English Resource Catalogue

Link to Teacher's Guide / Ron Mastine (ron@speaq.qc.ca)

You are about to take on the role of a teacher’s assistant working in cooperation with a small elite group of other assistants (classmates) who will develop a collection of learning resources for yourself and fellow students.

One of the directing principals of modern education states that students are responsible for their own learning.

With this in mind, what better way to take responsibility than by exploring and cataloguing important resources that could help you and others learn English easier and more quickly with fewer errors.

• Using a guiding outline, visit sites that offer help learning English under a variety of categories – writing, understanding written, spoken and video texts, pronunciation, practice conversing, etc.

• Describe and evaluate the best sites in order to create a catalogue of resources that you validate and refine in collaboration with a team of classmates.

Here are some criteria to guide your report:

Skills: read, write, listen and speak (or combinations listen -read)

Level: basic, intermediate (inter) and advanced (adv)

DESCRIPTION: type (self-correcting exercise, group activity, information, rules, … ) and the focus ( vocabulary, grammar…, pronunciation, etc.)

RECOMMANDATION: how user-friendly (U-F) and how effective (E-)

Visit these three sites and complete the chart:

Discuss your answers in class. Which was the best? Why …? This group activity will help guide you to complete your task.

Begin your quest:

1. You have about 2 x 1/2 period at the computers to complete your mission.
2. Read over the process from beginning to end and ask any appropriate questions to confirm your understanding,
3. Open and save your own copy of the model report (Click here ) in your own folder on the network or on your USB memory stick,
4. Begin exploring the suggested links, experiment and take note of the information requested classifying them as you discover appropriate resources.
5. Complete the table for the sites you visit. Explain and give an appreciation about the address of site, name of site, levels and skills involved, the type of resource, the focus of the resource, how user-friendly it is as well as how effective. Click here  
   
    
6. Here are some sites to visit:

  http://www.esldesk.com/esl-links/

Google : http://www.google.ca/search?num=50&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&cat=gwd%2FTop&q=ESL+practice+OR+exercises+OR+help&btnG=Google+Search

Yahoo: http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Linguistics_and_Human_Languages/Languages/Specific_Languages/English/English_as_a_Second_Language/Lessons_and_Tutorials_Online/

7. Reference sources (a dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, encyclopedia and other references) are also very important resources. Find a site you think is best for each of these categories and add it to the second part of the Learning Resource Catalogue.

Visit these links for possibilities:

Yahoo:  

Google :

8. Once you have your personal list, you will discuss your list with 3 other students. Choose the best:  the most user-friendly, the most effective, the most appropriate, etc.
9. Together, make a master list - Eliminate so-so sites and add any great sites that others have found to the list in order to present one very complete team list of great English resources useful to you and others.
10. Finally, save and print out your original document but also one Team document for the 4 of you and save your Team document as a web page or personal blog page to share with others.

Taking responsibility is not always easy in learning as in other spheres, for example, the environment, relationships, etc. to name a few. What are other ways of taking responsibility that all young people should try to live by?

Project Rubric