Bob Wilson's autoenglish.org

Name of the resource: Bob Wilson's autoenglish.org

URL: http://autoenglish.org/

Brief description: You can find grammar exercises, vocabulary free exercises, videos giving explanations about grammar, videos for doing listening comprehension activities, a free pronounciation course or dictionaries sites among other things. There are also sections depending on the learners level.

What it is useful for: To find activities to do with your students at class.

What you liked the most: the fact that there are videos for different learner's proficiency of English that you can use for listening comprehension activities. You can also find a lot of printable pdf documents with exercises that I find very useful.

What you disliked the most: The web page appearance. It is to sober, I don't find it motivating.

1.
Name of the resource: Learn English.- British Council
URL: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/talk-about?page=0%2C1
Brief description: This is a well known web site with plenty of audiovisual materials in order to promote use of English. Most of the videos or listenings have a worksheet atached so as so ask some questions or set a discussion. All the recordings with or without image can be easyly downloaded so the teacher does not need to depend on the Internet but he/she can feel  a bit more confident that the recording is going to work.
What it is useful for: Provides both authentic and adapted material so the teacher can choose the one that fits best with his/her lesson plan. Provides worksheets in order to work more deeply on the audiovisual material.
What you liked the most: This web site has plenty of materials to promote English language and it is updated quite often. Furthermore, teachers can write their comments in order to share activities, correct mistakes, ask for help...
What you disliked the most: Most of the videos are recorded with a white wall at the background and it gives the sensation that everything is too much prepared, too much adapted and non-realistic. Even if they are great performances of everyday life both students and teachers get this sense of "unreal language".
In my opinion, this non authentic videos should be used mainly with children with a low level of English,but not with adults as it may seem childish for them.

2.
Name of the resource: Warmups Followups
URL: http://warmupsfollowups.blogspot.com/
Brief Description: This web page is like Movie Segments To Assess Grammar Goals. http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/. It provides a movie segment related to a grammatical structure and it provides worksheets in order to wokr on the grammar goal through the movie segment.
What it is useful for: It provides plenty of UPDATED authentic material and plenty of worksheets already /prepared. The teacher will only need to adapt each worksheet to his/her students (which is a bit less work for the teacher). Movie segments in this webpage can also be dowloaded so the teacher does not need to depend on the Internet.
What you liked the most: This webpage is updated constantly!!!
What you disliked the most: You need to download a program to be able to PLAY the segments. This program is necessary in order to PLAY the video so it must be installed in every laptop that is going to be used in class. However, once you have downloaded it , you're DONE!

NOELIA ORNAQUE.

Keep your students controlled

Name of the resource: Edmodo
URL: http://www.edmodo.com/
Brief description: It is like a Facebook in which you can post every resource, including materials, homewrok, notes. It is a very useful way to be in touch with your students, who will be organised in groups, like in class.
What it is useful for: to keep in touch with your students in an organised way. The students can comment on things too.
What you liked the most: I liked most the way it works, because it is very easy to use. SIMPLE.

MUSICAL ENGLISH LESSONS

Name of the resource: Musical English Lessons

URL: http://www.musicalenglishlessons.com/

Brief description: It is a website where teachers can find a list of songs+lyrics with planned activities, worksheets and teaching ideas to practice different grammar points, vocabulary, writing and other language points. Apart from songs, there are also other resources such as grammar reference and videos.

What it is useful for: It is very useful to get ideas in order to plan dynamic and motivating lessons, since students usually enjoy learning through music. The activities can be useful to practice and/or consolidate a range of language points, to introduce subjects for debate, to encourage conversation, to improve writing skills, to introduce new vocabulary, etc. Moreover, many activities are suitable for students with learning difficulties.

What you liked the most: There is a complete list of commercial songs and the exercises are original and varied.

What you disliked the most: The page layout is not very well organized and it may be difficult to find what you are looking for until you get used to it.

