recommendations for self-study?

Hello colleagues, Recently, I was asked to recommend resources for an intermediate-level English learner who wants to study on her own. What resources would you recommend? Suggestions for self-study materials at any level would be welcome.

Thank you for your recommendations!

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

Comments

Hi Susan,

I generally try to come up with a plan for these kinds of students that has a checklist by unit of different activities to accomplish - basically a personalized syllabus.  But, I have some "go to" resources for students who don't want that kind of structure:

www.breakingnewsenglish.com  (lots of activities for students to do on their own)

www.usalearns.org (Course 2 or 3 depending on the student's level)

We Are NY 

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab 

VOA Learning English

English Listening Library Online

ESL Radio and TV

A4esl.org

GCFLearnFree (also good for ABE/ASE students - and anyone who wants to improve their technology skills)

BBC Learning English and Skillwise (also good for ABE/ASE)

LINCS Learner Center

Literacyworks Learning Resources

WatchKnowLearn.org (also good for ABE/ASE)

Okay, I'll stop there.  Can't wait to hear what other people come up with.  I love to add things to my list.

Peace,

Glenda

Susan and Glenda ...For intermediate students - I recommend Pumarosa.com for pronunciation, Project Gutenberg  for reading (https://www.gutenberg.org/), and songs with bilingual lyrics on YouTube for listening comprehensioin, vocabulary building and also reading. Actually reciting the lyrics to songs out loud, as well as singing, is very good for fluency too!!

Hi, Everybody - using the Smart Phone is a very effective way fror anyone to learn anything "independently", especially English. The phone seems to connect easier to a wifi than a laptop and, of course, is easier to carry. Google and YouTube both are the best domains for lessons and do not use up extra space like an App. 

Intermediate students can find lots of WhatsApp groups to join for lessons and assistance.

So...I strongly recommend that all adult ESL classes consider incorporating the use of smart phones. The results will be immediate. 

Perhaps eventually each of the websites can be put together on a master list or website with a brief description of what lessons they contain or "teach".

At Gaston Literacy Council we use the Ventures curriculum by Cambridge University Press for leveled adult ELL classes. Ventures new 3rd edition requires students to use their smart phones. Each unit has short grammar videos that students access by using a free QR scanner on their phones. The videos reinforce the grammar charts that introduce new lessons. Also, students no longer have cds for listening and repeating. The QR scanner is used to play the "tracks" for exercises. Teacher manuals have QR codes and cds included for backup. 

I think this list of resources is a wonderful start, but I also encourage providing the student with resources on HOW to study. Students who wish to study independently may also need to know what to do when they struggle. What happens if they have technical troubles? 
Working independently has so many benefits for individuals with challenges to traditional education, but in addition to these resources, they may often need a well developed plan and even a plan to be accountable by contacting their program once a week via email to discuss their challenges or their successes. 

Kathy 

Hi Susan, when I was living in Japan and in Africa, I occasionally met a non-native English speaker who spoke almost fluent English with clear pronunciation, natural intonation and mature vocabulary and had great listening skills.  Naturally, I assumed that they must have spent time in an English-speaking country or had English-speaking friends or a tutor, but all of them told me that they had never left their country and had little contact with English speakers.  However, I soon learned that all of them had one thing in common: each of them had developed their oral skills through one fairly simple technique.

The technique involved taking a recording in English and transcribing it.  However, there were some informal “rules” that they all had discovered on their own.

1) The recordings can be a monolog or dialog, but they try to avoid speakers who use a lot of slang or speak too fast.

2) It is important that they actually write down as much as they can understand.  According to them, just listening to a recording or watching a movie with English subtitles has little positive effect on their skill development.

3) As they are listening, they will frequently stop the recording in order to transcribe what they heard.  If there are words that they can’t understand or hear clearly, they just skip those in their transcription.

4) They try to do this consistently but the amount of time varied from 20 minutes a day to an hour five times a week.

Some of them found an interesting side benefit from this technique.  If there was a word or sentence in the recording that they couldn’t quite understand, when they had a chance they asked a native-speaker to help them with just those parts.  They found that this was a good way to meet native-speakers.  In fact, one of them met his American girlfriend this way.

Even though I am now teaching in the U.S. where my students are surrounded by native speakers, many of them are still hesitant to interact with Americans because they feel their oral skills are too weak.  They are worried that they won’t be able to keep up the conversation or that the American interlocutor will soon get tired of speaking “special English” with them.  So even here in the U.S., I’ve shared this technique with my students.  And the results have been quite impressive.

David Kehe

https://CommonSense-ESL.com/

 

Hello David and all, I love this technique. I will definitely pass this self-study idea along to students. Dictation is a similar technique that is commonly used in classrooms. Have you ever tried this adaptation of dictation in your classes, David? What do you see as the main differences? 

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

I imagine, Susan, that some differences between self-study transcribing a recording and doing a dictation in a classroom would be connected to how individualized the transcribing activity would be.  In self-study, the learners could stop at an time and replay it as often as they want, but during a classroom dictation, they might feel pressure not to interrupt the reader or ask the reader to repeat a part several times.  And if there are some sentences that seem incomprehensible, they can choose to just ignore those and continue on since nobody will judge them on how well they did, which they might feel during a dictation.  Also, they have more autonomy over what passages they want to work with in a self-study situation. 

Onward!

David