ESL Speaking/Listening and Phonics Hotlist

ESL Speaking/Listening and Phonics Hotlist
An Internet Hotlist on ESL Speaking/Listening and Phonics Sites

Introduction
An evolving site of Web pages that are effective in providing speaking, listening and phonics practice to ESL and ABE students. Check back often for updates.

The Internet Resources

Speaking Sites

Eva Easton Authentic American Pronunciation - Excellent site for working on phonics and pronunciation.
PBS: Do You Speak American? - 'The good news: It’s widely known. The bad news: Known for what? Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery report on the pluses and minuses of Southern American English in the popular imagination. (The research cited in this essay was first published in 2000.)' The site also includes discussions on the following dialects: African American English Smoky Mountains ¡Spanglish! Texan Californian Cajun Chicano English Lumbee Midwest New York City Pacific Northwest Pittsburghese

Listening Sites

Breaking News English - Check out this great site for some comprehensive news selections for ESL learners. Author and Webmaster Sean Banville prepares some ready to use lessons based on breaking news stories. Several new stories are presented each week at different levels with wonderful links; stories can be downloadable in Word.doc + PDF formats and range from very current ones to those dating back to Nov. '04. News articles can be viewed chronologically or by specific themes, including: Business English, Environment, Health, Issues, Lifestyle, Famous People and Gossip, Technology, and World News. These selections include a great variety of pre-reading activities to enhance vocabulary and overall comprehension and discussion questions with answers included. Listening is also available. In addition, Mr. Banville offers a free sample (PDF) showing various parts of his book, '1,000 Ideas & Activities for Language Teachers.' Free website with donations accepted. You will be quite impressed with how comprehensive this site is!
English Club - Free ESL lessons on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading, writing and more.
English Gateway - Description: Online vocabulary lessons (with audio) for intermediate and advanced ESL learners. Exercises on idioms, phrasal verbs and collocations. Student/teacher blog and worksheets.
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab - Randall's ESL listening lab offers easy, medium, and hard listening exercises.
Rong-Chang: English as a Second Language - Lots of great listening sites here. Choose one and click on the link.
World News in Slow and Clear English for ESL Learners - World News in Slow and Clear English For English as a Second Language (ESL) listeners. The English is spoken very clearly at about 80% the speed of regular news announcers.

Phonics Sites

English is Soup! Phonics for Adults - English is Soup! Site was developed for adult ESL students. Done in Adobe/PDF, so there is no sound, which would be helpful with phonics. However, the lists are complete and easy enough to make a copy for students to take with them to study.
Tampa Reads: The Sound Teacher - There are two excellent phonics and vowel areas on this site: THEVOWEL SOUNDTEACHER THEADULTPHONICSTEACHER Both of them utilize RealPlayer for sounds, which are very clear. The phonics page http://www.tampareads.com/realaudio/tests/index-rm.htm also has a great video on phonics rules. This is well done, and should be very useful for ABE and ESL students.
University of Iowa Phonetics - Created in 2003, this site addresses the sounds of American and Spanish English, and also Articulatory Anatomy (in both English and Spanish). Requires a Quick Time plug-in and newer Operating System (OS). Somewhat slow to load but worth the wait. There is also a helpful troubleshooting section.

American Idioms and Conversations

American Idioms - A good selection with good examples. Check out the Conver button to access conversations with idioms.

Instructor Sites

ESL Lesson Plans - This is another site that really has too many aspects to adequately describe. It is developed for Adult ESOL students, and is well designed to determine the skill levels from Literacy to Advanced , along with specific topic areas such as Workforce Development, Consumer Ed, Grammar, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing etc. I like that it is developed by classroom instructors, and that topics such as Life Skills are incorporated into the context.
Tips for Teaching English to the Elderly - An excellent resource of ideas for teaching ESL to the Elderly, and can be used for teaching any limited proficiency students as well.

Content by jsotir, jsotir@waubonsee.edu
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listeslspeajs.html
Last revised Thu Oct 23 10:37:40 US/Pacific 2008