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GREAT ESL ONLINE RESOURCES
FOR TUTORS AND STUDENTS
Compiled by the Literacy Council of Kitsap
So many online sites are come-ons to buy resources and materials or to subscribe to journals, lesson plan sites, etc. Here are a few great links that offer a lot of helpful material with little or no ulterior commercial motive.
If in the course of your tutoring you happen to come across a WONDERFUL site, please send us the link via e-mail at lorene@kitsapliteracy.org so we can determine whether to add it to the list. Thanks!
Shoreline Community College Ready-to-Teach Levels 1-5 "Pink Pages"
Go here first for fantastic spreadsheets of what to work on with your students
at their level of English. Includes: Communicative Areas, Grammar,
Vocabulary, and helps for you to do effective assessment.
www.manythings.org/signs/
Also called "Interesting Things for ESL Students." Shows photos of hundreds of typical signs around town – terrific for vocabulary development and discussion. They’d make a great matching and concentration game with all kinds of variations too!
www.englishtenseswithcartoons.com
English With Cartoons was developed by Mike, a former ESL student who designed this website focused solely on the 12 English verb tenses. Lists of basic facts about the tenses, an alphabetized list of irregular verbs, and exercises are accompanied by videos that illustrate the use of each tense. Love this one!
www.sozoexchange.com
"Where adults learn English and exchange ideas." This great site is highly recommended by one of our experienced tutors for working on pronunciation and understanding American idioms. Very clear videos present the sound and physical production of words and sentences.
www.englishmeeting.com
A unique resource with audio/video for ESL teachers and students. Recommended by Karen and Roberta, LCK tutor and student struggling with the pronunciation of ‘th’!
ESL Tutor Resources from St James Cathedral
Helping adult refugees & immigrants learn English & become U.S. Citizens.
www.usalearns.org
Developed by the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, this is a free web-based multimedia site for adults learning ESL. It is designed for distance learning where students work online at their convenience, and where the tutor can access their student’s site to check progress and offer feedback. Learners develop and strengthen reading, writing, listening, and life skills. This program is a great way to supplement your one-on-one tutoring time while increasing your student’s proficiency on the computer.
www.emints.org
eThemes on the top tab is organized alphabetically by theme and grade level to links for lessons/lesson plans/activities that are easily adaptable to adult education at all levels of ESL. Very comprehensive.
www.eslpartyland.com
Karin’s ESL Partyland is a site with material for students to work on online and for teachers to access lesson ideas. It also has a quiz center where thematic exercises for learners are ranked easy, medium, and difficult. The teacher pages are a wealth of information for all levels.
esl.about.com
Start Learning English with categories in: basics, grammar, quizzes, important differences and exceptions, phrases and vocabulary, reading comprehension, and much more. You’ll want to create a desktop shortcut for this one!
www.eslmania.com
Great place for students and teachers. Idioms, grammar, accent reduction, business English, reading the news, and more ideas. Be sure to look at the section Bright Ideas for Teaching ESL.
iteslj.org
The internet TESL Journal offers a multitude of links for teachers and students to browse for just about any aspect of ESL. There are also articles written by professionals on L2 teaching theory and practice. Check out the links tab.
www.rong-chang.com
Originally set up as a, “starting point for ESL learners who want to study English through the web.” Great links to the top 100 U.S. newspapers, idiom dictionaries, ESL/EFL magazines and journals, the Coffee Break Arcade for games, and links for Speakers of Spanish to study English.
www.elcivics.com
Civics/ESL lessons, activities, quizzes, ESL photo stories, videos, crossword puzzles, worksheets, etc. Great resource for sharing U.S. customs, landmarks, life-skills, and peculiarities with your students. A great source for the bank of 100 study questions, some of which are asked on the citizenship test.
a4esl.org
A HUGE place for online activities for students. Quizzes and activities can be done bilingually in 44 languages + English. We guarantee that your student’s L1 is included! This site provides great practice for learning simple navigation with a computer.
www.breakingnewsenglish.com
WOW!! Ready-to-use ESL lessons with all kinds of activities based on up-to-the-minute news/current events. Downloadable and printable. We love this site!
www.owl.english.purdue.edu
A wealth of helps! Grammar, writing, Grade 7-12 and GED-level material quite adaptable to adult education and definitely adaptable to ESL.
