Read With You

 

1.  Dictionaries:

• The Merriam Webster Dictionary provides audio for pronouncing most words.

• The Urban Dictionary is a good resource for looking up new slang terms. 

 

 

2.  Pronunciation:  (focusing on sound production unrelated to reading, spelling, meaning, or grammar.)

• The University of Iowa Phonetics page has clear, animated diagrams showing the articulation of vowels and consonants in English, Spanish, or German. 

• The Sounds of English page has clear descriptions of how to produce the correct sound along with pronunciation cards, games, and other lesson plan suggestions.

• These Mouth Manglers are difficult sentences to read in English. 

• The English Club's tongue twisters can help you target some difficult sounds. 

• The English Club's page on past tense morphology teaches when to pronounce -ed as /uhd/, /t/, or /d/. 

• The English Club's page on contractions helps to teach student how to pronounce words suchs as "I'll", "can't" and many more. 

 

 

3. Prosody: (Stress, intonation, rhythm, pausing)

• The Sounds of English page on Stress and Intonation is a short but very helpful description of what prosody is in daily English. 

• The English Club's Word Stress page has a description of how to know which syllable to stress in any English word.  

• The English Club's Sentence Stress page looks at how to know which word receives stress in any sentence. 

• This article discusses teaching English rhythm to speakers of Chinese.  This article was written for Chinese teachers of English, but would also be helpful for advanced students

 

 

4.  Listening:

• NPR's All Things Considered can be good practice for students needing to improve their listening skills. 

• Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab has many quizzes practicing listening to conversational English.

• Train Your Accent has audio along with transcriptions to practice listening for reduced syllables in English. 

• Poets.org has audio online of authors reading their poems.  Use this to teach English prosody (such as stress, intonation, and pausing).

• The Listening Lounge has many audio conversations and related quizzes for students to practice with.

• The English Club's Minimal Pairs page provide a large number of difficult sounds contrasted against each other.  Use this to help you student hear the difference between difficult foreign sounds. 

• Learn English by listening to simple songs. 

 

 

5.  Speaking: 

• The English Club's Linking page looks at how native speakers connect words together to avoid a choppy sound. 

• The Purdue Online Writing Lab describes how to summarize and paraphrase correctly and incorrectly. 

 

 

6.  Grammar: 

• The English Club's Articles page can help you teach when to use "a" and "an". 

• This is the site for the Purdue Writing Lab, an excellent resource for grammar and writing. 

 

​​

7.  Vocabulary: 

• Free Language Stuff has many parts of speech categories you can select and use with your students. 

 

 

8.  Idioms:

• This has a list of idioms on which you can click for an example of its use and a synonym. Site also has links for Slang, Proverbs, Conversations, Native-speaker sentences, etc.

• Dave's Idioms has a long list of common idioms.

• The Idiom Connection contains idioms organized both alphabetically and topically. 

 

 

9.  Slang:

• American Slang for ESL Students is has many commonly used idioms organized alphabetically and by part of speech. 

• Many Things has a Slang page which can also generate a list of 10 random slang words. 

 

 

10.  Spelling & Writing: 

• The English Club's Homophone page has many lists of homophones for advanced spellers.  

 

 

11.  Homework and Student Activities: 

• Grammar worksheets

• Pronunciation worksheets

• Vocabulary worksheets

• a4esl has many quizzes, including bilingual quizzes in 49 languages. 

• Dave's ESL Cafe

 

 

12.  Reading Comprehension: 

• Holiday Lessons SThis is a fun way to work on reading comprehension and spark discussions about culture!  Some of these dates aren’t appropriate (like National Condom Day), but there are some great lesson plans that can be used, too.  Dates for holidays that change annually may not be updated, so be sure to double-check!

• Breaking News English  This can be an exciting way to learn about current events while practicing English.  It's a good resource for more advanced students.  Change the level for each story (between 0 and 6) to meet your student's needs!  Be sure to check for topic appropriateness!  For example, reading, “Hong Kong protests ‘extremely dangerous,’ says leader” is definitely not appropriate for our students in China as it could be dangerous for them to be caught reading anti-government materials.