Russell Stannard offers something for everyone.
Something for the students
Teachers always seem to be looking for sites to recommend to their students or to use to set homework. I teach both Spanish and English, and in one of my Spanish classes everyone has either a home internet connection or a connection at work, so I have begun to set more and more homework on the web. I give the students the website addresses and they do the exercises online. This is proving to be quite popular as I can set a whole variety of exercises including listening, vocabulary, reading, grammar, etc.
www.collegeem.qc.ca/cemdept/anglais/trouindx.htm
This is a pretty impressive site. Parts of it need the ‘Flash’ plug-in but you can get this free from the next site on my list. Take a look at the ‘Grammar Troubleshooting’ section, which is good for using in class, too. There are notes on specific points and these can be found by scrolling down. Look, for example, at the section on do and make. Note also the animated grammar tutorials. These are very well designed and I am glad to see people are beginning to exploit the enormous potential of the web much more. There is a lot of material here and it is well worth recommending to your students.
This is a massive bank of grammar exercises and tests. Some are better than others, but it is very comprehensive and the material is usefully organised by level. It is run as a project of The Internet TESL Journal and includes contributions from teachers. I particularly like the ‘Flash’ and ‘Javascript’ quizzes (the ‘Flash’ plug-in is obtainable as a free download from the site). There is also a section for teachers with information on how to write quizzes. This is a good site to recommend to your students; it will keep them productively busy for ages. I have used a lot of the vocabulary exercises in the ‘Flash’ section, which run well and are great for revision or for testing.
Something curious for the teacher
Here are two sites that teachers might find entertaining.
www.wordspy.com/topwords.asp For a bit of fun, try this interesting site, which lists and explains newly-coined words that have appeared in recent newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. It has a ‘word of the day’, a list of top ten words and links to its previous top ten lists. Click on the home page to find out more. The site is well organised and informative.
www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0907017.html Although I speak a couple of languages quite well, I don’t know much about the roots of words, so I found the article on this webpage about the Latin and Greek roots of English words very interesting. The other Factmonster pages it is linked to are also worth a look.
Something to help with preparation
Many readers have asked me about trivia sites where you can find useful facts and figures which can be used to create games or quizzes for the classroom. I use the following trivia sites quite often. It is always worth double-checking any information you want to use by going to another site, but I have found those listed here to be reliable, correct and comprehensive.
www.amusingfacts.com/ Scroll down and click on ‘Places’ or one of the other sections. I like this site because many of the facts are quite funny and they are useful for livening up a class. It is also good because the site verifies all the sources.
www.britain.org.nz/about/questions.html How about using this site, which has common questions (and answers) about Britain? I know a lot of teachers like to use information about English-speaking countries in their lessons and this site can be quite a good reference. All you have to do is click on the question and the answer will appear.
www.mapzones.com/home.php If you want to find out some general information about a particular country, then just click on its name in the list. This is a great site, but there is one problem: when you open it or move from section to section, a lot of advertising appears and you have to close all those windows before you get to the good material. Still, it is very useful and very comprehensive.
Something a reader has recommended
www.worksheetfactory.com Janet Lunam recommended this site to me. It is one of those that help teachers to make exercises and worksheets. Every time I mention these sites in Webwatcher, I always get a lot of responses asking for more, so here, thanks to Janet, is another one.
Tip: One reader has asked me how I keep finding new sites. Well, what I do is to keep a look out for search engines around the world which are new to me, such as those in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, etc. I then use them to do searches for material. So the secret is not to keep looking through the results that come from the search engines you normally use, but find some new engines to try.
Russell Stannard is a lecturer in multimedia at Westminster University, London. He also teaches Spanish and English at Sutton Adult Education College, UK, and has an extensive writing and publishing background.
This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 28, 2003