www.esl-library.com
Brags that, “teaching English just got easier!” Hundreds of ready-made lessons replete with printable flashcards to which you can also add your own text.
www.eslcafe.com
Dave Spurling’s site has been around forever, but it bears mention as it is one of the most respected and accessed. Browse around and make sure to check out Stuff for Students – there’s a special section on teaching 1-to-1. ESL instructors around the globe submit teaching ideas, so the Café is a "world" of information!
www.usingenglish.com
154 downloadable PDF lessons and handouts for reading comprehension from beginning to advanced-level students. There are also on-line and hard copy quizzes and activities based on the reading selections. Another good site on which to practice basic computer skills.
www.cdlponline.com
Thematically organized "story lists" with audio (and some with video) from current and past news stories. Basic and full versions of each account cater to your student’s level of English, and each comes with activities to check comprehension.
www.MakeBeliefsComix.com
Available in seven languages, this website, endorsed by Google’s Literacy Project, UNESCO, and the International Reading Association, lets you write and illustrate your own comic strips. It provides practice on the computer and is very useful as a means of doing a running comic strip in interaction with your students. Fun!
Introduction
• Level 1
• Level 2
• Level 3
• Level 4
• Level 5
• Level 6
For more detailed information on Read With Understanding (RWU) standards, please go to the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC) website by clicking on the RWU link and then scroll to the indicated pages.
For more detailed information on CASAS Listening standards, please go to the
CASAS link and scroll to page 19.
For information on the Washington State/Equipped For The Future (WA/EFF) Learning standards, please click on the WA/EFF link and scroll to the indicated page.
Introduction
Standards-based ESL curriculum design and lessons help us teach more effectively and with greater consistency. We hope this information will help you in designing lessons for your students to help them make progress with their knowledge and use of English and to advance to the next level of ESL.
Standards:
- Describe what adult learners should know and be able to do in a particular skill area at a specific level.
- Focus on application – What do I now know and what can I do with that knowledge?
- Describe an integrated process that is the same across levels.
- Are developmental – as I progress, I get better and better at each skill process.
Washington State ‘Read With Understanding’ Standards guide us and our students to:
- Determine the reading purpose.
- Select reading strategies appropriate to the purpose.
- Monitor comprehension and adjust reading strategies.
- Analyze information and reflect on its underlying meaning.
- Integrate new information with prior knowledge to address the reading purpose.
CASAS Content Standards for ESL Listening
CASAS listening tests measure the attainment of basic listening skills in contexts that learners would expect to encounter in everyday situations. Incorporating CASAS listening competencies and standards into your teaching helps to insure that your students will learn what they need to know to become functionally competent English-speaking members of their families, communities, and of the workforce. Including the content standards in your instruction will help your students to progress in their new language skills and into the next level of ESL.
Washington State/Equipped for the Future Learning Standards
This document represents the core of a standards-based system for adult education in Washington State.
It includes:
- Learning Standards (broadly, what any adult needs to be able to do in order to be a successful worker, family member, and community member)
-
Indicators and Dimensions of Performance (which define what an adult can be expected to do at a given level of performance).
