ESL: English as a Second Language

Students can be assigned to use this free Web site for practicing listening skills with dictation exercises about current events. There are several levels, although the site is most suited to intermediate through advanced ESL learners. Students can additionally improve their typing by increasing their words per minute.

ESL: English as a Second Language

Intermediate Low, Intermediate High, Advanced

Use this site with intermediate and advanced students for reading practice and building reading fluency with audio support. There are online fables, stories, entire books (many classics), proverbs, and poems in MP3 format, which you can download or listen to online. View the text by projecting the Web page and read along or download, print, and photocopy PDF files of the texts. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Many of the texts have an accompanying student activity that can be downloaded, printed, and photocopied for use with your class.

ESL: English as a Second Language

Intermediate Low, Intermediate High, Advanced

Use this site with pre-literacy and novice computer-using students to learn the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet, alphabetization, shapes, how to hold a pencil and form shapes and letters, and spelling of simple words letter-by-letter, all while practicing keyboarding/typing and mouse skills. The site has audio for listening and repetition.

ESL: English as a Second Language

Beginning Literacy, Beginning Low

LoudLit offers audible novels, poetry, children's books, historical documents and short stories, complete with the text, making this site useful for ABE, ASE, Family Literacy, Parent Ed, ESL as well as adults with visual disabilities.

Advanced ESL students can follow along with the text as the words are read.

Some items are available for download as well as online listening, making the audio portion portable. Most are in MP3 format so putting the audio on an MP3 player is also possible for mobile learning.

ESL: English as a Second Language

Advanced

Use this site with students for practice of listening skills and vocabulary building through music videos by popular artists with accompanying listening cloze activities. For this activity we have chosen the song "Upside Down at the beginning level, but if your students are at another level, feel free to choose another level or another song that fits more closely with your vocabulary objectives or topic of study.

ESL: English as a Second Language

Beginning High, Intermediate Low, Intermediate High, Advanced