ESL Resources
Teaching Language
Academic Conversations with ELLs Video Series
This 7-part video series developed by the Teaching Channel showcases five tips for engaging students in academic conversations. While the videos were developed for K-12 teachers, the demonstrated techniques and tips easily transfer to a intermediate or advanced adult ESL setting.
Adult ESL Pronunciation Activities Videos
Find six different Pronunciation Classes videos that feature teachers delivering integrated pronunciation instruction in beginning and intermediate adult ESL classrooms. Some of the topics covered include word stress, intonation, and voice quality settings.
Authentic English: Communication Activities
Find short videos of native and fluent English speakers discussing a wide variety of topics. Transcripts for the videos are included.
Baruch College: Tools for Clear Speech
"TfCS offers a variety of practice exercises and online resources for remote access. From individual English sounds to overarching features like intonation and stress, these exercises are an excellent way to preview, practice, and maintain what you learn." The tools are made to support learners taking classes at Baruch College, but anyone can access and learn from their excellent Tools to Go!
BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental Readers
Find readers and accompanying course packets written specifically for adults. The six levels of readers range from low beginner to the equivalent of grade 9 in the K-12 system. Use the readers and course packets online, or download them as PDFs.
Beyond Citizenship: True Stories for the Civics Class
These true stories allow students to benefit from other students’ experiences by using the approach of using real life situations as material in the classroom. Each story is accompanied by pre-reading questions, new vocabulary, and post-reading activities to assist students in applying the situation in the story to their own life experiences.
Clear English Corner with Keenyn Rhodes
This channel is dedicated to helping learners speak American English with clarity and confidence. Video resources are uploaded weekly. This channel is a great resources for learners, and can also be used by teachers as supplemental resources for class, and can help teachers gain a greater understanding of English pronunciation.
Depend on the Text! How to Create Text-Dependent Questions
In this video from ReadWriteThink, a first-grade teacher demonstrates the process she uses to create text-dependent questions around a reading text. The strategies that are described are easily adapted to adult EL classrooms.
Editing Checklist for Self- and Peer Editing
The website ReadWriteThink has a sample peer editing checklist that can be adapted for a variety of writing levels and focuses. It also contains suggestions for scaffolding peer editing with learners who are new to the process.
ELLLO: English Listening Lesson Library Online
Over 2,500 free English video and audio tracks of native and fluent speakers of English speaking about a variety of topics including current events and grammar. Also find games, worksheets, and lesson plans. New tracks and materials are added each week.
ESL Conversation Questions
Find conversation questions grouped by topic or by grammar point. The site also contains ideas for icebreakers and additional online resources for teachers.
ESL Teaching Methods: Teaching Grammar Creatively
This article from the Reach to Teach blog offers best practices for teaching grammar in an effective and engaging manner for learners of all ages.
Facilitating Adult Learner Interactions to Build Listening and Speaking Skills
A Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) research brief that includes techniques to promote successful language learning interactions, examples of activities, and special considerations for beginning-level learners.
Five Activities to Promote Interaction and Communication
This packet contains in-depth descriptions of five communicative activities that can be used with literacy- and beginning-level learners through advanced level learners.
Getting to the Rough Ground of Language and Literacy Learning Through the Language Experience Approach
This blog post from The Literacy Bug describes how teachers can use the language experience approach (LEA) to support early language learners by providing them with ample opportunities to hear, see, use and manipulate language in contextualized, purposeful ways.
Give It a Go: Teaching Pronunciation to Adults
This interactive PDF resource provides "a brief and accessible overview of how pronunciation works in English, some explanations of the particular difficulties faced by learners from different backgrounds, and activities that teachers can use to help adult language learners to improve their pronunciation."
Guided Reading Prompts and Questions to Improve Comprehension
This blog post from Scholastic.com contains excellent teacher practices and materials that can be adapted for improving reading comprehension at any level. The post includes printable PDFs of a teacher Reading Prompt Booklet, "reading prompt" bookmarks for learners, and guided reading question cards for small-group or independent work. The reading prompts are written for a third grade reading level, which can easily be used with intermediate and advanced adult ESL learners.
How Should Adult ESL Reading Instruction Differ From ABE Reading Instruction?
A brief from the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) summarizing the research base on adult English language learners (ELLs) learning to read. It describes how ELLs differ from native English speakers and how these differences should affect reading instruction.
