’s league yet but which has some potential is called Busuu. It has a lot of good activities members can use without necessarily participating in the “social network” aspect of the site.

I’ve placed a link to Busuu on my website under Vocabulary.

Our House has different rooms you can click on.  Each room has “clickable” objects that will show a describing sentence and provide audio for the text.

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

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training Videos, which provides excellent screencasts on how teachers can best use Internet sites.

He’s just come out with a series of screencasts on Ten Sites For Vocabulary Development, primarily geared towards ESL/EFL sites for kids (though my high school students have also enjoyed using them). They’re definitely worth a look, as are all the other resources he has on his site.

Wordle lets you either copy and paste or upload text. It then produces a word cloud that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. You choose from different formats about how you want your word cloud displayed, and then have them displayed on the website with its own url address.

This could be a fascinating exercise for English Language Learners and other students. Beginning ELL’s could use it to see the importance of learning sight words. Social Studies students could upload speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain and compare the two.

I know there have been other ways to identify high-frequency words from text, but I think Wordle is the easiest and has the most elegant presentation.

I haven’t figured out, though, where I’ll be putting it on my website yet.

Wordworld is another good site from PBS.  Various animated animals star in interactive exercises to help beginning English readers learn new words.

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

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.

Sail Safe is a combination game and tutorial on how to sail a ship.  The National Maritime Museum in Great Britain created it.

It’s an opportunity for students to learn vocabulary and to answer questions and follow simple instructions in English.

I’ve placed it on my Intermediate English page under Word Games and Video Games.

Merriam-Webster’s Word Central has added new neat word games to their site — BigBot and Robobee.

They’re probably most accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve placed links to both games on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

The Birmingham Grid For Learning has a good activity to teach prepositions of place.  It’s called Location.

It has several steps and I have the direct link to most of them on my English Themes For Beginners page under Prepositions.

I’ve had a Thesaurus section on my English Themes For Beginners page for quite awhile.

I recently decided to also add specific new sections on Antonyms and Synonyms.  I haven’t placed many links in those categories yet, but will soon.

Tagnautica is an interesting search engine for Flickr Photos, similar to the Flickr Tag Browser I’ve written about earlier.

It’s sort of a “mind map” for Flickr.  There are subtle differences between the two, and I don’t know which one I like better.   Both are good vocabulary-builders for English Language Learners, and both can be found on my English For Beginners page under Vocabulary.

An ongoing challenge for English Language Learners is developing an understanding of, and an ability to use, academic language.

Averil Coxhead from New Zealand has created an excellent Academic Word List site. Just as there are lists and sublists of High Frequency, or Sight, Words (the most commonly used English words) he presents lists and sublists of the most frequently-used academic words.

The lists are good, though there are many other sources of similar lists. The difference here is that he also tons of interactive exercises where Intermediate English Language Learners can practice them.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Vocabulary.

I decided to bring together, in one “The Best…” list, my picks for The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too. These are websites that were not designed with education in mind, but which can easily be used for learning purposes — particularly, though not exclusively, for English language development. I only hope that creators of “educational” content can learn from the qualities that make these sites so engaging.

Unlike many of my other lists, these sites are not ranked in order of preference.

Here are my choices of The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too:

There are several sites that allow you to write in commands that a person or animal will then perform for you. They offer excellent opportunities for English Language Learners to practice vocabulary. The most famous first example was Subservient Chicken, a marketing tool by Burger King in 2004 that is still active. You can direct a person in a detailed chicken costume at their site. At I Do Dog Tricks you can do the same to a cute little dog.

However, the best and most ambitious site of this kind is without a doubt Family Friendly Simon Sez Santa. Its supply of commands is much, much greater than the other two, and each year additional ones are added.

I’ve posted and written a lot about how I use online video games with my students by having them work in small groups with instructions (called “Walkthroughs”) on how to beat the game. There are several that are my, and my students’, favorites. These include Phantasy Quest, where you are stranded on a deserted island (here’s the Walkthrough); Sound Factory, where you get to play a musical factory worker and can save and post your final composition (here’s the Walkthrough); and all the games created by Bart Bonte (you can find the Walkthroughs for his games, and many others, on my website under Word and Video Games).

Free Rider 2 is another fun game that apparently can teach some physics. I like it because students can save what they’ve played and write about it. You can see instructions on how that works here.

There are a couple of intriguing sites that work well for vocabulary development — one is called Willing To Try and the other Color In Motion. Instead of giving a lengthy explanation here of what they do, I’d suggest reading my previous posts about them here and here.

You can design, save, and post a zillion dancing people at Pictaps. More importantly for English Language Learners, after they use the site they can write and talk about their creation.

Viscosity is just about the most engaging site on the Web to create art, save it, and then write about it. It’s worth looking at a screencast showing how to use it.

Writing subtitles for over-the-top Bollywood movies is a lot of fun at Bombay TV. You can then email the url to a friend or post it on your blog or online journal.

Have the monster of your choice send a message to a friend at the Halloween Card Creator.

Lastly, I’ve written about how I use viral marketing with my students. These are entertaining online gimmicks designed to advertise certain products. The two best ones, I think, are sites that allow you to use a text-to-speech feature to let eggs of your choice speak and the famous Monk-e-Mail, where you can dress-up a monkey and have him/her communicate a message.

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Decorate is a fun and engaging game that English Language Learners can use to learn the names of house furnishings.

In it, “Roger” tells the names and colors of the items he wants in his apartment.  The player then has to choose the correct one.  It has text and audio support.

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

Learning Vocabulary With Pictures is a nice site from France that has as series of short quizzes.  Students need to choose the correct word from a drop-down menu that describes a picture.

I’ve placed it on my English For Beginners page under Vocabulary.

Word Girl is a television series from PBS geared towards vocabulary development for younger native English speakers.  Its website would also be appropriate for beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

Good activities can be found by clicking on “Huggy’s House of Fun.”   “Power Words” is a particularly good game.

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

The Packard Children’s Hospital has a wonderful site for kids which I’ve entitled Hospital Connection.

It’s animated with text and audio support (be sure to click on the closed-captioning “on”), and helps children understand how to get ready to go to the hospital and what happens once they’re there.

There are lots of games and opportunities for vocabulary development.  It’s very accessible to English Language Learners at all levels.

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

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.