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ozdic.com: an online collocation dictionary, at last!

It has been a long time since the ast post, but I hadn't found anything worth posting. Today I want to introduce you to a new resource I have been waiting for a long time. It is an on-line collocation dictionary and its name is ozdic.com. It is very useful for your writing tasks and even when planning any speech for your class or work.

Most of the times, we stick ourselves to the same combination of words, basically because we are unable to find other words to use or combine with the ones we need. There is when a collocation dictionary like this comes handy. Don't get frustrated if you don't know what to write or how to describe something, got to a collocation dictionary and part of the problem is sorted.

Imagine you have to write about your holidays in a little village and you need to describe it. Sometimes we end up describing the place as nice or friendly, but there are more possibilities, as the picture shows, there are a wide range of options we can choose from, it is only us now to pick the most convenient to our interest.

It is also useful if we don't know how to combine a verb or noun. Remember that most languages have their natural way of mixing words which we need to be aware of so we do not get misunderstood. Take for example the noun "research", in most cases students use "do" or, in the worst case scenario, "make" which is incorrect. If you look up in a collocation dictionary, you can find out what are the verbs and adjectives most convenient for this noun. Take a look at the picture to check what has been said.

 Hope this brief tutorial can be of help. Any contribution os more than welcome.

Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Dickens

On 7 February, 1812, the greates British author of all times was born: Charles Dickens. It was in Portsmouth, South East England. His father was a clerk who went bankrupt and sent to prison when Dickens was only a child. At the age of twelve, he was sent to work in a factory and soon after he started his career as a journalist. A the age of 24, his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, gained a huge success and was the beginning of a prestigious career as a novelist. 

And this year we are ceebrating the bicentennary of his birth. 

SiestaMovies: Original Sountrack Movies with subtitles

A really nice present for you all to start the year, SiestaMovies is a website with a good range of movies in different languages (mainly English) in their original soundtracks. There you have the option to download them with or without subtitles. In most cases those subtitles are in the original language, however a small number of them come with Spanish subtitles. And that is it! Now click on the link below and choose your next film for the weekend.

  Ingles | SiestaMovies.com

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Tips for any speaking test

First, I would like to thank Eva Suárez from EOI Santa María de Guía for pointing out to this web site. The Bristish Council is a well reputed institution devoted to, among other things, making the British culture and language accesible to the rest of the world. One of their aims is to provide useful materials to help English Language learners (LearnEnglish). Also, they provide tips to be used when sitting an exam and this si what you will find when you click on the link below: tips in the form of videos to assist preparig and facing a speaking test. Thes videos come with comments on dos and don'ts and the transcripts to make it easier to understand what is said.

If you decide to follow the link, do no miss the opportunity of surfing the site. It's worth the time!

IELTS Interview Skills | LearnEnglish | British Council

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Verbling: practice the language with native speakers

Summer is already here! And now that you have a lot of time free (sic), it is time to make use of what the net has to offer. 


In this post, I want to talk you about Verbling, a website designed for students of English as a foreign language to get in touch with native English speakers from around the world and practice in real time. It is meant to be an exchange between you and your chat partner: 5 minutes for each language. 


On top of that, if you don't know what to talk about, the site itself gives you the possibility of choosing a topic you like and proposes a question that could help as a conversation starter. All you need is a mic, a webcam and an email address. About privacy, these guys are in control of everything and they will not provide any personal information to anybody. You should also remember not to do it yourself!


Ups, nearly forgot! This website is not meant for under 13. 

Challenge your vocabulary!!

"Vocabulary.com is the easiest, most intelligent way to improve your vocabulary. It combines an adaptive learning system (The Challenge) with the world’s fastest dictionary (The Dictionary) so that you can more quickly and more efficiently learn words." These are their words and, believe me, it is true. If you are one of those who moans about how little vocabulary you know, or if you are a words freek, or just a regular student, this website will probably be of help. 

Fun with grammar? Road to Grammar

 

Yes, there is a fun way to study grammar! Road to Grammar is a website specially disigned to offer fun exercises to practice any grammar difficulty you may have. All activities are adult orientated so you will not find them too childish. There you can find online quizzes, extra practice and games, they also do printables if you like to work on paper. If you have children learning English at school, there is a junior version that you can use with them and enjoy learning together. Thank you Antonio Jiménez for the tip. 

 

More help to improve your writing: writingfun.com

When learning a foreign language writing and speaking are the two most frustrating skills students have to deal with; the former being a real stone in the shoe that may lead to quitting. There are many reasons for that, but the basic problem is that writing is a very demanding skill, it needs to be highly organized and structured. On top of that the person(s), whom the piece of writing is meant for, are not present, what implies an extra effort in providing the information in full, nothing can be left aside. I bet you are already yawning or put off just with the thought of it. Well, it is time for you to take a look at the website I am introducing today Writing Fun. Jenny Eather has gathered all the basic types of writing and made a useful presentation using the latest technology in order to help ESL students with their writing skills. There you will find explanations, exercises, printables and examples of how to write and organize your ideas in formal and informal pieces of writing. By the way, I must thank Laura Martín (ESL teacher at EOI Las Palmas) for the tip.