How to Use Interesting Photos to Help Students Become Better Writers
Two teachers explain their routine for English language learners to use “What’s Going On in This Picture?” from The New York Times. This routine helps students learn how to create a claim and support that claim with evidence found in a photograph. They also engage in academic conversations that stimulate academic vocabulary development and critical thinking skills.
Improving Adult Literacy: Developing Reading and Writing
This booklet presents an overview of what is known about how literacy develops, the component skills of reading and writing, and the practices that are effective for developing them. It also describes principles of reading and writing instruction that can guide those who design and administer programs or courses to improve adult literacy skills.
Improving Writing Skills: ELLs and the Joy of Writing
This article offers some concrete activity ideas to build writing skills at all levels, as well as suggestions for differentiating writing instruction and links to additional online resources.
Just Write! Guide
The Just Write! Guide is a resource guide for ABE teachers, intended to increase familiarity with evidence-based writing instruction and to facilitate translation of research findings into teaching practices and products that will enhance the quality of instruction delivered to adult learners.
Language Experience Approach and Adult Learners
This Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) article explains how the language experience approach (LEA) approach can be used in tutorial or classroom settings with homogeneous or heterogeneous groups of learners to help develop and strengthen English literacy skills.
Listen in English
On this website, find short clips of TV shows, movies, news, and academic stories accompanied by vocabulary building activities and listening comprehension questions from beginning to advanced levels. Learners and teachers can make free accounts in order to access expanded discussion activities.
Listening and Speaking Activities for Adult ESL Learners
This packet of listening and speaking activities contains a number of activities that can be used in the ESL classroom. The activities are organized by the three skills of language scored in the BEST Plus assessment: Listening Comprehension, Language Complexity, and Communication.
Listening with a Purpose: 7 Types of ESL Activities
This article outlines different approaches that teachers can take when planning the purpose of a listening activity so that students can strengthen a variety of listening comprehension skills.
Manythings.org
This website 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 - including activities that learners can do on their own and listening and reading texts that can be used to create lessons.
Manythings.org
This website 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 - including activities that learners can do on their own and listening and reading texts that can be used to create lessons.
Newsela
Newsela is a data base of current events stories tailor-made for classroom use. Indexed by broad theme (e.g. War and Peace, Arts, Science, Health, Law, Money), stories are both student-friendly and can be accessed in different formats by reading level. Use Newsela to differentiate nonfiction reading.
Newsy
This website contains short videos of recent news stories across a variety of topics. Each video is posted with a transcript, so that learners can read as well as listen to the story.
Photocopiables
A site with some well put together grammar resources for both teachers and students. A lot of the material is grouped around a specific grammar topic that is based on a theme to help contextualize the grammar for instruction.
Print Discuss
This relatively new website contains printable lists of conversation questions arranged by topic or grammar point. Most conversation lists contain simple warm-up questions and a vocabulary word list.
Pronunciation Pull-Out Kit
The Pronunciation Kit provides activity instructions for a wide variety of activities that focus on helping learners improve their pronunciation of English suprasegmentals (intonation, rhythm, stress, etc.). The activities in this kit can be used with low-beginning to advanced level English language learners.
Pronunciation Webinar 1: Voice Quality Settings
Learn how Voice Quality Settings (VQS) impact accent and pronunciation. Discover ideas for integrating VQS instruction into your classroom instruction and daily routines at any level.
Rachel’s English YouTube Channel
Americans speak fast and conversation can be hard! On this channel, unpack pronunciation features with videos on all aspects of spoken English – from dropped sounds and linked words to idioms, phrasal verbs, and conversation study. This channel is a great resource for learners! It can also be used by teachers as supplemental resources for class, and can help teachers gain a greater understanding of English pronunciation.
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab is an online, multimedia listening website designed to help ESOL students improve their listening comprehension skills in English. The website contains over 300 original learning quizzes and activities that cover functional language topics.
Reading Skills for Today’s Adults – ESL
This website was designed to provide an online repository of leveled reading selections that are appropriate for and valued by adult learners. The readings being posted correspond to CASAS 200 - 235, focusing on topics such as Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government.
ReadWriteThink
Search the extensive classroom resources section of the ReadWriteThink website to find a wide variety of writing lesson plans and activities. All activities were written and reviewed by educators, and many align to standards-based teaching practices.
