Update 2024/25
I started this blog in 2013 and some of the recommendations I made in 2013, feel somehow outdated in light of how much has changed digitally. However, many of the old recommendations and links are still valid today.
I have gone through the list and updated where necessary.
(Other recommendations can also be found under Useful Lesson Links 1.0 and 2.0. They are not in any structured order. In the beginning of the pandemic and our online teaching, I just listed all the things I found and used myself, or that were recommended by colleagues and course participants.)
I create and choose a lot myself from all kinds of sources. I am a proponent of a content based syllabus guided by the principle of trying to offer and instigate ‘meaningful communication’. And I also believe in using ‘authentic material’ as early as possible: exerpts from books and magazines and all things the internet provides like various you tube videos, TED talks, Curiosity Stream – the list is endless. Here I intend to offer some guidance through the jungle of choices. The challenge with every group and individual is to find out what their respective interests, preferences and needs are.
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One internet page specifically for teachers of English is onestopenglish. It is not for free; the subscription costs around 30 Euro a year, but I believe you get a lot for your money. You find whole lessons with pre-reading and follow-up exercises related to articles under Guardian Weekly, for instance.
Linguahouse is a similar page that provides ready-made lessons with reading and listening material for English language trainers to use. Lesson plans guide you along and give advice or suggestions as to how to use things.
Here is an example lesson plan related to World’s Ocean Day on June 8th and World’s Turtle Day.
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Breaking news is a page provided by Sean Banville for free and it offers amazing little mini-lessons with a huge range of possible activities to choose from. I always wondered how he did it and found a ‘tool box’ underlying some (if not all) the exercises. Textivate is one of them.
Textivate is a tool with which you can jumble up texts into tiles for your students to put back together. It supplements the reading process and is fun. The text size is limited to 500 words, but for copyright reasons it is advisable to summarize or write your own texts anyway. There are additional exercise formats you can apply to your texts.
Update July 2024
Pages with which you can create your own quizzes and games:
Dashboard | TriviaMaker – Quiz Creator
Trending Games | TriviaMaker – Quiz Creator
Here is an interesting quiz from Tirviamaker:
General Knowledge Trivia | Part – 1 – Custom Trivia Quiz Maker (triviamaker.com)
Code Puzzle Maker – Puzzel.org
Interacty: Interactive Content and Gamification Platform for Educators and Business. | Interacty
You can also create your own sporcles, see my sporcle post.
As already mentioned in some of the posts about individual web pages, there is loads of stuff on the internet for language learners and teachers alike (see post on BBC webpage, and Macmillan dictionary).
The BBC Learning section has been overhauled and is a great place to go not only for extra language practice. BBC Six Minute English is an old time favorite. BBC Reel offers a selection of short topic specific videos.
There are many professional online English teachers, trainers and coaches for varios topics. One I recently found who offers interesting videos on business vocabulary is Derek Callan. He focusses on collocations, which is a highly recommended approach to vocabulary study. Don’t learn lists of single words, always look at words and phrases in context. The term ‘collocation’ decribes words that have a strong co-occurance in language use: words that are commonly used together.
Alex Lyon is a coach for leadership and communication. I watched and discussed his video on leadership styles in some of my classes. (I had difficulties providing a link to his videos, so you will have to research him yourself.) His video on the three main leadership styles Democratic, Autocratic and Laissez Faire are great for discussion in in-company courses.
Merriam-Webster dictionary has a wonderful collection of Games and Quizzes on their website Word Games & Quizzes | Merriam-Webster.
I frequently visit the website of the New York Times for which I have a subscription (without one there might be a restriction on use).
The Guardian, on the other hand, does not have a pay wall; they ask for donations. I became a ‘Guardian member’ many years ago, which means I pay a fixed annual amount. It is definitely worth it. Besides current news and thought provoking opinion columns you find articles on various different topics from sports to lifestyle. The writing is of excellent quality (of course) and I believe quite accessible for advanced learners/non-native speakers of English.
