English Language FAQ: Why do we call today Boxing Day?

English Language FAQ: Why do we call today Boxing Day?: There is no agreement about this but it is not a) because the British liked a good boxing match to work of their Christmas dinners  b) it ...

Merry Christmas to efl.useful.links Readers!

Merry Christmas!

Language Cartoons from ecenglish

Language Cartoons from ecenglish:

2012 in Photos

The idea of showing the year in photos is a good one - a great source for discussion, thinking the things over and just watching how we lived, and maybe predicting how we will.
The Washington Post - 2012's Photos of the Year.
The Wall Street Journal - Year in Photos 2012.
U.S.News - 2012: The Year in Photos.
Forbes - 2012 год в фотографиях.

With the News

Using news sites in class can be of much help: many topics covered, important things discussed, interesting photos shown - all this could be very useful for a teacher at almost any lesson: to start the lesson, to start the discussion, to organise pair or group work, to introduce new vocabulary or even grammar, and other ways the teacher can use news in class.

Teaching Kids News offers "original news articles on topics that are timely, relevant and intriguing, they are written for an elementary and intermediate school audience (grades 2-8) and can be used easily by kids, parents, and teachers".

Much interesting can be found on CBBC Newsround: news reports, pictures, videos, slideshows.

The Daily What has news articles on various topics with related quizes and lesson ideas.

BBC On This Day is a showcase of some of the most significant as well as some of the quirkier stories broadcast by BBC News since 1950. Nearly all the stories contain video or audio and are written as if the event had only just occurred, drawing on archive media, old newspapers and historical reference books.

GIFT GIVING TRADITIONS AROUND THE WORLD - INTERACTIVE INFOGRAPHIC

GIFT GIVING TRADITIONS AROUND THE WORLD - INTERACTIVE INFOGRAPHIC from visual.ly

This interactive gift giving map, brought to you by Cloud 9 Living, is meant for world travelers, study abroad students, those living in or visiting a foreign country; and anyone with curiosity about cultures, traditions and etiquette standards around the world.

The map specifically covers gift giving traditions in China, India, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Italy, Sweden, Bolivia, Tibet, Morocco, Russia, Samoa, Israel and the English Commonwealth. With holidays ranging from Diwali to Christmas, and traditions from gifting yogurt to pulling on earlobes; everyone will learn something new.

Talk Time

iMOMoffers a nice section with really useful TALK printables - conversation starters on various topics: After School Talk, Friends Talk, Pillow Talk, and so on. The tips are good for using in class or at home.
Other iMOM Printables are also very helpful and beautifully designed.
Besides, one can find many other useful things for school and family life at iMOM.

What the World Searched For in 2012

Google|Zeitgeist 2012 is a site that takes a look at the searches that defines 2012:

The resource can be a good thing for a finishing-year lesson - there is much here to remember and discuss.

Great Idea Found! 2012 News Quiz from Jeffrey Hill

Jeffry Hill, the author of The English Blog (a great place really), has just published his 2012 News Quiz - a good idea to close the year.

2012 News Quiz from Jeffrey Hill

Great Resource Found!

PaperZip is a site of "Free Teaching Resources|Beautifully Designed". Literacy, Numeracy, Topics, and Classroom sections offer wonderful printables that techers really need - very useful and very nice. The blog is also of much help, full of good ideas. In addition to PaperZip, the team also run a kids site Discovery Den - "Exploring the Online World" - a very useful place.

Watch This!

The Kid Should See This is a nice video site where kids can watch good instructional videos. The idea is to provide kids with a safe watching environment. The videos cover various topics: nature, art, music, science, technology and more.

KIDEOS collects appropriate for kids videos of various kind. The large collection to choose from.

National Geographic|Kids - worth watching short videos on different topics: Animals, History, Science and others.

Travelling The World

World Wonders Project by Google is a great teaching resource giving the opportunity to explore the world's most wonderful places. It gives much textual, video and photo information on each place, shows it on the world's map with 3D viewing variant. About section gives much help to start working with the resource. Education section offers free downloadable educational packages for classroom use: teacher guides for primary and secondary schools, secondary school history topics, secondary school geography topics.

Interesting: The 50 Most Popular Books for Teachers

Edudemic has published The 50 Most Popular Books for Teachers with the Infographic from the Best Education Degrees and some words about The Top 10 Books. It would be really interesting to read them some day and compare with the top books for teachers in one's own culture.

