Nik's Daily English Activities

This blog is absolutely brilliant!  Nik Peachey has so many great ideas for using the internet, and this is a list of dozens of websites for learners to use outside the class.  It's also a great one for you as a teacher as many of these ideas can be adapted to use in class. 

Here's an example - A city love story  using a short film (9 minutes) from You Tube about Beirut.  I used this is class - opening with a discussion of places you have been that have surprised you (because they've been better or worse than expected) and then discussed people's impressions of Beirut.
I then showed them the first minute (showing what a beautiful city it is) and asked for impressions.



They then watched the next 6 minutes and noted the things that the girl and the boy like.  It's not in English, but there is really nice language in the subtitles (he likes the elasticity of cheese, for example!).  We did watch  the end of the film, but my main focus was then on the learners writing what they like about their cities or towns.  It was really inspiring!
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Animoto

This is a really nice site for creating videos of pictures or video content that you can upload from your own computer or from the internet (or from samples on the site).  You get to choose a soundtrack for it and different backgrounds and the result looks something like this:



Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.  When you've made your video, you can save it, facebook, tweet or embed it, and it's very easy to use.  You do have to register to use it, and the free version only allows you to make 30 second long videos - if you want to make longer ones, you have to sign up and pay.  Still, 30 seconds is still enough to make something worthwhile for a language class.

There are lots of potential applications for this. The video I made depicts a trip to Egypt; you could ask your learners to watch the first time to see where I went, and then a second time, ticking off vocabulary on a list of things they saw (eg sail, pyramid, camel, seagull - including some likely things that weren't there -hotel, shops, bus). Then ask them to describe the trip as if they went, or to prepare a tour operator's persuasive sales pitch for the trip.  The possibilities for this to be a catalyst for lots of language work are limited only by your imagination.  You could also include pictures of your learners or of places that are familiar to them.

My only criticism of the site is that, although it's free, they do keep asking you if you want to upgrade and this can be a lttle annoying......

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.

Language Plants

This is a link to a blog called Language Garden, by David Warr, which has a whole collection of 'word plants' in it.  They're hard to explain, so the easiest thing is to show you a one!  Have a look at this one - how could it fail to brighten up your class?

There are lots of others, some very thought provoking, using lots of different kinds of texts.  This one is one that stirs me.....

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemöller,
a German anti-Nazi theologian

I think that they are a really nice way to introduce a text for further work on vocabulary or structure, or for further productive work on  the same topic.  What's particularly nice for lower level adult or teenage learners is that a lot of the texts are quite profound or thought provoking, but quite accessible due to the repetitious nature of the texts.  The visual aspect may also help to add motivation, and comprehension.

Limitations?  I guess you might have to be a bit sensitive to your learners in terms of some of the content (the one above, for example, might be upsetting to some), but apart from that I think they're great for a five minute filler, or for basing a whole lesson around.  Let the garden grow!

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Worldmapper

This site is really interesting, especially if you have students who are quite politically aware (or you feel you'd like to make them more politically aware!).  It has a wide range of world maps that are distorted according to various criteria.  You can choose what you'd like to see -anything from numbers of people in tertiary education to internet use, and a whole raft of other things.  Below is an example of one showing GDP, showing how the purchasing power of various currencies varies form country to country and therefore the discrepancies in power between nations. It's a bit of an eye-opener....

I think that this would work very well with educated teenagers or adults who are interested in world events.  A simple print out would make a great warmer for a discussion on the topic and could be used for work on comparatives and superlatives, too. If you were teaching articles with geographical place names, it might make an interesting alternative to the 'take a trip round the world' activity, too.

I suppose that the only limitations are that the class would need to be fairly well educated and have a good sense of the actual geography of a world map (this wouldn't work so well with my ESOL class of middle aged South Asian women, I don't think) and that they need to have a background of expressing the kind of critical thought that this discussion would entail.

Mapcrunch

This is an example of a picture from Mapcrunch.  It's a site that uses images from Google Street View from all over the world.  You can also follow the roads along and see different views, and there are pictures from all over the world to choose from:

Some of them are really stunning., but it's worth noting that,since they are all street views, a lot are of suburban streets or motorways and so a bit universal in character.  A nice activity might be to show some of these less iconic ones and see if the learners can guess where they are.  It could be nice for teaching comparatives and superlatives or doing speaking exercises to descibe scenes.  Here are a couple of examples - Which countries do you think they are from?

Give up?  Well, it's New Zealand, and Switzerland - arguably two of the prettiest countries in the world!

Image Slideshow using Gif Up

GIF animations generator gifup.com

Gif Up is a really great website for creating slideshows for use in the class.  You can use pictures of your own, or from Flickr (which has thousands of images of all sorts of things) or from websites.  to use it, just go to the website, click on 'Select from Flickr', and put in a word to search for (I used 'africa')

Then select up to 9 images and the site will make a slideshow for you.  It's designed to make animations, so put the speed on 'super slow' if you want it to be more of a slideshow.

This is a nice tool for use as an introduction to a topic or a reading, for example.  You could show them the slideshow and ask them in pairs to think of as many words as possible to describe them.  You could then elicit more vocabulary and add to theirs.  My class also wrote poetry from this:

Africa
Elephants roaming the savannah
Boabab trees sheltering herdsmen
Buffalo stampeding
Children playing in the rain
Africa.

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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