English learning and teaching resources from the U.S. State Department

http://americanenglish.state.gov/ - American English Portal

http://americanenglish.state.gov/english-teaching-forum - English Teaching Forum

http://americanenglish.state.gov/submission-guidelines - English Teaching Forum Submission Guidelines

http://americanenglish.state.gov/trace-effects - Trace Effects game

http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/american-english-mobile-app - American English Mobile App

Webinars

http://americanenglish.state.gov/search/solr/webinar - Webinars on American English Portal

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBQ58amRJh3anfDtob6sBSQ - Shaping Webinars on YouTube

http://shapingenglish.ning.com/main/authorization/signIn?target=http%3A%2F%2Fshapingenglish.ning.com%2F  - Webinar archive (click on “click here to join”)

MOOCs

https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx-colwri2-1x-principles-2581#.VCXZS_lXAmg – Principles of Writing I

https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx-colwri-2-2x-principles-4466#.VCXZYvlXAmg – Principles of Writing II

https://www.coursera.org/course/shaping1landscape - Shaping the Way We Teach English I

https://www.coursera.org/course/shaping2paths - Shaping the Way We Teach English II

Free online videos showing language teaching methods.

Here is a link to a video series produced by the U.S. Information Service that some of you may already be familiar with. 

It's important to note two things:
a) the videos are old - from the 1990s. This means that they do not reflect more recent research.
b) the videos show language teaching methods that most people would agree do not represent best practice. For example, the Audio Lingual Method is based on the (mostly false) belief that language is something that can be learned through repetition of form with limited attention to communication or meaning and that accuracy (i.e., not making mistakes) is very very important. However, researchers generally agree that this is not true. 

Similarly, the Silent Way asks learners to build communication by focusing primarily on phonemes (the basic meaningful sounds of a language). Although such a focus can be helpful, a more holistic top-down focus on communication is generally agreed to be more useful. 

The most useful video is likely to be the one on the Communicative Approach. This approach is generally supported by most recent research and most current language teaching incorporates a communicative approach.


http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/language-teaching-methods 

Here are links to free online courses produced by major U.S. universities:


 
Harvard:  www.extension.harvard.edu

MIT : ocw.mit.edu

Carnegie Mellon: oli.cmu.edu

Yale:  oyc.yale.edu

Here is the link to some Peace Corps language teaching resources.  Free, downloadable, designed for Peace Corps Volunteers but useful for many other folks. 

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=library.language

Teacher Development Videos

Here is a great video series available online and as DVDs

http://www.newamericanhorizons.org/

Teacher Development Videos

Here is a link to a site with some interesting videos of non-English langauge classrooms. The Swahili one is quite good.

http://startalk.umd.edu/teacher-development/videos

Teacher Training Videos

Here is a great site with lots of teacher training videos.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

Language Corpora

If you've ever wanted to see how words are really used, check these out:

• British National Corpus: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
• Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English: http://micase.elicorpora.info/
• International Corpus of English: http://ice-corpora.net/ice/
• Corpus of Contemporary American English (Brigham Young University): http://www.americancorpus.org/
• Time Magazine Corpus (Brigham Young University): http://corpus.byu.edu/time/

Customizable newletter with Teaching Tips

Here is a link to a useful customizable newsletter from the Center for Applied Second Language Studies - http://casls.uoregon.edu/intercom.php

This is what they say about it:

InterCom: The Busy Teachers' Newsletter

Between planning lessons, grading students' work, meeting with parents and administrators, organizing after-school activities, and attending teacher in-service days, who has time to stay apprised of recent developments in the field? Let CASLS help!

Our staff subscribes to numerous listservs and taps our national network to create InterCom, a customizable weekly newsletter designed for the time-pressed educator. Members receive a short description with links to resources that match their interests, such as curriculum, workshops, assessment, funding opportunities, and more.

InterCom Features

Available free of charge
Arrives once a week
Incorporates information from numerous listservs and Web sites
Customizable to match individual preferences
Access to over five thousand past articles

Simple video introduction to Wikis

If you've never done a Wiki before it sounds so much more complicated than it is.

Look at this video to find out how simple it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY&feature=channel

Website for Teachers

Here is a link to website designed for Algerian ESL teachers. It has a variety of materials and links and some some useful articles for higher education faculty.

www.algeriatesol.org

Free video courses from leading universities.

Free video courses on a variety of topics from leading universities including courses from Columbia, Yale, UCLA, Michigan, and MIT.

http://www.academicearth.org/

Free Resources from Cambridge University Press

Here is a series of free short e-books on topics such as Teaching Listening, Teaching Vocabulary, Teaching Pronunciation, etc.

http://www.cambridge.org/elt/resources/teachersupportplus/#teacher-support

Teaching pronunciation

Here is a link to a series of online sessions on teaching pronunciation.

Great stuff!

http://www.dlfeschool.in.th/2007/etraining_eng7.php

Teaching Large Classes

Here are two great resources for teaching large classes.

The first is aimed at K-12 and produced by UNESCO in Bangkok. Lots of great stuff here.

http://www2.unescobkk.org/elib/publications/095/Teaching_Large_Classes.pdf

The second is a great book aimed at TESOL specifically. You can view it online through Google books at

http://books.google.com.pe/books?id=kEyHZ_DiVVkC&printsec=frontcover&lr=&hl=en

Free Online Video English Lessons

Here is a link to a series of free online video lessons.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL

I haven't yet been able to listen to them (no speakers on my current computer), but they look good.

Good for English students, as well as teachers who want to see how another teachers works with particular content areas.

Roleplay

A great collection of links here on using roleplays

http://www.eslflow.com/roleplaysdramatheatregames.html

Common European Framework

Here is a link to a huge document on the Council of Europe's Common European Framework for language teaching and learning.

There is a useful self-assessment on p 26 and 27 and a good chapter on language learning and teaching.

http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf

Pronunciation website

Here's a great website with lots of useful information and activities for teaching pronunciation.

http://www.soundsofenglish.org/activities/printable/FinalConsonantBingo.pdf

Great blog - lots of practical ideas for teachers.

http://eltnotebook.blogspot.com/2006/10/complete-list-of-contents.html