There are so many websites that help learners to improve their writing, speaking or listening competencies. In the last few days I got to know some of them and here’s a short review.
Writing
- Quill is a website that offers “tools to make your student better writers” as the website lets us know. There are short exercises to improve grammar and writing skills and it’s really fun doing them. Richard Byrne wrote a post about Quill and its use.
- Blog de Cristina offers a collection of Six Amazing Websites that Make Your Writing Stronger. All of them seem to regard vocabulary, collocations and the right use of the right word in the right situation (would be fantastic to have a synonym for right here 😉 BTW I really appreciate Blog the Cristina as the website offers a lot of interesting methods, tools and teaching ideas.
- If you like to play with texts, try Transl8it – and your text will be translated into the new and modern SMS or WhatsApp language. Kind of decrypting modern texts 😉
- English Grammar Pass is an interesting website offering grammar and vocabulary exercises and a section called Common Errors.
Speaking
- Regarding pronunciation the Independent published really nice article The most commonly mispronounced food words – and how to say them properly. It’s not only the pronunciation that is delivered by this article but also some interesting, modern food words. If you are not so used to phonetic scripts, PhoTransEdit might help you to do text transcriptions.
- To foster speaking skills Richard Byrne introduced a new audio recorder, SpeakPipe’s voice recorder, and even created kind of a tutorial video. The tool seems to be handy, no registration is required to do the voice recording and it is web based and doesn’t depend on a specific browser. Sounds great.
Listening
- Some useful tips on how to Maximize Your Score in Listening (IETLS, TOEFL, PTE) are provided by Course and Career. Well, the tips are not innovative but important, I would say. A rather interesting website regarding listening skills is lyrics training. It helps teachers to follow the linguistic immersion process.
Reading
- Kind of a funny thing is the website PHD comics. I really adore the comics and there is so much of my own experience in these comics. Do you need an example? How to write an e-mail to your instructor or T.A.
A great tool
- Last but not least, a great tool: Flashcard Maker. It helps teachers to design printable Flashcards. Find here a description in German language provided by EduGroup.