Update concerning payment of Guardian subscription: It seems the donations scheme did not work or was not sufficient to cover all costs; there seem to be too many freeloaders out there. Too bad. (It also shows with Wikipedia – but beware: Elon Musk, right-wing extremist proponent of manipulation does not like Wikipedia and would like to see it go.)
For more intermediate learners of English, Voice of America could be interesting. VOA provides simplified versions of current news both in written and audio form.
Youtube has evolved from being a forum for private videos to a platform where all kinds of institutions publish their visual material – among them TED. TED talks and TED Ed videos have evolved into one of my favorites, which is why I devoted them an extra page. Ted Talks have been growing and becoming quite numerous. This adds to one of the problems of our times – too many choices. Here I recommend going to “playlists”. If you are new to TED talks, go to the playlist 25 Best Talks.
The series How it’s Made might remind German viewers of the ‘Sendung mit der Maus’. It started as a Canadian documentary TV program in 2001, but now loads of episodes can be found on youtube.
I love Vicky and Jay, a couple that has been on youtube for what feels like ages, (and they have indeed been aging and passing things on to young assistants). There youtube page is Simple English Videos. There specialty is to compare British and American ways of saying things. One I watched and shared frequently: ‘I don’t care’ – ‘I don’t mind’: A British and American English difference
I always recommend listening to as much in English as you can. Besides all the online tips above, I recommend you watch your favorite TV series or streamed series in English (with English subtitles whenever comprehension gets to muddled). I prefer series to feature films, as in many series you have more conversation. Movies often have a lot of white noise that obstructs comprehension, and good films, being creative pieces of art, often emphasize visualizations more than conversations. Nevertheless, also watch your favorite movies in the original and if you have the DVDs, switch on the English subtitles if need be.
If you’re into cooking, Jamie Oliver’s ‘Jamie at Home’ series is something to watch in the original. Though Jamie Oliver has a strong regional accent (Essex), everything he says is a comment on what he is doing in the kitchen or the garden, so I believe you can learn to understand him after a while. However, if you get the original UK version, you also find English subtitles (the German version provides only German subtitles and a German voice over – I would strongly recommend the English original.)
Publications specifically for German learners of English:
World and Press and Read On: Both are collections of articles from selected newspapers, mainly British and US. They cover different topics ranging from current political affairs and economics to science, history, lifestyle and various topics of social interest.
Spotlight Magazine
Business Spotlight
Literature on Learning and Teaching English
Baker,Colin, Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Clevedon: 1996
Carter, Ronald, David Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages, Cambridge: 2001
Celce-Murcia, Maranne and Diane Larsen-Freeman, The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course; Newbury House publishers – Row (1983); Heinle and Heinle (1998)
Chalker, Sylvia and Edmund Weiner, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, 1994, Sylvia Chalker, Oxford University Press
Close, Richard A., A Teachers’ Grammar, LTP: 1992
One of the leading linguists who has written many books on language, also for non-specialists or a more general audience is David Crystal. A great introduction into the study of language is his Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1996).
Krashen, Stephen D. (check all his works on the wikipedia entry linked below)
Stephen Krashen offers his publications for free downloads on researchgate. But you also find pdf downloads on wikipedia. He does this because, as he says in a youtube video, the books are simply too expense and he wants to share his research.
Lewis, Michael, The English Verb, LTP: 1986 (latest edition Thomson/Heinle 2002)
Lewis, Michael, The Lexical Approach, LTP: 1993
Lightbown, Patsy M. & Nina Spada, How Languages are Learned, Oxford 1999. There is a newer, updated edition from one of the best introductory books on the topic. Here a link to an interview Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown gave.
Nation, Paul, How Vocabulary is Learned and What should an EFL Teacher Know?
On Paul Nation’s website, you find a vocabulary size quiz. Try it out and don’t cheat 😉
The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Discourse, editied by Brian Paltridge and Matthew T. Prior
Van Patten, Bill et al. (editors), 2020, Theories in Language Acquisition: An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research