An authoring program specially written for language teachers that enables them to create language activities on the computer including multimedia features. Features include:

• Storyboard: the classic total text reconstruction program.
• Testmaster: Students type in full answers to questions. Alternative versions of correct answers are allowed.
• Gapmaster: Teachers remove items from texts and the students have to fill the gaps.
• Matchmaster: Jumbles up matching pairs of words or sentences for students to match up.
• Choicemaster: A multiple choice creation program.
• Vocabulary: Six different language games are generated by the computer from lists of keywords, definitions and example sentences entered by the teacher.
• Pinpoint: Match a short text up with its correct title. Includes a text jumbler.

  Product Support
  http://www.wida.co.uk/

   

Teaching Tips and Resources

CNN News FYI for Teachers
http://fyi.cnn.com/fyi/teachers/
Activities of all kinds based on news articles. Also see:

New York Times Newspaper, Education
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/

Comenius
http://www.comenius.com/
Fables and idioms activities for English learners.

English Club: Reading
http://www.englishclub.net/reading/index.htm
Reading activities for ESL and EFL learners.

Integration of CALL and News Media
http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/oncall/71farr.htm

Learning Network from Western Pacific Literacy Network
http://www.literacynet.org/cnnsf/
Offers web-delivered instruction using current and past CNN news stories.

MysteryNet.com
http://www.MysteryNet.com/
Online mysteries, information about famous authors. See MysteryNet for Kids at http://kids.mysterynet.com. For other mystery web sites see:

Ongoing Tales Mystery E-Magazine
http://www.ongoing-tales.com/SERIALS/mystery/
Mystery stories in serial format.

UptownCity's Online Mysteries
http://uptowncity.com/mystry/storys/Myst1.htm
Short mysteries in simple English. You can email them to guess or get the ending.

Quandary Action Mazes
http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/
Action mazes making reading fun!

Teaching ESL Reading using Computers
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/AlKahtani-ComputerReading/

 

Extended Activities and Resources

Hot Potatoes Software (Free)
http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/

International Reading Association
http://www.reading.org/positions/
Research-based positions on critical issues. For more information on reading in ESOL:

I-TESL-J, Reading
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/links/ESL/Reading/
Articles and lesson plans for teaching Reading from educators worldwide.