University of Delaware
Memorial Hall 034

Grant Wolf

Thursday 06-29-2006


INTERNET RESOURCES FOR TESL/TEFL

How to work on this post:
-Read the introduction carefully.
-Keep in mind the challenging question in bold blue every time you log into a website.
-Explore one of the recommended websites every two or three days.

Introduction: (by Kassem Al Tarras)

This workshop by Grant Wolf might be the most important one in this training course for the following simple but crucial reasons:

• It is the key to log into the websites we need.
• It facilitates how to directly hit what we seek on the internet with minimum waste of time among the huge stuff available there.
• It is what we really need as a resource for our workshops, presentations, lesson planning…etc. We have tons of ideas piled over there.
  

I would like just to remind you that what you need is for sure available on the internet but the question is how you can reach it and are you going to capture it on time?
The challenging question is what useful stuff you can add to this incredibly enormous source (the internet) and how you would allow people who need it to simply reach it. It is supposed that we have been internet explorers for sometime but now we need to be also bloggers and share some helpful ideas with other professionals around us or maybe overseas. Remember that the world is a small village but please mind what you are doing in this village.

During the workshop we discussed the importance of the internet as a resource for both teachers and students, how do we use it and what are the obstacles of using it. Then we went into a brief tour of some useful websites. I explored them and selected the most important ones. I hope I satisfied your needs. Please spend enough time exploring them and enjoying them because they are really enjoyable.

Note that phrases and lines in green are not originally in the handout but I added them.

A. Comprehensive Resources for TESL/TEFL
Dave’s ESL Café. Dave was one of the pioneers to use the internet. The “Mother”of all ESL/EFL websites, for students and teachers:
http://www.eslcafe.com/search/index.html
Internet TESL Journal. A free monthly journal, offering a wealth of practical ideas for teachers.
http://iteslj.org/
B. On-Line Discussion Groups:
A discussion forum for students, through the famous Dave’s ESL Café site: http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/student/index.php
C. Authentic Language Content-based sites that ESL/EFL teachers have found useful.
Content-based sites for reading, discussing, problem-solving, etc. (uses authentic language, generally designed for young native-speakers of various grade-levels):
http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/project/history.html
Ready-made, news-based high-interest lessons designed for literacy instruction.
Includes both listening and reading, with full text as well as abridged text.
http://www.literacynet.org/cnnsf/
D. On-Line Activities, specifically for TESL/TEFL students and teachers
Hundreds of on-line games and activities for your students: (You can develop them to be a drama activity).
http://iteslj.org/games/

ESL Independent Study Lab: http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html

A Free, Easy Authoring Program for Teachers: Filamentality If you are really ambitious you can have your own website.http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil

Phonetics: A state-of-the-art animated visual and sound resource from the University of Iowa. This website might be very important regarding oral intelligibility.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

This is one dedicated solely to everyone’s favorite. . . prepositions!
http://www.englishpage.com/prepositions/prepositions.html

This is one dedicated solely to everyone’s favorite.
www.englishpage.com

E. A small sampling of fun and varied websites for you and your students to try (great motivators!)

Amazon.com Activity. In this website you will learn about one of the largest and most famous stores on the Internet. You will learn how to navigate the site and how to search for products:
http://iteslj.org/guides/amazon.html

Jokes for TEFL. Teachers often use jokes in the ESL/EFL classroom to teach culture, grammar and vocabulary.:
http://iteslj.org/c/jokes.html

F. Just for Kids

Sesame Street Coloring pages, for learning the alphabet.
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/sesamestreet/coloringpages/

IATEFL Young Learner’s Interest Group Site. This is a huge, annotated list of resources for teachers of children. Definitely worth the time to explore. (Note that it is color-coded by age group). http://www.countryschool.com/ylsig/

Phonics and Stories on Line. Many to choose from, with sound and simple animation for various elementary grades. It is useful for Story Telling.
http://www.beenleigss.eq.edu.au/requested_sites/sounds/

Big Books on-line. Pictures, texts, and sound with simple animation for kids. It is useful for Story Telling.
http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/html/fiction/bigbook.htm

H. Independent Exploration: HOMEWORK!

During the next week, spend some time exploring and playing with the Internet resources we’ve looked at today. Choose your favorite one and think about how you might use it in your classes. Then send me an email at gwolf19@yahoo.com Tell me the address of the website, and briefly, how you will use it in your teaching. I will compile all your suggestions and send them to the entire group, for your mutual enjoyment and benefit.

