Useful Online Resources
This is a (slowly growing) list of useful online resources for teachers & students, in no particular order. If you have any favourite sites, please let me know.
Entries by Sharn
IELTS
Free Practice Tests online How to Prepare for IELTS directed at students IELTS Marking Criteria directed at students
Songs for Learning Vocabulary: Topics A to Z
A to Z of Song Topics As I’ve spent the last month or so listing songs for learning English grammar, it seems to make sense to finish with a list of songs for topics to introduce or revise vocabulary. This list will grow as I remember/discover more, or people get in touch with suggestions.
Songs for Learning English Grammar
I’m keen on the idea of songs helping students internalise, through repetition, the rhythm, sentence stress and grammatical structures or English. I don’t have much opportunity to use songs in most of my classes (mostly business, academic and exam classes at the moment) but am interested in the idea of encouraging students to use songs […]
ChatGPT in the Classroom
I became interested in ChatGPT because it has become such an issue in pre-sessional courses. There are great, valid, concerns about ChatGPT in education but, when used appropriately, it can offer some interesting benefits.
Literature Circles
Over the summer I explored Academic Reading Circles (ARC) with pre-sessional students and was impressed with the depth of reading comprehension and quality of discussion they prompted. The students found them both valuable and enjoyable.
Teaching Effective Thinking – Six Thinking Hats
Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats was originally designed as an effective (both critical and creative) thinking exercise for management programs but has since been applied in a variety of business and educational contexts.
CPD Course 7: ChatGPT in the Language Classroom
The course I took on online teaching mentions PeacheyPublications.com as a good source of online tools and materials. I haven’t had much time to explore the site as I got distracted by this course it offers on teaching with ChatGPT. This has been a recurring topic in pre-sessionals and the course is only £40 so […]
Teaching Effective Thinking: Game – Devil’s Advocate
This is a good activity for critical thinking, it helps when practicing or reviewing discussion language. You will need cards with discussion expressions on them. In a previous activity you could get students to classify these according to function (see below).
Teaching Effective Thinking: Game – Good News / Bad News
This is a good exercise in looking at things from a different perspective. Give the students an example such as the one below, which is a common saying in England.