MEMORY GAME MAKER

Name of the resource: Memory Game Maker

URL: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/games/memory/

Brief description: Using the Memory Game Maker, you can build your own interactive memory game. You can specify if you want text, pictures or sounds on each row of cards. You can then type in your own text, attach your own pictures or record your own voice. These will appear on the cards in your finished game. You can also customize some other features of the game such as the look of your game and the sound effects used.

What it is useful for: It is very attractive for young students. You can use it with digital whiteboards. You can use this resource to practice vocabulary or even to match sentences. Students love this game because they learn while playing games.

What you liked the most: It is very easy to build a memory game. In five minutes, you have a dynamic exercise.

What you disliked the most: You cannot use this resource in Mac computers.

A finished game created with the Memory Game Maker.

Name of the resource:  Movie Segments

URL: http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/

Brief description: This resource is really useful because it includes some films. The user of this blogs uploads some clips from certain films in order to assess some grammar points. There are some exercises already done, so the teacher has not to do a lot of work.

What it is useful for: When you want to explain some grammatical item, and you do not know how to make it a bit more entertaining, this is a good way.

What you liked the most: You already have some exercises done for you, and they are divided by ages and levels.

What you disliked the most: It is a bit difficult to find something for the age and the level you need it. And you cannot rate it.

• Name of the resource Manythings

• URL http://www.manythings.org/

• Brief description: this web page provides loads of activities for a wide range of levels.

• What it is useful for: the activities can be used as extra material to practise grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading.

• What you liked the most: it has many audiovisual resources.

• What you disliked the most: it is not well organized. Sometimes it is difficult to find what you are looking for.

ESL About

Name of the resource: ESL About
URL: http://esl.about.com/
Brief description: it is a web plenty of resources. It offers all types of materials for beginners and higher levels as well as some theoretical explanations.
What it is useful for: finding activities related to speaking, reading, writing as well as listening. There are also some quizzes and games.
What you liked the most: you can find listening activities and different proposals to run speaking activities.
What you disliked the most: the activities are grouped according to the skills, however, they are organised in to two main levels: beginners and “continue learning”. The levels are not concretely specified.

English Club

Name of the resource: English Club
URL: www.englishclub.com
Brief description:

Englishclub is a user-friendly website including plenty of resources for teachers and learners of English. You can search activities according to skills (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading and writing) and some fields (Business English). It also offers a wide range of fun and interactive material and activities to learn English through ESL Games, English quizzes and audiovisual material online. Apart from activities to teach and learn English, you can find tutorials and sound files explaining formal aspects of the English language and plenty of worthy references, such as dictionaries of sayings, idioms, phrasal verbs, slang, quotes, etc.

It offers the possibility to test your level in English and get help with English grammar. You can also make your own English page with blogs, photos, videos, music, etc and chat in English with other students and teachers and find penpals for English practice.

What it is useful for: It is useful for students to read or listen to the tutorials and understand some formal aspects of the language, do activities, check their mistakes and improve their English proficiency in an easy and fun way. It is useful for teachers to get interesting ideas to teach aspects of the English language and download useful material.

What you liked the most: It is useful for teachers and learners of English.


What you disliked the most: Users can get distracted by so many advertisements.

Name of the resource: Englisch-Hilfen. Learning English Online

URL:

http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/

Brief description: This web page includes different grammar and vocabulary exercises very useful for different levels of English. Visitors can also do tests, participate in the forum and download worksheets.

What it is useful for: It is useful for both teachers and learners.

What you liked the most: One useful thing is that exercises are divided into levels or into topics to facilitate the visitor's research. There are also interesting links such as top news and online dictionaries.

What you disliked the most: There are few speaking and listening comprehension activities.

Name of the resource Agenda Web
URL: http://www.agendaweb.org/
Brief description :  This is a very interesting and useful webpage where you can find a huge variety of exercises that cope with all the language skills. 

What you liked the most: I really like this web because it has a the exercises separated by skills and within each skill they are separated by topic.



