ESL Lounge is complete with ESL Games, lessons plans and other support materials for teachers. Some free lessons.
ESL Talk is a podcast produced by Daniel Shaw who interviews ESL teachers on a variety of aspects of practice. Recent episodes include topics such as: Fears and Competition in the ESL industry; Teaching Subjects and Extracurricular Classes to Students; Bolstering Vocabulary with Teacher Talk; Building Cultural Awareness; and Writing and Publishing ESL Content. The podcast is intended for current and prospective English language teachers, as well as content creators, and educators in general, with the goal of providing “strategies, techniques, advice, and skills to help you improve as a teacher and to be more effective both inside and outside the classroom”. All episodes are clearly labelled and can be listened to directly through the website, without installing a podcast app. The site also includes teaching resources (sample lesson plans), some of which are available at no cost, while others are fee-based. Additionally, educators are able to indicate their interest in being a guest on the podcast, by suggesting a topic and providing information about their expertise on the topic.
Added July, 2023
Larry Ferlazzo is a well-known American high school English teacher-blogger whose website offers numerous resources and reference materials that are useful to teachers who work in adult settings. He offers: English themes for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners, bilingual exercises, and academic reading and writing.
This highly engaging podcast is hosted by an English language learner: Daniel Goodson, a German speaker from Switzerland. He interviews linguistics scholars, polyglots, travelers and other English language learners to discuss, tips, challenges, vocabulary, accents, motivation and research. His podcasts are accompanied by a blog and links to his social media accounts. The episodes could be used as listening exercises to prompt in-class discussion, or as inspiration to create a class podcast.
The following English teacher blogs and websites have been recommended by our members:
Patrice Palmer is a veteran Canadian English language professional. She specializes in teacher self-care.
Free access:
https://www.positiveupside.ca/
TheJoyOfESL: Kelly Morrissey is a respected Canadian educator and blogger, with lively discussions on activism, links to other sites, and well developed literacy resources available.
free access:
https://joyofesl.blogspot.com/
EnglishwithJanice: Ontario teacher and tutor, Janice's website offers resources for children and adults and includes pronunciation, business writing, listening for different levels and more.
free access:
https://www.englishwithjanice.com/
Larry Ferlazzo is an American educator whose blog contains a treasure trove of materials and tech suggestions.
free access:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/
Susan Alyn's Inspiration Lane (American) contains readings content that changes daily. The website can be projected on a whiteboard and can be translated into several languages.
free access:
http://inspirationlane.blogspot.com/
"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.
The Font is an open access international Literary Journal for language teachers. Essays, fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction articles focus on the general theme of teaching and learning languages at home and abroad.
