In these times going
to the school is as easy as giving a click on a keyboard. It is something as
the magical door that permits people in general and students to enter into a
world of learning. The days of traditional education and learning systems seem
to be far away compared with the new technologies available, and the online
spaces and environments provided for distance education. Up to date, we are getting aware of the new
ways to teaching and learning a second language; ways that relate directly with
an explicit word: “virtual”. We hear this relatively new word going hand by
hand with other ones such as classrooms, communities, environments, interaction,
and participation.
But it is not as
simple as it may sound; the adaptation process could be a bit stressing, especially
for those people who experienced the traditional way of learning and teaching. Distance
language learners need the necessary orientation and assistance in the use of
these new practices so that they could get familiar with and feel comfortable
interacting in online environments. Fortunately there are a lot of materials
for virtual education that includes a wide range of tools which can be used to
facilitate, and make the learning of a language an interesting and funny project.
These tools are available and appropriate according to the student´s way of
learning, such as linguistic, visual, auditory or kinesthetic, and the personal
needs. They can be found as hypertexts, videos, slide-shows and through all the
possibilities of the cyberspace; they can be instructional in the way they
inform learners about the language, they can be experiential in that they provide
exposure to the language in use, and they can be elucidative in that they
stimulate language use, or they can be exploratory in that they seek
discoveries about language use. (Tollimson, 1998).
What we have to do,
then, is give a click and start looking for the right places where we can find
these wonderful tools. Some of these places are waiting for us.
http://www.usingenglish.com/ Visit this website if you are a teacher and need
handouts & pintables, lesson plans and worksheets, and/or teacher-training
handouts. Also if you are a learner and want to practice your English, there
you will get quizzes, idioms, phrasal verbs, and irregular verbs.
This web site
is for people studying English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a
Foreign Language (EFL). There are quizzes, word games, word puzzles, proverbs,
slang expressions, anagrams, a random-sentence generator and other computer
assisted language learning activities. There are no ads or other information
additional to what the page announces.
Videos are
useful tools to teaching English as a second language. This site is recommended
for education, among other purposes, and offers the opportunity to create
videos that are customizable, easy to use, hosted on the cloud. It also has
some additional features that would make your video interesting, attractive and
understandable.
A free website devoted to ESL:
English Study and learning materials. An especially catch-attention site that
includes a lot of resources to enhance your abilities and skills in the English
learning. It provides materials for all levels of knowledge of the language,
with thousands of pages of free information and resources for both teachers and
students.
