TEFL.net TEFL Site Awards

This website by English language teacher Kieran Donaghy promotes the use of film in the language learning classroom. The site provides full lesson plans centred on a variety of films and topics. Many of the lessons contain short films that are embedded right in the posts. The lessons are categorized by level and age appropriateness and include homework and follow up activities.

Donaghy has also included some useful links for teachers who want to find scripts, audio clips, and other film related sites. This site is clean, colourful and open for comments. Find out which lessons other teachers have enjoyed using with their English language learners, and be sure to check out the Film Words glossary!

http://film-english.com

If you’re looking for worksheets on basic topics like Jobs, Animals, Travel, or Business, check out ESLTopics.com. The PDF printables are free and will supplement many topics that you’ll find in traditional textbooks. To find out which printables are the most popular, simply look at how many times they have been downloaded. The board games are popular, as are the advice columns. (more…)

This reading practice website features nine fictional teen characters living in Britain. The characters are multicultural and come with biographical information, such as language, food preferences, and hobbies. The theme of the site is race and racism, and the author has worked hard to avoid stereotyping. The characters live in the fictional town of Britchester. The biographical information is written in the first person narrative form. After learning about a character, students can take the Britkid to a map of Britchester and choose a location to visit. (more…)

This website by English language teacher Kieran Donaghy promotes the use of film in the language learning classroom. The site provides full lesson plans centred on a variety of films and topics. Many of the lessons contain short films that are embedded right in the posts. The lessons are categorized by level and age appropriateness and include homework and follow up activities.  (more…)

This site is useful for teachers who want to participate in discussions about the gray areas of the English language. Users can pose questions, review responses and offer opinions related to grammar, style and usage of the English language. As site creator Dyske Suematsu explains, “One expert could authoritatively tell you one thing, and you would follow it faithfully for years, only to be corrected by another expert.” This discussion forum is moderated so that not all of the questions submitted are published. (more…)

This site allows teachers to have their own mini website that can be shared with parents and students. Teachers can separate their homework assignments, announcements, and notes by class in an organized manner. If you have a list of suggested sites and resources you want to share, you can create a page of favourites. All of your pages can be edited easily or deleted when they are no longer needed. (more…)

DifferenceBetween.net is a website full of short articles that you can use for reading practice in your English language classroom. Each article explores the difference between two similar subjects. Teachers may be interested in the articles in the Language category, such as the difference between “myth” and “legend” or the difference between an “idiom” and an “expression”. (more…)

The Guardian website has a special section for English language teachers offering free classroom materials.  Each month a few new lessons are added to the site. Interesting stories from the Guardian are rewritten for low-intermediate learners or used as authentic materials for advanced learners. The lessons include pre-reading activities, comprehension questions, and vocabulary review. Teacher instructions are included. (more…)

Since establishing her Quick and Dirty Tips website, Mignon Fogerty has become the grammar guru on the web. Her regular podcasts offer quick tips about word choice, punctuation, writing style, and other grammar related topics. The tips are useful for teachers who want to brush up on their grammar, and also for teachers who are looking for new topics to share with high level learners. (more…)

English learners love learning new idioms. They often find that they have similar expressions in their own language.  On his site “Rolls off the Tongue,” Andy Martin challenges learners to guess, learn, and remember idiomatic expressions through cartoons. Combine  images with humour and you have a great recipe for learning! (more…)

Give a group of creative minds something like a couple of stamps or a stuffed blue fish and see what they can do with it! Infinite ELT Ideas is a collaboration project created by English language teacher, Sandy Millin. Sandy posts a new prompt each Wednesday and invites teachers to “exercise their teaching muscles” by commenting on how they would use the picture, writing, artifact etc. in class. Teachers who regularly get together to swap teaching ideas via Twitter grew excited about Sandy’s idea quickly. The first post was a simple question: “What would you do with a single laptop in your classroom?”. (more…)

LessonStream.org is a growing site of online lesson plans for English teachers designed and written by popular material writer, Jamie Keddie. There are currently about 50 lessons available on the site for a range of ages and levels. Teachers can review the lessons online and print any necessary worksheets via PDF. The site is colourful, fun, and meticulously organized, just as teaching should be. Teachers can search by age, level, topic, or type of activity. (more…)

If you find that you are always looking for new games to play with your English learners, ESL Games World will come in handy. This site has both printable and interactive games. English learners can practise vocabulary and grammar online in your school computer lab or at home for extra practice. Many of the matching games are listening-based and are very useful for beginner and low intermediate learners. (more…)

EFL Teaching Recipes is a growing collection of short ideas and activities submitted by and for English language teachers around the world. The site was created by EFL teachers, David Deubelbeiss and Dmitry Volokhov. The activities and ideas are categorized by age and level and are rated by teachers. Recipes can be viewed online or printed as a PDF. The top recipes are featured on the (more…)

Some ELT blogs are much more than a blog and Ken Wilson’s is one of them. Despite calling himself a “cyberclutz” this ELT author has a special way with words and has held his readers’ attention since his very first post in mid 2009. The posts themselves are filled with stories of his teaching and writing career, and the comments offer a great place to continue the conversation. (more…)

With Spelling City you can assign online spelling quizzes and writing assignments for your students in a fun easy to use website. Students can listen to the words and example sentences as they practise. A new feature this year allows teachers or parents to create their own example sentences. There are also plenty of ready-made lists such as homophones and compound words. (more…)

Cybraryman (Jerry) is a helpful librarian for anyone who is looking for online educational resources. His website is designed for parents, educators, and students and is updated daily. To find the pages and resources specifically for English language teachers, navigate to (more…)

With the success of #edchat on twitter, a new chat has emerged for English Language Teachers. #ELTChat is currently being moderated by @ShellTerrell, @Marisa_C, @englishraven, and @olafelch. The educators who initiated the twitter chat have also posted a useful website to make sure that ideas and discussions have room to expand beyond 140 characters. The site is still in its infant stages, but already shows promise of being an (more…)

A popular ELT site that was first published in 2001 and disappeared from the Internet without a trace has returned to cyberspace! English Droid, written by Simon Barne, is full of satirical articles related to teaching English as a foreign language. Fans of the site claimed that English Droid was the ultimate stress reliever, providing laughter and reflection during break time or while engaging in teacher training. (more…)

Known by many as the best TESL site without any of the bells and whistles, The Internet TESL Journal offers a regularly updated digest of new articles and research about the industry. The site is “Optimized for Speed” and states “No Advertising, No Images, Minimal HTML, No Nonsense.” (more…)