Quizzes

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.

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes is a quiz maker.  You can download it for free from here, and it has a range of different types of quiz, ranging from a crossword, to multiple choice questions, matching activities and clozes.  It's nice in that you can produce quizzes that are applicable to your learners and include colour, pictures, and useful feedback with the answers.
This picture shows you the screen you get for making a JQuiz:

It's a great tool if you have something specific that you want to test your learners on, and they can be saved to use with further classes or to share with colleagues or on the net.  It's worth considering, though,  that they take a lot of time to make and a very short time for the learners to consume.  Also, although you can include feedback with the answers, on the whole, they are a testing, rather than a learning tool.  They do take a lot of time to develop and there is already a huge amount of quiz type material on the net, so if you want to test your learners on standard grammatical items, it's probably best to do a quick Google search.  If you want to develop more specific quizzes, though - this is your tool.