In the fields of computational linguistics an n-gram is a sequence of items from a corpus of language. An n-gram could be any combination of letters, phonemes, syllables or words, etc. Looking at n-grams is useful to help work out how language works and is used...
Essentially Illustrate - The Video Dictionary is a dictionary. But it does things slightly differently. After you look up a word you have the option to watch a short animated video. Let's say you look up the word POUT. You see an explanation and there's also the...
For years they've been telling us that new technology will revolutionize teaching. First it was film. Then radio. Then TV. Then video. Then computers. Then MOOCs... And they were wrong. Wrong every time. Wrong all the time. In this insightful video from Derek Muller...
This article looks at a few ideas you should bear in mind if you have blind or visually impaired students in your TEFL class. Over the years we at ICAL TEFL have had a number of blind and visually impaired teacher trainees taking our course and we have worked with...
A recent article in the New York Times has highlighted a number of disturbing statistics that shake the current craze for those free online educational courses known as MOOCs. Basically put, an appalling number of students are dropping out. MOOCs are being abandoned...
ESLdrama is a brand new web series produced especially for learners of English.It's stylish, clever and well produced. I watched the first episode earlier and found it completely engaging. Then I spoke to Sean James Sutton, the director of the series, to find out...
ESLdrama is a web series (a drama for ESL students) designed specifically for learners of English. It is essentially a soap opera built around the lives of half a dozen or characters. Each episode features several short scenes and the language used is basic. It has...
At its simplest, Computational Linguistics (or CL) is all about trying to create a computer which uses language in the same way as a human does. The Holy Grail would be a human having a conversation with a computer but thinking they were talking to a another human....
Authoring is the term used to describe the ability to change the content in a CALL computer program. For example, some off-the-shelf CALL programs come supplied with a bank of questions in English. However, these may not quite be suitable for a class in terms of level...
A Crossword Compiler is a program which allows you to produce crosswords for the class - or have your students produce them for each other. There are a number on the market which include features such as: alternative layouts easy printing and/or publishing automatic...
An idea of how important it is to punctuate correctly. Punctuation does, indeed, save lives...
TextSTAT is a simple text analysis program. The first step is to make a corpus. This can be done by adding files from a PC in HTML, TXT and WORD format, etc. In addition, there is also the ability to add in web pages using a spider to collect them from a particular...
Strange English is a collection of statements about English which deserve more thinking about. If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented? If people from Poland are called "Poles," why aren't people from Holland called...
AntConc is a freeware concordancer and is very useful for searching through large swathes of texts to look for patterns of usage and so on. As an example, the screenshot on the right shows a concordance search for the word, word. The program has searched through a...
The following is a basic chatroom lesson you can use with your CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) class. Ideally this is best with a class who all know each other fairly well. Preparation First off, prepare a list with all the names of the students in the...
Dropbox is a simple - and free - method of keeping your files up to date between your computer, laptop and smartphone. It's incredibly useful for English teachers (amongst others) in many ways, not least because it means you can work on materials at home and have them...
BBC: Smack the Pony-English as a Foreign Language A woman tries to register for an EFL course... but there's a problem. This clip comes from the British TV series, Smack the Pony.
Can we teach like this? Of course not because we're mere mortals. But Harold Ramis in the 1981 film classic, Stripes, can. Stripes - Basic English The film opens with Russell Ziskey (played by Harold Ramis) teaching a brand new class to speak English when he himself...
MemoryLifter is a freeware program which displays flashcards. Although it's not specifically for English, there are English modules and you can create your own set of materials for your students allowing them to study and learn the items appropriate for their level...
This clip comes from the British Comic Relief show (a yearly show designed to raise money for charity) where Katherine Tate as a surly teenager cross examines her new Scottish English teacher and then moves on to Shakespeare.
Sometimes living in a foreign country can be lonely but one way to keep in touch with home and get a little light relief is to watch On Demand Television (or Catch Up Television) on your computer. It's the perfect way to keep up with current affairs back home as well...
The following commercial was apparently banned for the taboo language it used: Banned Commercials - Learn English Don't listen if you're easily shocked. The commercial was made for the Soesman Language Institute and entitled, A Day Trip. It features a middle aged...
Instant Messaging (also IM or Chat) and Chatrooms are a way of sending messages online and having a real-time text conversation. Instant Messaging is usually one-to-one while Chatrooms are usually with large groups of people. For the TEFL teacher, the goal of IM/Chat...
In this video, Katherine Tate states confidently that she can help out in an awkward situation because, "I did TEFL in my Gap Year."
Audacity is a piece of freeware software which you can use to record audio. This can later be incorporated into a Podcast or used as a simple audio file for playing in class or mixing with other media. This article explains how to get the software, install it on your...
Lingro is a useful online tool allowing language students (and teachers) to read a webpage with immediate access to dictionary definitions of unknown words. For example, this is a screen shot of a TWW page after a number of words have been clicked on using Lingro. In...
Rosetta Stone is the name of proprietary piece of software for language learning. The name comes from the Rosetta Stone, a large carved stone from Ancient Egypt with a single text in 3 languages which was used as an aid to translation. The principle of the Rosetta...
The following clip demonstrates the art of English pronunciation training as practiced by Steve Martin in the Pink Panther: Learning English Pronunciation
Of course English is important, we all know that. But in this epic fail it's a matter of life or death! Check out this video and you'll see why: Learn English (really funny commercial) Use It! And then, why not use it with your TEFL class? Set up the scene. Show the...
Teachers mess up as well. Many of us have spent time teaching in a foreign country and grappling with the problems of the local language. Here are a few problems which arise: A class were playing a word game where they had to explain a word to the rest of the class....