Rong Chang Listening Collection
This is a collection of online listening tracks for ESL learners. There is a wide range of topics and levels featured, and all of the sites include an audio track and a reading text.
Sounds of English
Sounds of English is a collaboration by Holly Gray and Sharon Widmayer that they started to help their ESL students develop their pronunciation and speaking skills. The site has been expanded to include information about their past research and presentations, lessons and activities for ESL teachers, and more.
Tar Heel Reader
This collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces. Teachers can write their own books using pictures from the huge collection at Flickr or pictures they upload.
Teaching Academic Writing to Adult English Learners
This PowerPoint shares the importance of teaching academic writing in the 21st century; reports on a 2014-2015 survey of adult ESL writing instruction; briefly describes ten approaches that are better aligned with academic writing skill development; and concludes with references for exploration by ABE/ESL writing teachers.
Teaching Grammar in Context Using Authentic Resources
This blog post unpacks the "why" and "how" of using authentic texts to teach grammar to learners, providing a variety of teaching approaches for readers to choose from, as well as real-life examples.
Teaching Grammar to Adult English Language Learners: Focus on Form
This brief from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) provides a research-based rational as to why there is a need to teach grammar within a meaningful context. Teachers who struggle with questions of how much, when, and how to teach grammar will find this brief both informative and thought-provoking.
TEFL Online Tutorial: Teaching Grammar in Context
TEFL Online Tutorial: Teaching Grammar in Context - an example provided by an experienced TEFL teacher of how to teach grammar using context.
Ten ESL Activities to Teach Perfect Pronunciation and Get Mouths Moving
This article from the FluentU English Educator Blog provides ten activities for teachers to use when students have difficulty differentiating between two sounds (known as minimal pairs).
The Pronunciation Doctor YouTube Channel
Marsha Chan demonstrates how teachers can use multiple textbooks to improve language learners' pronunciation through a variety of techniques. Teachers will also find videos of professional development workshops on pronunciation instruction, and examples of adult ESL learners engaging in pronunciation activities in the classroom.
ThoughtCo How to Teach Pronunciation
This guide on how to teach pronunciation provides a short overview of the main issues to be addressed at each level, as well as pointing to resources on the site, such as lesson plans and activities, that you can use in class to help your students improve their English pronunciation skills. Following each level are a few suggestions for level-appropriate activities.
ThoughtCo Pronunciation and Conversation
English pronunciation and speaking help and exercises including International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) guides, lesson plans, and conversational strategies for ESL/EFL classes and teachers.
ThoughtCo: Writing Skills
This website contains articles on English writing skills for a variety of purposes, including essays, formal and informal letter writing, resumes, business documents, that include examples and instructions. The articles can be printed for use in the classroom.
Transforming Grammar Instruction: Moving from a Traditional Practice to a Functional Practice
Sheri Lear, and adult ESL teacher from Minneapolis, MN, outlines her approach to teaching functional grammar in this lesson plan. The plan provides teachers with an explanation of functional grammar as well as a concrete example of how it integrates grammar instruction into the overall context of the lesson.
Ventures Online Activities
This website provides free online activities to supplement the Ventures Series. Learners can practice grammar and vocabulary activities that support align with the units in the Ventures student books.
VOA Learning English
Voice of America's Learning English website provides captioned videos and accompanying lesson plans which include supplemental videos and listening tracks for vocabulary development, pronunciation, and conversation. Appropriate for beginning to advanced levels.
We Speak NYC
These videos and accompanying materials (including short stories, study guides, and glosses) develop listening and vocabulary skills in a classroom or independent learning setting. Topics include education, health, emergency preparedness, domestic violence, workforce development, adult education, early childhood education, worker rights, mental health, and immigration legal help. Appropriate for high beginning to high intermediate learners.
Wisc-Online
Wisc-Online is a repository of high-quality educational resources that are free for learners and teachers. It includes over 2,500 learning objects (such as assessments, animations, and templates) for topics ranging from language arts to career clusters, to manufacturing, to math. It can be used in the classroom or independently by learners.
Writing Across Borders
Writing Across Borders is a 3-year documentary project whose purpose is to help faculty, writing assistants, and other professionals work more productively with international students in writing environments.