 

Linguee: a new way of searching for meanings

 

 

In this post I would like to introduce you to a new tool which would be of great help with your writing. As you can see in the picture, the name of the tool is Linguee.com and it is a search engine for words and expressions in multiple languages and their translation in various contexts. It also provides the user with helpful information and examples. Although specifically meant for translators, Linguee.com can be used by students of English as a kind of thesaurus. You type the word you want to know the use of and the engine will bring you a set of different sentences with the specific word in a variety of meanings and contexts. One thing to bear in mind, Linguee.com is not a dictionary. Here you have a link to their about-us page.

Is the Internet Hurting Our Environment?

Larry Ferlazzo and JJ de Haro, two twitter users I devotedly follow, have posted about this infographic which can help us understand the growth of the Internet and its influence on the enviroment. A good way to learn about statistics and vocabulary related to enviroment and  internet. Tank you to WordStream for making it and 2ndgreenrevolution for sharing.



Infographic by WordStream Internet Marketing

Phrasemix: vocabulary in action

Here is a very useful site if you are a vocabulary fanatic!! Every day, the guys of Phrasemix give their readers an assortment of every day sentences together with the explanation about how and when to use them. The site is easy to use, very neat and the stuff they post will always be very handy, especially for students of more advanced levels. If you are of those who find it difficult to visit the page everyday, they have a profile on facebook or twitter so you can have their updates on your wall or time line. In case you're not that geeky and you have a reader follow this link to add it to your feed reader. Now is time to pay a visit to the website and start improving your English. 

Xmas and New Year's Greetings

Here it goes my Xmas for all the readers of this blog. It is a word cloud created with imagechef.com. It allows you to do amazing clouds with almost any kind of picture. Although wordle and tagul are still my favourite, imagechef is an option to bare in mind for its originality. The only downside is you have to pay if you want more advanced features.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY 2011

Congratulations ELLA (English Language Lab Asturias)

They say no news is good news, but this time there is news and very good ones. ELLA (English Language Lab Asturias), a site devoted to integrate language learning and new technologies, has been awarded the European Seal for  innovative initiatives at foreign language teaching and learning by the European Council. 


This award means an institutional recognition to several years of hard work and passion on the grounds of English teaching. With this post I would like to pay a tribute to the ELLA team who are not only very good friends, but, most important, a model to follow for those who are trying hard to make from technology a fundamental tool in ESL/EFL teaching.


Very well done guys!!! 


PD: Here is the link to a previous post on ELLA.

English Central: A fun way of dealing with pronunciation.

http://www.englishcentral.com/en/videos

First of all, I must thank Maria from EOI Santa Brígida for the tip. English Central is a new attemp to make English Learning fun and effective. The idea is to watch a video, record your own voice repeating  the lines on the screen, then their speech recognition technology will analyze yours and give inmediate feedback. The aim is to help ESL students with their   pronuntiation by comparing their speech with that of a native. If you are a group of students who enjoy on-line gaming, you can also set a challange for your group and compete to see who is the best.  There are more features to this brilliant site, but I'd rather let you discover them by yourself. 

ENGLISHCENTRAL

CONDITIONAL SENTENCES

Recently I've made this presentation to help my students to understand conditional sentences. Hope it is of help for you as well:

CONDITIONALS on Prezi

Useful links

Hi again. It's been a long time since the last entry but it has been a hectic two months. Anyway, I'm back and here goes this first post of the new academic year.

Recently I have created a visual presentation with many of the links to the resources I have talked to you about and some I have discovered but haven't had the time to post here (will do soon, though). The novelty of this presentation is that you don't need to click on links and open windows, everything is displayed on the slide itself.

It`s called Useful Links and the contents have been arranged in tabs for each of the  four common skills, plus some additional ones for grammar and dictionaries.

This project is open to contributions from all of you, so don't be shy and tell us about any other resources you think are worth including. Click on the icon below and get started.

Useful Links

Easy Reading for the Summer

Hi, everyone!!! I hope you are all having a great summer. Just wanted to talk you about this great site which could be of great use for what it is left of the summer and getting ready for the coming school year.

This site is made of short stories of various levels together with activities and crosswords to help you building up your vocabulary.


ESL/EFL Reading - 365 ESL/EFL Short Stories

Do not forget to give feedback on the site!!! Keep enjoying your summer holidays and see you in September.

Listening for the summer: Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab

Well, before we all pack definitely for the summer I'd like to share with you this fantastic site devoted to the listening skill with thousands of material to work one of your worst nightmares: understanding what it is said naturally, without the editing of a language lab. Give feedback so visitors know a little bit more about the site from your experience.

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab - For ESL/EFL Students


Have a great summer holiday!!!!!

Technorati Tags: listening, online, exercises, resources

How to video chat easy and for free

Well, this is another one of Google 's brilliant ideas: the possibility of  having a face-to-face chat for free. And really easy to set up. There's no excuse now not to have a proper conversation with those you like, love or both.What's more, just imagine the great tool this could be to improve your speaking skills. Take a look at the video guide the guys from Google have made to introduce this fabulous tool.

 Grandmother's guide to video

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