Hello everybody. This is going to be the last blogpost of this blog so far. From now on, we’ll be pleased to receive you at English in Guía, the blog where we will be concentrating the articles of all levels.

See you soon!!!

“Integrating the web into the classroom or encouraging students to take advantage of online self-learning materials can be a great way to supplement current lesson plans. The following e-learning resources would serve as a nice addition to almost any curriculum.

FreeRice – Created by the United Nations World Food Program, FreeRice is a revolutionary site that allows visitors to practice English vocabulary and end world hunger in the process. For every question that is answered correctly in the FreeRice trivia game, ten grains of rice are donated to hungry people.

VerbaLearn – This vocabulary learning site allows users to review English words and quiz themselves online for free. Questions that are answered incorrectly on quizzes are automatically placed on handy study lists.

Popling – Popling is a desktop application that makes it easy to learn English (or anything else) with flashcards that pop up on your computer screen. The app gives users the option of studying existing flashcards or creating original Popling cards.

Fit Brains – Fit Brains is a free gaming website that allows users to play free brain-training games and puzzles. The most useful games on the site for English students include Paradise Island 2 and Wildword Garden, both of which teach English vocabulary.

LingQ – LingQ is a popular language learning site that combines lessons with social networking. Teachers and students who sign up for a free membership can practice LingQ lessons, make friends in the community, join live conversations, and have writing corrected by native speakers.

ESL Fast Robot – In addition to offering resources for the classroom and independent learning, ESL Fast also provides two online robots that can be used to practice English conversations. The robots are programmed to chat about more than 2,000 different things.

ESL Tower – ESL Tower provides students and teachers with a wide range of grammar and vocabulary exercises that can be printed or studied online.

Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg produces and links to free print and audio books that can be found online. These books provide great reading and listening practice for English students.

Yugma – Yugma is web conferencing software that makes it easy for teachers and students to share screens and communicate with a built-in instant messaging feature. The free version of Yugma supports up to 20 attendees.

LectureTools – This site provides a unique set of educational tools that can be used to share slides and learning objects, upload podcasts, manage lectures, and monitor student understanding. LectureTools is free for instructors at any U.S. or Canadian college or university.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.”

Who said reading news is boring? I’ve been browsing through different websites which may make you laugh and also help you understand English better.

A couple of examples are Orange news quirkies (includes videos too!) and Oddly Enough news from Reuters.

For those who enjoy this sort of reading, here you are a website which compiles links to a great number of newspapers all around the world. The good thing about the list is it forwards you straight to the “weird news” section, so that you don’t have to look for it.

Finally, you might also need to have a look at the language of headlines. Headlines in English are not too easy at first sight, but once you understand the basics, you’ll be fine. I recommend you this summary on ESLabout, a very useful website on different topics.

Picture by Littel Image

Taken by Simon Crowley

I imagine you would all like to do some listening practice these days, while I’m away. Thanks to a colleague, I’ve discovered a website which contains 6 listening exercises of different levels. They are taken from authentic sources, so they’re bound to be good exam practice too.

Please click here to do the exercises. If you subscribe, they’ll give you access to more.

The website itself is called Instant Ideas and it contains lots of authentic teaching materials.

Thanks to Mónica for sharing it. She writes “El blog para aprender inglés“, which is also worth a visit. If you want some quality advice to learn English, this blog is a must.

Enjoy!

1. General tips on how to write a formal letter: layout, rules, content, abbreviations, etc.
2. Saro’s post on how to write a formal letter: it’s aimed at intermediate students, but it can remind you of interesting stuff. You have a useful presentation plus some exercises to practice.
3. Travel plans + seeking employment: samples on how to request information, offering a house exchange, booking a campsite, making enquiries + applying for a job.
4. Here you have samples of letters related to jobs: resignation, thank you, reference, salary history and cover letters. Here you are another website which is plenty of cover letters.

I hope these were helpful. Enjoy writing!

Here you are a funny video that explains it all. It’s taken from Mark Gungor’s great marriage seminars- they are not “the usual thing”: the tone is humorous and humane; you can also visit his website here, and listen to his radio show here.

Do you agree with the statements posed in the video?

Related websites:

• Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
• BBC: What are the 78 differences between women and men?
• LiveScience: Men and Women really do think differently

Those who are in Facebook might already have had a look at the latest link I’ve shared on my profile. Those who aren’t are invited to join us there, or just visit this other wonderful site we like: it’s called TED TALKS and it contains lots and lots of interesting and inspiring talks in English by well-known (and not so well-known) people from all over the world.

The good news is most of these talks include the option of subtitles (in English- good for you! or Spanish- a bit easier but not so productive).

Where to start? It’s hard, but here are a couple of tips:

1. They are categorized by topics on the left-hand side bottom corner:

• the most persuasive
• the most coragoeus
• the most fascinating
• the most funny
• the most beautiful
• etc

2. Or you could start by these suggestions of talks I personally enjoyed a lot:

• Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity
• Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
• Bill Gates: How I’m going to change the world now
• Isabel Allende tells tales of passion

Enjoy!

It’s my pleasure to announce that we’re participating in this national blogs’ competition again. It’s an event where educational blogs from all over the country can sign in. I’d appreciate some feedback from you all:

• Do you like the design of this blog?
• Is it easy to find what you’re looking for?
• What content would you expect to find here?
• How could we improve it?

You can answer here (in the comments section), by email (you know where I am) or in class.

If you want to leave a support message in the Espiral’s website, you can do so by clicking here.

Thanks for your help!

Practice makes perfect, so to keep practicing here are some websites where you can get more, or you can listen to people reciting them.  Try to emulate them:

• This one claims to be the world´s  largest collection of tongue twisters and it offers 414 in English!
• Here you can find five tongue twisters with audio. 
• In this page you can find three very popular tongue twisters with audio, but it also offers specific ones devised for ESL/EFL students of different languages.  For Spanish speakers, for example, there are tongue twisters to practice the sound pairs /s/ /z/ or /b/ /v/.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page for an amazing rendition of the Woodchuck tongue twister.  See if you can match that!
  

  Photo by Giles Douglas

There is a tool I would really like you to try: it’s called Paragraph Punch and it takes you, step by step, through the whole process of paragraph writing.

There is one free demo (topic one). All you have to do is click here and follow the instructions up to the very end. When you’re ready, copy and paste the text and forward it to me; I’ll be happy to give you feedback on it.

Please feel free to use the comments section here to tell me what you think of the tool.

Photo by Martin Kingsley