Back to Standards Top
Level 1 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 7—11)
Adults exiting Level 1 ESL should be able to read:
- Familiar words on signs and labels
- Personal information prompts on simple forms
- Months, days, dates, and times on an appointment card
- Street signs and numbers, bus numbers, and store-front signs
- Familiar traffic and safety signs
- Prices and currency and coin values
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 45)
Adults exiting Level 1 ESL should be able to:
- Recognize and distinguish between the various sounds of vowels and consonants
- Distinguish basic stress and intonation patterns
- Comprehend basic grammar with present tense verbs
- Comprehend simple social exchanges
- Comprehend short emergency warnings and commands
- Identify the main idea, topic, or gist of brief discourse or information
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 33)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 39)
Back to Standards Top
Level 2 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 12—17)
Adults exiting Level 2 ESL should be able to read:
- Words and prices in store ads to decide what to buy
- Personal information prompts to fill out applications and registrations
- Months, days, dates, and times on a personal calendar to ID and enter important dates
- Maps, bus schedules, and directions to get to destinations
- Product labels and simple directions for proper use
- Phone directory to locate phone numbers and addresses
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 46)
Adults exiting Level 2 ESL should be able to:
- Distinguish individual words in connected speech
- Recognize letters of the alphabet, letters in words, and numbers when spelled or dictated
- Recognize contracted forms (ex. I’ll for I will)
- Understand simply expressed states or feelings
- Comprehend simple brief messages or announcements
- Comprehend simple single-step instructions and directions
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 34)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 40)
Back to Standards Top
Level 3 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 18—23)
Adults exiting Level 3 ESL should be able to read:
- Store ads to make comparisons and shopping decisions
- Personal information prompts to complete job applications
- Classified ads to find jobs, housing, and goods and services
- Garage sale ads
- Medical prescriptions and labels to accurately follow instructions
- Notes, bulletins, and announcements from school teachers and work
- Product names and quantities to fill a purchase order
- Short narratives on U.S. customs, holidays, and history
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 47)
Adults exiting Level 3 ESL should be able to:
- Recognize words and sounds when modified by adjacent sounds
(ex. walked –‘t’ and played –‘d’)
- Comprehend homonyms in context (ex. 'There’s a hole in the bag' and 'Get a whole bag')
- Understand intermediate grammar and structures
- Understand comparative and superlative adjective forms (fast, faster, the fastest)
- Understand brief non-face-to-face communication (ex. phone calls)
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 35)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 41)
Back to Standards Top
Level 4 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 24—28)
Adults exiting Level 4 ESL should be able to read:
- Picture books with simple text aloud to a child
- Short narratives about community concerns to ID and consider issues in one’s own community
- Lists of entry-level job duties to decide whether to apply
- Charts about job benefits
- Short narratives about the immigrant experience to reflect on one’s heritage and explore others’
- Bills to understand how and when to pay
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 48)
Adults exiting Level 4 ESL should be able to:
- Recognize reduced, non-formal forms of words and phrases (ex. gonna, gimme, didja)
- Comprehend words changed by prefixes and suffixes (ex. happy/unhappy, joy/joyful)
- Comprehend multi-step instructions and directions
- Show understanding of hypothetical situations (ex. You are a patient. What do you ask the doctor?)
- Comprehend extended conversations
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 36)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 42)
Back to Standards Top
Level 5 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 29—33)
Adults exiting Level 5 ESL should be able to read:
- House and apartment rental ads to compare options and make informed decisions
- A minimum wage poster to determine if one’s pay level is legal
- Information regarding employment benefits to make choices about each
- Short stories about losing one’s job to reflect on how job loss affects family relations
- Information about application for U.S. citizenship
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 49)
Adults exiting Level 5 ESL should be able to:
- Recognize moods, emotions, and attitudes conveyed by pronunciation and stress patterns (ex. I don’t believe it., I don’t believe it!)
- Comprehend speech that contains unfamiliar vocabulary using contextual clues
- Comprehend advanced grammar (ex. complex verb tenses, passive voice, reported speech, etc.)
- Comprehend extended and detailed non-face-to-face communication (ex. phone conversations, announcements, radio broadcasts)
- Comprehend detailed instructions, explanations, and directions in a range of contexts
- Identify the main idea/topic of extended discourse
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 37)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 43)
Back to Standards Top
Level 6 –
Examples of Proficient Performance in Reading RWU (pp 34—38)
Adults exiting Level 6 ESL should be able to read:
- Nutrition charts to choose healthier or diet-specific meals
- Newspaper editorials on opposing sides of an issue to clarify one’s opinion
- Newspaper advice columns to stimulate discussion of personal issues
- Television and movie guides to determine viewing choices
- Information from labor unions to help with decisions to join or not
- Medical brochures on illnesses/conditions and how to deal with them
- Policy and procedure manuals to prepare for a job or job advancement
- Academic and vocational textbooks to prepare for future education
Examples of Listening Standards CASAS (p 19) WA/EFF (p 50)
Adults exiting Level 6 ESL should be able to:
- Comprehend specialized vocabulary (ex. technical, vocational, academic)
- Recognize a range of question types (ex. embedded and tag questions)
- Comprehend extended social narrative (ex. description of weekend activities)
- Understand details of descriptive and factual material in narrative form (ex. lectures, safety
talks)
- Differentiate fact from opinion
- Detect a speaker’s direct/indirect purpose or bias (ex. advertisements, political speeches)
Convey Ideas in Writing Standards WA/EFF (p 38)
Speaking So Others Can Understand Standards WA/EFF (p 44)
Back to Standards Top
