Quizzes - there are gazzillions of them (yes, that is a real number...) on the net. Just put 'English Quiz' into Google and you'll see that I'm right. They're quite good if you want to do a bit of form focused grammar practice, or if you want to learn vocab in lists. Does that sound a bit old-fashioned? A bit Skinner-esque? Get out the carrot and stick?
I guess it'll depend a lot on the kind of learners that you have whether or not these will be motivating or effective. I think that there is a place for this kind of material, if only because it raises awareness of language form and because using ICT you get instant feedback. You could use it to give practice in a specific area for homework or ask learners to find a couple of quizzes that they found helpful and swap them with each other as a warmer for the next class. It's probably worth using with an eye to how your learners enjoy it, though.
About.com has a wide range of quizzes at all different levels. This is the page showing you all of the options:
As you can see, there's loads of stuff! It can be useful if you want to give learners specific practice in a particular area, but the layout isn't all that motivating. Here's what they look like:
Another quiz site that has a huge amount of material is http://a4esl.org/ . As well as thousands of quizzes to practice vocabulary and grammr, there are also bi-lingual vocabulary quizzes in a really wide range of languages. This can be quite fun to do with languages you have never learnt - I got a surprisingly high score in Croatian based on some cognates and a bit of lucky guesswork!
This site also has some really nice links to VOA Special English (where you can read and listen to a special news programme) and to a variety of podcasts designed for esl learners.
Welcome to my blog! I'm an ESOL teacher and teacher trainer in the UK, and you'll find some of the websites I know about in this blog, and some suggestions on how to use them. Hope it's helpful.
Showing posts with label Crosswords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crosswords. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Eclipse Crossword
Eclipse crossword is a really nice site for creating crosswords (does what it says on the tin, really!)
You can download the programme so that it's on your desktop and it's very easy to use. All you need to do is add in the words you want with definitions, and it does all the work for you. You can print out blank copies, copes with the clues and answers on (useful if you forget the words you put in!) and you can save your word lists and crosswords to re-use. Great for recycling vocab (I often give my learners one at the beginning of the lesson with words from the past week - it's a useful 10 minute filler while you wait for the adult stragglers). You can also get your learners to make them for each other. What's not to like?
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You can download the programme so that it's on your desktop and it's very easy to use. All you need to do is add in the words you want with definitions, and it does all the work for you. You can print out blank copies, copes with the clues and answers on (useful if you forget the words you put in!) and you can save your word lists and crosswords to re-use. Great for recycling vocab (I often give my learners one at the beginning of the lesson with words from the past week - it's a useful 10 minute filler while you wait for the adult stragglers). You can also get your learners to make them for each other. What's not to like?
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