Hope is useful for you all!!!!! ;)

Name of the resource: Educating Her World, Sara Davila.

URL: http://saradavila.com/front/

Brief description: This is a resource where you can find plenty of activities for your classroom. You can search them by level of proficiency, by type of activity  (e.g. games, TBL, etc.) and also according to the  language items (e.g. skills, grammar, reading comprehension, etc.) you want to work with.

It is useful for finding activities for the classroom and also for getting inspiration.

What I like the most is that there are TBL (task-based learning) activities, many activities that focus on speaking and also that in all the activities you find you can download the sheets for the students to work in class (it's very complete).

What I dislike the most is that there are not many activities for practicing specific grammar points.

Anna Prat

Storybird

•Name of the resource: Storybird
•URL: http://storybird.com/
•Brief description: Teachers and students can make stories using the illustrations that are available in the page
•What it is useful for: Teachers can build stories and also use a free class account to manage students and give assignments to them. When students have submitted their task, teachers can send emails and/or comments to students.
•What you liked the most: it stimulates student creativity and imagination, moreover there are so many images that can inspire students to start writing, It’s a good tool to foster collaborative writing among students because students can invite other students to collaborate with them in the same task. Teachers/students can make their stories available to the general public or restrict the access.
•What you disliked the most: Students can get distracted easily with the illustrations.


Marta Nogué

Name of the resource: Teachers.net
URL: http://teachers.net/
Brief descriptio: Here you can find activities, lesson plans, games, etc.
What it is useful fo: It is useful to get ideas to design our own lesson plans and activities in the classroom.
What you liked the most: There are a lot of interesting activities that one can adapt.
What you disliked the most: The organization is a little bit messy but it is not very difficult to find activities related to the teaching of English.

Name of the resource: Multimedia Authoring for Language Tutors and Educational Development
URL:  http://recursostic.educacion.es/malted/web/
Brief description: This web page is designed to learn English.

 

What it is useful for: Revising units, listening, reading, vocabulary, speaking.
What you liked the most: The activities are visual and entertaining.

 

What you disliked the most: You need Java to use to programme and you cannot download the activities.

Name of the resource APAC (Associació de Professors de Llengua Anglesa)
URL http://www.apac.es/index.html
Brief description ok, first of all, sorry for my previous task; I though we just have to prove how the site works, and try to write something or embed some videos, this is why I've done this little presentation of the Shaun the Sheep videos. Anyway, it's been useful for me to see how it works.
Now, I'm prividing the URL (I already now what it is!) of a website that could be useful as a resource. It is the website of the APAC, whre you can find interesting information about our job.
What it is useful for it's useful to be updated and aware of all the latest researches concerning English Language Teaching
What you liked the most that you can find there uploaded the powerpoints of some lecturers made by prestigious linguists and also interesting activities to put into practice with the students!
What you disliked the most that it could be richer in terms of content

Let me show you some examples of what you can find in the site:

1) Here is the link wher you can directly find some of the games suggested
http://www.eslgamesworld.com/members/games/ClassroomGames/Quizshow/Irregular%20Past%20Simple%20Quiz%20Show/

2) And here I'm providing you with the cover of one of the monographs the APAC publishes every year. In this case, the issue was dedicated to CLIL:

Name of the resource English + 1
URL I'm still wondering what it precisely is
Brief description What about learning English + something else more? I like learning that way because there are so many interesting and funny things to learn! Now, I've recently discovered some typical English cartoons made by plasticine (Walace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep) and I've learnt about its filming technique, called Art-motion. I've found an entertaining video where it is explained the process to make these cartoons possible. Let me show it to you!
What it is useful for Well, it's useful to find entertaining and curious things about all kind of subjects. Just to make learning English a bit more exciting (and also to foster curiosity)
What you liked the most that there aren't any content contraints
What you disliked the most that it's very difficult to deal with ICT

Here you are one sample chapter of  Shaun the Sheep

And here you can see how the art-motion technique works!