Useful internet sites

USEFUL WEBSITES

There is an enormous amount of useful stuff for teachers and learners of English available on the Internet, if you spend time following up interesting-looking links. The following sites are good places to start.

Organisations TEFL Sites Resources

Organisations

International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), This is best-known British-based association of EFL Teachers. Their website provides information on IATEFL conferences, Special Interest Groups, publications etc. There is also a very useful page of links to ELT-related professional and governmental organisations, examination boards, journals, publishers etc.

IATEFL has a thriving Hungarian Branch called IATEFL-H with its own publications and conferences, and website.

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is the best-known US-based association of EFL/ESL teachers of English. Their website provides information and links about conferences, publications, services etc.

The British Council's central website contains a wealth of useful information and ideas, and it is well worth visiting the website of the British Council's HUNGARIAN OFFICE as well.

The Regional Language Office of the United States Embassy “assists the English teaching community in the host country to develop the language competency of the professionals and the successor generation”.

The BBC World Service Learning English page contains a rich collection of ideas for EFL teachers and learners . Thgere is a variety of resources, including material for teachers and students, online courses, interactive exercises and glossaries of useful vocabulary, as well as audio and video clips. See also their page of useful links for EFL teachers: a selection of sites with information on organisations connected with English language learning and teaching, education in the UK - including languages, new language learning technologies, development organisations etc.

Wordsmith.org offers various services to lovers of language and lexis, including a daily 'learn a new word every day' e-mail service which you can join by sending an e-mail to wsmith@wordsmith.org with the following subject line:
subscribe <YourFirstName LastName>

TEFL Sites

1-language.com is an award-winning free, comprehensive ESL site including forums, realtime chat, jobs, grammar, helplines, multi-lingual content - and much more!

Linguistic Funland is a US-based site which is "intended to be a stepping off point for TESL/TEFL people into the wonderful chaos available on the Internet".

TEFL Farm is a Europe-based site "for teachers and lovers of English", with dozens of links to other worthwhile sites - particularly good for useful online resources.

Dave's ESL Café is one of the oldest websites for teachers and learners, recommended by Makadi Pál

Two more very interesting sites:

http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/online/www/teacher.htm

http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/teach/teachlink.html

Resources

APA citation and reference conventions: if you quote from or refer to documents found on the internet when you are writing your thesis, you must cite and provide references as for printed sources. This website gives detailed instructions about how to do this, and examples.

The Hungarian Electronic Library, organised by the Széchényi Könyvtár

jDictionary: a free, computer-platform-independent, multilanguage dictionary

WordWeb: a powerful, free thesaurus/dictionary that can be used from many word processors or on its own, and runs well on slower computers, too!

Project Gutenberg: English Literature that you can download free: a collection of over 3000 books in electronic form.

The Lyrics Library is a good place to look if you can't find the lyrics of your favourite song ... a set of links to thousands of songs by hundreds of artists and bands.

The Rap Dictionary is full of expressions you never dreamed of – until you tried (and failed) to understand those rap lyrics!

SUGGESTIONS WELCOME!

IF YOU HAVE COME ACROSS A REALLY USEFUL WEBSITE THAT WOULD BE WORTH ADDING TO THIS PAGE, PLEASE SEND THE URL AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE TO kristoff@ludens.elte.hu