Resources on the Net - what's out there?
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Critics have had a lot of things to say about the Internet
and so have the enthusiasts.
It's time for you to give some advice to your fellow English
students. Where should you look if you want an interesting useful
site? To help you there are some links below, but you don't have
to stick to those sites. Feel free to find others if you prefer
that.
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Submit
a comment to your project discussion:
Comment on three of the sites. What is interesting and useful?
The navigation. Is it easy or difficult to find things? The design.
Is it boring or beautiful? Why should somebody visit - or stay
away from - this site?
One paragraph about each site is quite enough. |
Links:
Note that some of the links below will take you to yet another list,
and there you have to choose a site.
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Exercises for English students
on the net |
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Wicked
Stuff, pronunciation, listening, reading etc. Quite fun!
Study, a place
with activities (chat etc.) and free English courses...
English
Net, tips and activities for students of English.
Dave's
ESL café, a lot of exercises! Chat etc.
ESL
lab, listening exercises, not that difficult, but fun to try.
English-to-go,
exercises on a news text. A good place!!
The Comenius
group, a lot of different activities, idioms, quizzes etc.
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| News/magazines
on the net |
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CNN,
news, video clips.
BBC
ITN, news and video (from Great Britain).
The Paperboy,
a list of papers from all over the world and radio stations.
Reuters,
news.
The
New York Times, a special on line edition for schools.
Watch and/or listen to the news (CNN, ABC etc.). Streaming
audio and video makes it possible to listen and watch without
waiting for half an hour. Download audio and media players from
Tucows,
for instance.
Radio stations If you want a list of stations that are
on the net go to Yahoo, click on the headline News, then
click on Radio and finally click on Internet broadcasts
and you'll get a list of radio stations on the net.
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| Entertainment |
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Mr. Showbiz,
a place where you'll find news, gossip etc.
Walt Disney's
homepage -well, they certainly want you to visit. Quite a
few things to look at.
Sony, visit
a studio, read about your favourite tv-show etc.
ABC, American
tv channel, shows, news etc.
NBC, more tv-shows,
watch demos etc.
Warner.bros,
movies etc. They claim they are the hottest online.
Excite travel,
a good place to start.
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| References |
Merriam-Webster's
WWWebster dictionary.
Netlingo,
on line dictionary search for new vocabulary that has to do with
the technology and community of the Internet and the World Wide
Web.
A list of on-line dictionaries, grammars etc. An impressive
list from around the world. |
| Music and odds and
ends |
MTV,
the television channel has its own homepage of course.
New
Musical Express online, the online version of the magazine.
Lycos
music, news, links, top 5% sites and more.
Top 40-hits, from 1930 -1999, find the lyrics.
The
original Hip-Hop music archives, soundtracks, artists, lyrics,
links and a lot more.
Meaningful
lyrics, The homepage of an Australian, he has collected the
lyrics of songs he finds meaningful. Look at them and see if you
agree, also look at his ideas on what to do with the lyrics. |
More things you can do
| Subscribe to
words! |
You'll get a new (difficult) word in your mailbox
everyday.
New
word, you can discuss words, and get a new one in the mailbox
every day.
A word a day. Get a word a day. |
| Chat |
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Some of the sites for students have chatsites and/or mailinglists, newsgroups
etc. where you can practise your English. The search engines also
have chatsites and if you join one called "reading"
or something, you should be able to find some serious people to
talk to.
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| Mailing lists and Newsgroups |
| Join an e-mail list, newsgroup etc. where people
discuss something you're interested in (everything from Icelandic
horses, gardening and cooking to Jane Austen novels is being discussed
somewhere). You can search for mailinglists and newsgroups in the
search engines. |
| Listening |
| You can listen to radio news, watch music videos
etc. Many events are broadcast on the net. Excellent listening practise!
Post any interesting thing you come across in the newsgroup. |
| Use the search engines |
| Lycos,
Excite, Webcrawler, Yahoo,
etc. They work differently, some search everything on the net and
some only have sites that that have been checked. The important
thing is that you spend some time figuring out how they work. And
if you are looking for an interesting site about skiing, for instance,
it's not a bad idea to start with the sites the search engine
recommend (Lycos for instance has "Top 5 %" where
you'll find the most popular sites. Infoseek will give you rated
sites etc.) |
Inference,
is a search engine that searches all the others, you can get very good
results.
And as you start looking at all the sites for students of English you'll
find other things (idioms, stories etc.) that you can subscribe to and
exercises to do.
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