This group provides an opportunity for adult educators and learners to organize materials dedicated to supporting Adult Basic Education (ABE) and Adult English as a Second Language (Adult ESL) teaching and learning. Adult educators and learners are encouraged to join this open community to share high-quality, high-interest materials for adult learners with low literacy levels preparing for the GED, new career opportunities, increased participation in their children’s education, English language learning, and other important skills. We strongly encourage you to tag each resource you use and evaluate as “Adult Basic Education” or “Adult ESL” so others will also be able to find these adult learner-appropriate material.
This website contains helpful information for citing and referencing sources in academic writing, according to the APA Style, 7th Edition, the most recent edition. The site includes information on how to format, properly cite and do references. You'll also find How-to Resources and Frequently Asked Questions.
Free access:
http://bowvalleycollege.libguides.com/apa-style
This is a 10 minute excerpt from a lecture given by David Crystal, world renowned expert on world Englishes. In the video, he explains what happens when languages come into contact (e.g. through empire-building, migration, commerce and globalization). He describes how, just as English has taken words from other languages and made them its own, other languages have incorporated English words into their lexicons while maintaining their own grammatical integrity. This is a useful orientation for teachers who want to understand the origins of pidgins, creoles and varieties of English, and/or the reflexive relationship between language and culture.
https://dialogues.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/dialogues
This open access journal, published by North Carolina State University, seeks to build connections between universities, community colleges, adult education programs, TESOL programs, and K-12 programs. Articles are intended to be accessible to a diverse audience including teachers, scholars and the general public. Recent article topics include vocabulary instruction, code-switching, digital storytelling, and academic writing.
https://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/journal/view.php
This journal was a free open access journal published by the University of Waikato in New Zealand up until 2014 - after which it became accessible only through institutional subscription. Thus only older issues (2002-2014) are available for free. Nevertheless many topics covered are still very relevant: culturally responsive pedagogy, textual diversity, language and identity, and more.
In this excerpt (chapter nine) of his 2003 book entitled English as Global Language, David Chrystal describes how there are no precedents for a language with the same degree of global presence as English currently enjoys (apart from Latin which dominated in a ‘smaller world’). He presents statistics outlining the number of speakers of English as a first, second or third language across the globe, the reasons for the emergence of English as a global language (politics, economics, American film and music etc.), and the future of English’s position as a global language. It should be noted that this chapter is available for free on Crystal's website, along with many other of his publications. This chapter constitutes solid professional development for teachers interested in understanding the impact of the English language on the international stage.
Eye on Literacy wordless picture books are designed by two Canadian educators for literacy learners with limited formal education. The books contain high quality visuals to build on the oral language skills of adult second language literacy learners with limited schooling, to help create learner-generated texts. The site states: "Moving the learner from oral language to print through visuals creates an environment where, together, the teacher and learner can build meaningful contexts and decoding skills. The emphasis is on oral language which becomes the stepping stone to the reading and writing process."
Each book comes with assessments with audio. Yearly subscriptions $45 or books can be purchased individually.
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt
This is an open access international journal with a focus on promoting exchange between teachers and researchers in the following areas: theory and practice in English language teaching and learning, teaching English as a second or foreign language, and English language teachers’ training and education. It is published monthly by the Canadian Center of Science and Education. Some topics covered in 2022 issues to date are: flipped learning environments, task-based instruction, peer and teacher feedback, accuracy in oral performance, and writing instructions.
Lingthusiasm is an outstanding podcast about linguistics in general. You can choose episodes by topics such as phonetics, morphology, phonology, syntax and more! For example, in Episode 13: What Does it Mean to Sound Black?, the host Gretchen McCulloch interviews Dr. Nicole Holliday, an Assistant Professor of linguistics at Pomona College about her work on the speech of American black/biracial young men, prosody and intonation, and what it means to sound black.
Established in 1992, Oxford Seminars is the leading provider of teacher training certification courses all across Canada and the US. Join our over 70,000 graduates and get TESOL/TESL certified with Oxford Seminars and begin your exciting adventure teaching English abroad.
Public Legal Education (PLE) Learning Exchange of Ontario has produced a series of 4 podcasts with accompanying CLB lesson plans and assessments. The podcasts vary in length from 15 to 20 minutes and cover common problems for newcomers, such tenant and workplace issues. In each episode, the host interviews a legal expert who provides advice. The podcasts are suitable for CLB 6 and higher.