Source: edudemic.com via Favourite on Pinterest

27 Days of European Christmas Customs

27 Days of European Christmas Customs from Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany London is a good way to "travel" Europe in December and read how people in different countries celebrate Christmas. Each date opens the window with a short story and a link to more information, video or audio file.

Ideas for English Language Learners | Celebrate the Holidays

The New Your Times|The Lerning Network has posted Ideas for English Language Learners | Celebrate the Holidays where one can easily find the ideas suitable for his students.

Christmas Fun and Activities

We can have Christmas fun all year around and still there will be much great activities left!
Here are some ideas from various places:
technology rocks. seriously.: Sweet Gingerbread Fun!: Gingerbread Apps: The Talking Gingerbread App  is a free app that lets you interact with the gingerbread man by having him dance  ...

Much on British Council and ESOL Courses.

So you want to be an English Language Teacher? – infographic | Macmillan

So you want to be an English Language Teacher? – infographic | Macmillan

Cartoons in Class

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists site has the Cartoons for the Classroom section - a good resource to use with upper-intermediate and advanced learners. Teachers are suggested to download the lesson on the cartoon, its blank version for students to write down their own captions and the cartoon evaluation worksheet. The learning standard given are:

Comprehending and evaluating the content and artistic aspects of oral and visual presentations. 
Responding to a variety of written, visual and electronic texts by making connections to students' personal lives and the lives of others; posing social science questions.

There are 235 cartoon lessons in the library now. The teacher can choose the one suitable and either use it as a part of the lesson or create a lesson just around the cartoon.

Reading

The Library of Congress offers much reading. For kids and teens one can find

The Aesop for Children - the interactive book which contains the text of selected fables, color pictures, video and interactive animations;

The Rocket Book - "The upward progress of a rocket, lit in the basement by the janitor's son, causes some strange situations as it passes through 20 floors of apartments!";

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure with MP3 version of all the episodes: "Ever heard of an Exquisite Corpse? It's not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud.

Our "Exquisite Corpse Adventure" works this way: Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, has written the first episode, which is "pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!" He has passed it on to a cast of celebrated writers and illustrators, who must eventually bring the story to an end. 

Every two weeks, there will be a new episode and a new illustration. The story will conclude a year from now. To get bi-weekly updates with new Exquisite Corpse Adventure chapters, click on the subscribe link  at the top of the page. "This story starts with a train rushing through the night...." No one knows where or how it will end!"

and many more.

Infographics Again

The more you work with Infographics the more you love it - teaching becomes facts full, colour full and more  interactive of course.
Here are some more resources on using Infographics:
Teaching with Infographics. from Lisa Marie Johnson, Ph.D.

Much about Infographics: Innovation Design In Education - ASIDE: Infographics.
More Infographics on https://pinterest.com/favinfographics/ and in the previous Infographics post.

Christmas is Coming! from various resources

10 Resources for Christmas Activities! from Teaching News

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Fun! from technology rocks. seriously

Really Beautiful

Beautiful Time Lapse Video "Within Two Worlds" found at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day is really beautiful - just a pleasure to watch, but also could be a nice variant to show in the class and see what the students feel and think about it.

Videos in Class

The History of English in Ten Minutes offered by The Open University is an entertaining romp through "the History of English" - 1600 years of history in 10 one-minute bites, about the sources of English words and phrases from Shakespear to America and the Internet. There are ten short series and one combined clip containing all the parts. This source could be quite interesting and useful for a certain group of students.

TED-Ed offers video lessons on various subjects supplying each one with a multiple-choice test and the list of additional resources for the topic.

explania.com offers hundreds of animated explanations, interactive tutorials and instructional videos, some of them could be easily used in class. The categories are Ecology, Health, Money, Opinions and Trends, Software, Sports, Technology, Work, Companies. The videos are free to embed on a web page.

The history of the football - Explania

Video For Kids

Kids TV 123 -  many nice educational songs and videos for children for major efl concepts: ABC, Numbers, Colours, Baby Animals and others. There is always a minute at the lesson to watch a 2-3 min video illustrating some vocabulary or grammar thing - a good way to make a lesson more interesting, dynamic and productive.

British Council|Learn English Kids offers Grammar Videos section where Gran helps the girl understand how to use English grammar. There are the scripts and worksheets available. The introduction to a video tells what grammar it is about. These videos could be a nice way to introduce or practice, or even test students' knowledge.