Websites added to the handout by Kassem

http://www.englishclub.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml

Hi again.This time I am going to give you an idea about a workshop by Barbara Gilette with the title:Material Development from authentic Sources: Using broadcast and print sources.
Let's start by speaking about what is an authentic material.Well,It's a real document from the target culture which was not prepared for teaching purposes.The purpose of this material is for natives by natives.It's the same as realia which can be tickets, menus ,bus schedules,etc.
Ms. Gilette started her workshop by explaining the things she was going to speak about.She said she had a video and a written article.
Then the question was :Why should we use authentic material?It's because what is authentic is not prepared and not simplified.That's how you learn the right word and the latest vocabulary using culture as a motivating rule.At the same time it shouldn't be shocking to students.
What do you think of when choosing a piece of realia?
1-How does this fit in what I'm teaching?
2-What are my students' interests?
Ms.Gilette then gave us a piece of paper showing how to design the materials.It goes like this:
STEP ONE :Pre-Listening/Pre-Reading.
This is to prepare the students for the topic.We get some brainstorming to engage them with the subject and get some background knowledge.
STEP TWO:Core Text (Video or Reading)
It's a video or a written text .
STEP THREE:Global Understanding(Main Ideas)
Students try to find the main idea.It's better to start with global knowledge then to get to some relevant details.You don't want to encourage students to understand everything every time.
STEP FOUR:Relevant Details(Content /Language)
It's when we try to use this information productively.
STEP FIVE:Follow-Up/Skills transfer
Like for example if the material is used for listening practice,you can use the follow-up as speaking exercise,it's like doing a role play for instance.
To give us an example :
1-Ms. Gilette played a video from the ABC News about soccer in the US. A video is a very good way of teaching the language because it's a slice of real life which gives students a chance to be there.She said that sometimes she plays the first part of the video without the sound and asks them about what they understand.This is to show the students that they really understand more than they think they do.The second time they watch and she asks about some ideas.Then she can ask about more details.
2-For the second listening she gave us a list of questions like:
-How many young Americans play soccer?
-How much does 11-year-old Kyle love the sport ?
-What do you think a" soccer Mom" might be?
-Explain why soccer is an ideal sport to play. etc.
She said that you could grade the task according to the level of your students.
3-Then she gives the students a list of vocabulary and phrases to focus on some linguistic details.
4-The follow-up can be mock interviews.Here it's an interview with a famous athlete.But they shouldn't tell who the athlete is.It's like a mystery guest game.Then the class will guess who the athlete is.
Concerning the reading she gave us a piece of written realia from a newspaper which was a movie review of "The Pirates of the Caribbean:Dead Man's Chest." Then she started asking us questions like:
-What kind of article is this?
-What's the name of the newspaper?
-What does the writer think of the movie?
-When was this review puplished?
-What kind of film is it? etc.
In case you don't have suitable authentic articles ,you can get articles from the internet about a movie they know.
For your students you can lead a pre-reading discussion with them about movies.Then they read for the main idea.You can help them to find it in the title,sub-headings,and the pictures or they can read the first and last paragraphs of the article.We should train our students to be good readers.You can also use labeling:Which paragraph speaks about the characters?Which paragraph speaks about the plot? etc.
As for the follow -up ,she asks students to write a real movie review.
Finally I would say that the workshop was very interesting.Although most of us use something like this in our lessons,it will always be useful to have some confirmation that what we are doing is good.I believe we can find some tips in what we read which can really be rewarding.

