Materials/Resources

This page contains a sample of teaching materials I’ve created, as well as a collection of useful websites for teaching ESL.

I try to limit this page to general materials that can be used in as many teaching contexts as possible, so if you are curious about using something with a particular student age/level, feel free to contact me!

Pronunciation / Intonation / Stress

Minimal Pairs Practice activities with /l/ and /r/ sounds:

Speaking

Agree/Disagree Cards – Assign a group discussion prompt and deal 3-4 of these cards randomly to students. Have them take turns “playing” a card and agreeing or disagreeing. They can also “pass.” First to have no cards in their hand wins!Download
Discussion Actions – A handout with 8 groups of sentence starters, one for each of the ways a student can participate in a discussion. This helps students understand how to discuss by breaking the discussion process down into concrete, explicit discourse functions. It solves the problem of students thinking, “OK, but what should I say? How am I supposed to ‘discuss?'”Download
Agree/Disagree phrases – Large-font phrases for hanging on the classroom wall.Download
Boston Events (Lesson Plan) – A lesson plan for practicing invitations, wh-questions, times, and dates. Find an event in Boston, describe it, and invite your classmate! See materials below.Download
Boston Events (Lesson Materials)Download

Reading

Guessing Words in Context: Recording Sheet – A sheet for students to practice guessing words in context when they read. Download
Vocabulary Notebook (Blank Page) – Includes areas for students to record new words, other word forms / parts of speech, definition, example sentence, and collocations.Download
Vocabulary Notebook (Example Entry) – Another version with two example words recordedDownload

Writing

Writing Improvement Log – A chart for students to record their most frequent sentence-level errors in writing, so they can notice patterns and avoid repeating errors.Download
Writing Improvement Log (Example Entry)Download
Transition Words: Model Paragraph – A student-written paragraph that models use of transition words nicely.Download

Research

While it’s important to teach students about paraphrasing and quoting to avoid plagiarism, showing them how to do it requires teaching a new set of skills entirely. Below are video tutorials I’ve made to help students with the research process, including citations and paraphrasing.

Useful Websites for Teaching ESL

Reading

Websites with news articles adapted for multiple ESL levels:

Listening

Websites with good listening practice:

  • esl-lab.com – tons of dialogues at different levels, with pre-listening, post-listening, comprehension questions, etc. Everything you need for a complete listening lesson!
  • English Listening Lesson Library Online – many good listenings, with multiple accents
  • eslfast.com/robot – 1,500+ dialogues on multiple topics.  Students can listen & repeat, then make their own similar dialogues, or act out the dialogues to practice intonation/expression

Vocabulary

eslquiz.net – Brendon’s website. Create picture-matching or fill-in-the-blank (cloze) quizzes.

Quizlet – students can download the app, keep flashcard decks, and play review games with them

use-in-a-sentence.com – has the top 3000 or so academic words and example sentences with each.  Good for teaching collocations or having students examine how words are used, then try using the word in a sentence naturally themselves.

esl-lab.com/vocab/  – many lists of words organized by topic (the best way to teach new words).  Also has exercises and listening.

manythings.org/vocabulary/lists/c/ – many lists of words organized by topic (the best way to teach new words).  Also has many games you can play with the lists

englishscale.com – Pearson’s website where you can set the level of your students, and find suitable vocabulary sorted by theme to teach them.  Has printable vocab lists with definitions.

But possibly the best way to teach vocab…is to just keep a “Word wall” in your classroom! (Or in your virtual online classroom, using a tool like Padlet.) Add words that come up naturally in lessons and organize them according to topic (natural disasters, elections, education, etc.)  Then play review games and give students chances to use the words in natural conversation/writing.  Check out “Marzano’s 6-step process” for more details.