Using of virtual tools to enhance the learning of English

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.

http://www.manythings.org/   

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.

http://animoto.com/  

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.

http://www.eslgold.com/

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.