The BBC have excelled themselves, this is a site for all English teachers and particularly helpful for ESL teachers. The site contains sections on General and business English; Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation; Quizzes; The Flatmates and For Teachers. The teacher's section contains lesson plans, skills, teaching ideas and worksheets and videos.
One of the most difficult concepts for an ESL student to grasp is the use of and understanding of idiom. The video uses comedy to explain the meaning and use of idiom in categories such as, food, transport, body and sport and each video contains suggestions for homework.
‘The Flatmates’ section of the site provides a weekly online soap opera using YouTube and then worksheets and lesson plans linked to each episode. For ESL learners it combines three of the four macro skills in one unit - listening, speaking, writing and also contains work on grammar and vocabulary.
In the General and Business English section there are lesson plans for 'Talk about English', 'Talking Business' but the one I really like is, 'Express English', where every week there is a different question and students listen to what others have answered and then join in the conversation by writing and posting a response.
Downloads contain audio as well as a PDF file containing the text of the audio. In my SOSE class we are discussing population density and I intend to download the file which discusses the fact that by the end of this month, the world’s population will have reached seven billion people. Also helpful will be the vocabulary words and definition sheet at the end of the PDF file.
Although very British in content it is nonetheless a very useful site. Visually, it has a simple lay- out with lots of pictures and lots of good words! It’s very easy to navigate useful links to other BBC sites like the news, sports and weather.
This site looks very useful, I would certainly access it if I got an opportunity to teach ESL. I liked the wide variety of resources. Who made this post?
ReplyDeleteKaren