Random Name Generator

Random Name Generator - a why-not thing to use sometimes in class, surely children will love it!

100 Book-to-Film Adaptations

100 Best Films Based on Books from Stylist is a good resource to speak about films, films and books, films vs books, films on books and so on as far as one needs. The images help find the necessary film, get its name, the title of the book, the name of the author. The teacher can choose one film to discuss, offer students to speak upon the Stylist choice of the films, point the films they have or haven't seen, the books they have or haven't read.

Great Printables! Visit!

technology rocks. seriously.: School Signs: Just click on the printable to go to the downloadable PDF version.  You can also right click and save each image as a JPG.

Always Do Your Best

What Kind of Teacher Are You Quiz

British Council|Teaching English offers a nice What Kind of Teacher Are You Quiz - a fun quiz that tells you what kind of teacher you are. Doing the quiz you discover what animal you are and what actiities you can use at class. The collection of activities offered for each animal is really nice with detailed explanations given. The questions of the quiz help understand your own way of teaching, weak and strong points, suggest more ideas you might use in class.

For Fun

TYPOGRAFFIT is a visual communication toy. It organizes the visual information (signs, symbols, graffity...) which will be stored online. Useres can type their text messages and receive graphically related images, up;oad their own images, relate them with text phrases and send to friends, share the images and use other people's images as well.
The result is something like this:

Looks nice!

fodey.com also gives some funny ideas of this kind. It helps create a newspaper clipping, a clipper board, a wizard text, talking flowers, squirrels, cats, and others.

Students will surely love such things and will gladly use them in presenting their homework and projects. Teachers could use these tools to create website and classroom posters, notice boards.
Some examples for classroom board at https://pinterest.com/favinfographics/

Let's Pronounce Correctly

Phonemic Chart from British Council|Learn English is a very convenient thing for a teacher to work with transcription and the pronunciation of vowels, consonants and diphthongs, a good tool to practise these things at home.

Shiporsheep.com uses a language teaching device known as minimal pair practice to teach English speech sounds. The technique helps to distinguish between the different sounds by presenting the words which sound identical apart from the sounds concerned. Learners can hear the words spoken and see the illustration of their meaning. 

Advanced Learning

Specialist Vocabbuilder from British Council|LearnenglishProfessional is a vocabulary practice for advanced students. Choosing between Medical, Legal, IT, Marketing and Financial words they can learn or test themselves on up to 100 words in each category.

lingro is a good online dictionary tool to work with sites and files, helps to quickly look up and learn the most important vocabulary.
You just enter a website address to make all words on that page clickable. There is an online dictionary with  more than 8 million translations in 11 languages. With registration the site saves your history showing recent words and sentences.

Useful material on Writing an English Cover Letter, Writing an English Resume, How to Interview for a Job can be found at EnglishLink in Free English Tools section. The tips and advice will help with writing and presentation - explaining how to prepare and giving examples. There are audio files of the texts in each section.

Infographics

Wikipedia  gives the following definition to INFOGRAPHICS: Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information (more here).

The following infographics from Cool Infographics with a good collection of infographics on different topics and its cool-infographics-gallery illustrates what an infographic is:

 Here are some ways teachers can use infographics in class:
- a silent poster on the wall to arouse students' interest (The Learning Power of LEGO)
- a poster revising a previously learnt topic (Gerund: hints and tips)

- a visual plan of the lesson (I Wish I were - English Grammar)

- a visual plan for a story telling (story writing) (The History of the Christmas Tree)
- a starting point for a student's project (Those Kids Today)

- a starting point for a discussion (The Shocking benefits of Learning English

The following sites offers various kinds of infographics:

Grammar.net

Find out more about English grammar through Infographics on Grammar.net.
















Learn Stuff
Learn Stuff offers Infographics section with some stories which could be a good start for a discussion in class. Each story has an introduction to the topic and quite a detailed infographic about it.
For example, Graduating with Technology story:

Visual.ly
A big collection of infographics can be found at Visual.ly. There are different topics: Animals, Business, Computers, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Environment, Food, Gaming, Geography. The teacher can choose any that suits his needs. The infographics can be embeded to the site.