Prepared by Balqees Abu Assali

Hi.... Belal Al-Amarat (Abu Osama) welcomes you again .....
here is a plan of teaching persent perfect by using the technique of drama.
subject: present perfect
Level: pre-intermediate
Outlines:
1- The teacher explains the present perfect by introducing sentences then students figour out the rule of this tense.
2- The teacher gives this sentence to be practiced by the students. e.g " have you ever been to Jordan?" students should repeat that sentence.
3- Whenever you finished presenting rule and making sure that students have understand how to use the present perfect, get them to stand out and make a circle so that each student could be able to see the other ones.
4- The teacher starts saying this sentence " i've been to The U.S.." then students repeat this sentence after the teacher.
5- Finally, each student takes his turn to say this sentence making some changes in the place they've been to.
6- Each sentence should be repeated first by the other students and then by the one who has said it and the one whos is going to say the following one.

Hi… I’m Belal again summarizing this workshop hoping that you will get as much benefit as you can. In the morning we left to the George Read Middle School where we had attended several classes and seen the techniques used by the teachers of the school. The next day teachers practiced their own. Before they taught we had found their teacher teaching them how to deal with different stories. Students had been reading these stories which were of different titles and events and then they lined up and each one of them had to tell what the story was about. Some of weak students were asked oral questions about their stories In order to check their understanding.
She wrote this question on the board “what did you do on the 4th of July?” and then students wrote their answer on pieces of paper by this way she encouraged them to speak English in the classroom although their native language is Spanish and they had to write seven answers for that question when they finished she wrote some answers on the board emphasizing on students’ grammatical mistakes for example “ I go yesterday “ and “ I am my family and me watched T.V” she asked other students to give the right answers and gave them feedback.
The second lesson was the Roman empire she followed the following procedures
1- Revising the previous lesson and reminding students of the vocabs they’d already taken.
2- Students drew pictures of things they knew “turtles and what they look like” on the other side of the card they had to write the definition of each picture.
3- She used the computer in order to show the students a video about the Roman Empire.
4- Brain storming.
5- Making predictions
6- Eye contact.
Belal Al-Amarat & Hussein Al-Otome

Hi guys, i'm Belal and i'd like to summerise the lecture we took which was about the American culture American ways. First of all, let's define what's meant by the word culture which each person has different prospect about it.Culture means: traditions, habits, hobbies, history, religion, clothes, architecture, food, education, lifestyle, language, geography, life, and way of life, race, celebration, smell, customs and music. All the nations all over the world have these things. American get married, get children and so on... like any other person around the world but wedding in Jordan is different from the American wedding so it depends on the place you were born in you learn the culture by being in the place for experiencing it by yourself.
It is very hard to understand people's culture unless you travel and interact with people.People have different ways even within the same culture, there is a kind of diversity between people, and every one has his own prospective and they see life from different angles.How do Americans see themselves? Most of the Americans raise American flags either because they are patriot or because they think that they are the best.Brazilians are offended when they hear American say American culture because Brazil is a part of the continent.
The constitution of the United States begins with this phrase "we the people" so that the government is controlled by the people.America is considered the country of the emigrants, because about 13% of the inhabitants don't speak English and also about 40% of the New York university students don't speak English as their first language.
Generalities about the American culture:
1- Individual freedom (self-reliance) in public places you can see DIY which means you can do it yourself.
2- Equality of opportunity, the second person has only one pronoun in English whereas in some other languages it has got more than one pronouns. Abraham Lankan came and was born from very poor family, he had no significant education he was self taught; he fought slavery and exemplified equality.
3- Individual privacy (suspicion of the government) Thomas Jefferson was genius and he was fluent in many languages Greek, Italian, French, Latin, Hebrew, and English. He was the third president of the United States he believed that a wise government should create a safe society and leave them alone the more powerful you are the more corruption you get. The states are united at the front of the outside world and separated in some aspects. For example, you can't get married from your cousin in some states but in other states you may get married and then get back and return to your previous state.
4- Time future-oriented. Time is a resource. Americans are concerned with traveling to the moon more than caring about the hungry or homeless people. So time is money.
5- Not every change is a progress and American assume that this is true. Capitalism is based upon notions of change and improvement.
6- Education: is a quest and trip to learn. Teachers learn from the students as much as students learn from their teachers. The relationship between the teachers and the students is informal.