Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

I stumbled on this awesome animated music video about a shy man named Mr. Morton , which is trying to focus on subjects and predicates, but does a really nice job with past tense verbs too. My students found it funny and useful to listen to and re-tell. Here's another nice one that's more of a pattern chant. For the different pronunciations of -ed in regular past tense verbs, here's a nice list . For irregular past tense verbs, I like giving a fairly complete alphabetical list and then shorter lists grouped by patterns . That's all for now!  Have a great day!

Check out the University of Iowa's Sounds of Speech App.   It gives great animations, descriptions, and videos of how the mouth forms the sounds of English. Also Pronuncian has some great resources and strategies for pronouncing difficult sounds, words, and phrases.  Please comment with any other resources you would recommend!

I'm a big fan of songs for learning in general.  You can learn vocabulary, phrases, rhythm, slang, grammar, and so much more!  Here are a few songs that one of my classes listened to and sang a long with last week.  Yes, they're for children, but they're still useful! Vowel Spelling and pronunciation song (short and long vowels!) Head Shoulders Knees and Toes Health Vocabulary I'll add more as I find them! Will

Learning a new language is hard.  If you have money to devote to learning English, I highly recommend you study where I work!  UT ESL is awesome! However, sometimes paying for courses is not possible.  Austin provides many free or almost-free opportunities to learn English.  Here is an incomplete list.  The Austin Public Library has a great list of ESL Classes around town.  I will replicate it in part below, with my own commentary, but their list is more complete. UT hosts a free ESL course that is taught by master teachers and practicing teacher interns.  They provide a free class that the students can practice teaching, and ESL students can get an excellent, challenging free classes, Monday through Friday from 5:00 - 7:00.  Space is very limited, so watch the website or get on the e-mail list for information on how to register. Manos de Cristo provides almost-free ($20/semester) classes with morning and evening schedules.  They...

These comics are some of my favorites.  I think they would be wonderful, bite-sized reading practice.  Some are decidedly advanced in their vocabulary and cultural context; others could be accessible to a beginner.  Enjoy!  Calvin and Hobbes (a new strip every day, although actually they were all written ten or more years ago) Here is a list of several people's favorite 25 Calvin and Hobbes strips .  They are some pretty great, philosophical ones!  Non Sequitur is another of my favorite comic strips.  It is more consistently advanced, but it's worth the effort!

I have been tutoring a few high intermediate Korean students, and I have compiled some resources that I think are great for practicing pronunciation, reading, and listening.  I thought, why not share these on my blog?!  Here they are. Pronunciation: Guide to IPA pronunciation George Mason University’s accent archive database -- a cool way to listen to different accents around the US and the world. Reading: Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/ good news source and amazing photograph of the day section (not actually a religious publication) Wait But Why -- fun, insightful, illustrated articles.  I'm hooked on this guy's material.  His illustrations are fun as well.  Enjoy! xkcd -- a fun, nerdy comic strip.  Some of the vocabulary may be difficult, but the illustrations and humor are great, and I'll bet you can get something out of most of them regardless of your level. USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/ The Week: ht...

I've been hearing about Edutopia on the radio for years, and right now I'm finding a bunch of cool resources on their site.  This list of alternative strategies for reading instruction is awesome.  The Crazy Professor Reading Game looks particularly fun!  (start watching at 1:49 minutes) I'm teaching adults these days, and I'm curious which of these techniques will appeal more to adults than the others... I've seen Reader's Theater and Jig Saw activities be very successful.  I'm looking forward to trying Radio Reading , FORI (Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction), Reciprocal Reading and others that are recommended in the above Edutopia article by Todd Finley .