More sites on INFOGRAPHICS:
The Oatmeal - the resource with great language infographics

Daily Infographics - a new infographic every day, many categories
Schools.com Visuals - many infographics on How to Become a ...
InfographicsArchive - a big collection of infographics on different topics
Educational Infographics - a Pinterest collection
Infographics - a Pinterest collection
Favourite Infographics - a Pinterest collection

The Learning Curve Thinking Tools

At The Learning Curve site one can find Values for Life section - Living Life: Qualities and Attributes - with printable activity sheets for each of the 200 qualities and attributes listed on the page (Acceptance, Accomplishment, Accuracy and others). Each worksheet contains the following questions and tasks: In your own words, how would you describe ...? How does the dictionary describe ...? In the text boxes below, enter the things you think you should do to show ...; To live a rewarding and full life for yourself and to make a difference to the lives of others, how will you incorporate this ‘Value for Life’ into your character. Enter your ideas in the shapes below.
.

In the Thinking Tools section there is the collection of thinking strategies and tools designed to provide a scaffold which enables students to think with more depth and structure. Short discription of each tool is given, the worksheets are printable. 

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 from Jane Hart

VOA Learning English

VOALearningEnglish is a site with good listening activities of different kind, the teacher can choose what suits his needs. The site offers Shows in Special English where one can learn English reading and listening to weekly shows. The stories are written at the intermediate and upper-beginner level and are read one-third slower than regular VOA English. There are downloadable texts, MP3s, PDFs and captioned videos. Interactive Books section gives pronunciation, definition and examples of words and idioms. A good way to introduce vocabulary in the classroom and revise it at home. Students can improve their listening skills, vocabulary and comprehension skills with Article Activities.

Grammar in Focus

Road to Grammar with Road to Grammar Junior provide Quizzes on various grammar topics with notes, Extra Extended Practice on major grammar topics with all the necessary information, interesting interactive Games, Downloads both for teachers and students. There is also Road to Grammar blog with more ideas about teaching grammar.

Cambridge English Online where we have recently found the great Phonetic Focus (read here) also offers wonderful Grammar Gremlins - a funny short grammar game with elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. You will have only one minute to complete the five questions correctly. A nice way to master grammar!
The site has other interesting interactive activities: Tower of Babble with matching the question and the answer, Wild West English with various games included, English Doctor with testing on over 70 idioms using body parts and many others.

The Macmillan Dictionary is going places

More information - the article on Macmillan's website.
To access the online dictionary click here.

163 Questions

The NYT Learning Network blog offers a  list of 163 discussion questions taken from its Student Opinion feature. The questions are based on the NYT content with the links to the relevant article. The questions can be a good way to start the lesson or a discussion, to help students in writing or project working. There are the questions for various topics, age and language levels (intermediate, advanced).
The first two questions as an example:

1. Do Apps Help You or Just Waste Your Time?
2. Do You Keep a Diary or Journal?

English Language Tools

Online-Utility.org offers online computer utilities which allow to perform tasks without installing any software. Its English Language Tools software can be used in teaching, learning, linguistic research and more.
The discription of the tools as the site gives it:

Readability Test and Improve - Calculates and prints various readability tests. Finds sentences which you should consider revising to improve text's readability.

Learn English Text - Provides tooltips with synonyms and dictionary links for difficult words.

Vocabulary Builder - Generate vocabulary lists for any English language text.

New Words English Dictionary - Create custom vocabularies and dictionaries (for teachers and students).

Dictionary - Explains to you meaning of the words. Learn English words. Reference and lexicon.

In Simple English - Allows you to find words in English text which are not considered simple or basic or they aren't in the word list you choose. Useful when one should write simple English texts.

Filtered Word Frequencies - Allows you to find uncommon words in any English text or web page. For working with students in class Learn English Text  and Vocabulary Builder seem to be especially useful.

Something About Photos

Fotopedia is a great collection of wonderful photos on any topic you need. The photos are given together with encyclopedia articles. There is also Fotopedia Magazine with daily added selections of photos and articles. For example, Infinite Riches: The Hermitage Museum.

TeachingPhotos has photos of hundreds of classroom displays and provides inspiration to teachers all over the world. It is nice to see how other classrooms look like, what activities teachers use and how they are designed. The examples of different school subjects are given.

Photography from the National Geographic - great photos from the great site. Students will probably love the activities from My Shot section. Not much about English - but really beautiful. Anyway, a creative teacher will find the way to use this great photo resource in teaching English.