Reading Aloud on Voxopop

Chinswing has now become Voxopop! “Perspective,” a Japanese user who has started several different conversations, has now begun several threads for reading aloud which are wonderful for improving your listening, speaking, and reading skills!

TED

“TED: Ideas Worth Spreading” is a fabulous site that features talks by a variety of people on many different subjects. You can search the site by theme, by title, or by speaker.

Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing is a great site for advanced students who are curious about grammar.  The site owner, Mignon Fogarty, has created podcasts about a variety of grammar topics and accompanied them with the full text on site, so you can read along as you listen.  A lot of [...]

Double Entry Reading Journal

Keeping a double-entry reading journal is a great way to improve your reading skills while increasing fluency and accuracy in your writing. When I have my students keep these journals, I collect and respond to their entries, correcting their grammar and spelling and answering their questions; but even if you don’t have anyone respond [...]

Absolutely Intercultural!

“Absolutely Intercultural!” is a wonderful ESL podcast created by Anne Fox and Laurent Borgmann.  Winner of Edublogs’ 2006 Award for Best Audio and/or Video Blog, “Absolutely Intercultural!” has been on the web since March 2006.   Topics include things like how holidays are celebrated in various countries, how music can connect people of different cultures,  cultural [...]

Open Yale Courses

Yale University, one of America’s premier universities, has just uploaded seven entire introductory undergraduate courses to the web! The seven courses are in English (modern poetry), philosophy (death), astronomy (issues in astrophysics), political science (introduction to political philosophy), physics (fundamentals of physics), religious studies (the Old Testament), and psychology (introduction to psychology). Each [...]

Watching Captioned Movies

Do you like movies?  You can watch movies for pleasure and improve your listening skill at the same time.  Buy or rent an English-language movie that has subtitles or captions.  Watch the movie several times–at first with the captions, and finally, without.  When you feel comfortable listening to the movie without subtitles, move on to [...]