Learn English with EF podEnglish, bite-sized 5 minute English lessons. Perfect for beginners, intermediate and advanced students, these video lessons are as good as having an English teacher in your pocket! Created by EF, the world's largest language school with over 400 schools in 50 countries worldwide.
Pragmatic Language Tips:
- Social Language Tips (Overview)
- Teaching Pragmatics: The chapters included here allow teachers to see how other teachers approach the teaching of pragmatics and to appreciate the diversity and creativity of their endeavors.
This open access journal is published twice yearly by the University of Hawaii. Issues as far back as 1983 are available for free online. Recent article topics include: Constructing Diagnostic Reading Instruments, Lexical profiling and Teaching Vocabulary.
This is a site for teacher-created resources to be purchased and downloaded by other teachers. Prices are reasonable (e.g. $4.00 for a conversation activity on 'annoying things' that consists of an editable powerpoint slide deck, teacher notes and 2 student worksheets for reproducing. Lessons and materials are available for K-12 as well as for adults. This link will take you directly to the adult ESL section secondary level materials as many would be suitable for adult classes as well.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) posts engaging talks on scientific, academic and cultural issues to its website. Speakers from around the world deliver talks in a lecture-style format. New lectures are posted on a weekly basis. The lectures range from 5 to 18 minutes and longer, and have transcripts and subtitles available in more than 100 languages. Learners can use the talks for independent study. Instructors can use the search feature to find talks on appropriate themes, and build lessons around talks to target specific language skills and academic skills, such as note taking.
TEDEd: Instructors can open an account and develop their own lesson plans or access lessons developed by other teachers. Learn English with TED Talks: TED Talks/National Geographic Curriculum for English Learners. The integrated skills curriculum for adult learners is called Keynote. It is divided into 6 levels. The content integrates TED Talks and National Geographic photos into lesson plans. Also available: National Geographic English learning textbooks on a variety of topics including Grammar, Pronunciation, and Business English. There is a cost.
Well-populated with ideas and resources from practitioners, this TESL Ontario blog is kept up-to-date and managed by a knowledgeable team. This might be particularily helpful for new instrctors.
http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/
TESL E-J The Electronic Journal For English as a Second Language
http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/
This is an open access journal from UC Berkeley that publishes quarterly to an international audience on ESL and EFL matters. Recent topics include trans-languaging, teacher education, intelligibility, teaching online during COVID and the psychology of technology. The journal was launched in 1994 and all current and past issues are available for free.
"The Conversation" is a Canadian newsletter and website that provides daily articles written by researchers on a number of topical themes. Its tagline is "Academic Rigour, Journalistic Flair" and it prides itself on presenting academic research in a very reader-friendly style for the general public. It is both a source of professional reading, and also research articles for an advanced or EAP class. It includes the following sections: Arts, Business+Economy, Culture+Society, Education, Environment+Energy, Health, Politics, and Science+Tech. The Education section is particularly relevant. A key word search (learning English, English language etc.) in the search bar will return a significant number of articles of great interest including this one which provides sound tracks of various non-native speakers with accompanying rankings (how difficult to understand they are) by ESL teachers.
This academic article from the City University of New York written by Sarah Vogel and Ofelia Garcia presents the evolution of the debate associated with translanguaging within language education and academia. The authors explain the historical colonial perspective that privileged monolingual dominant language speakers and maintained linguistic hierarchies. They then describe the theoretical evolution which demonstrated the value of leveraging the learners' prior linguistic learning (from their L1) to scaffold and enhance their engagement and comprehension of complex content in the target language. The authors do not shy away from addressing the perceived extra demand upon teachers that is required to use translanguaging in the classroom.
This site helps students and teachers polish their skills.
This 2022 academic article (by Jerry Won Lee) describes how applied linguistics researchers have been limited in their assessment of translanguaging in the classroom, by methodologies that bias their conclusions. He feels that unimaginative approaches to researching translanguaging has resulted in an unfortunate dismissal of its value. He argues that very few research studies have addressed the complexities of pedagogical translanguaging or related it to the reality of pluralingualism inherent in human interaction globally.
This is a very accessible 5 minute video that connects the academic research on translanguaging with teacher practice. It emphasizes 'linguistic wealth' through harnessing all the languages in our students' repertoire. It also advocates for teacher modelling with respect to linguistic curiosity and metalinguistic awareness, and promotes the value of inter-language such as 'Spanglish'.
This is a for-fun e-book of the differences between Canada and the United States. The e-book is available as a free download.
