ESL blog by ANANDI THE GREAT...:

The blog I visited is Randall’s ESL Blog and the id is http://esl-lab.blogspot.com/

This blog is designed for ESL/EFL teachers and students.

It helps to share ideas about learning English as a second or foreign language. Study abroad, ESL programs, accent reduction, ESL study Tips . . . Anything related to learning English and cultural understanding.

Main Features:

This blog has different links like:

1. Train your Accent
2. Tips for students
3. Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
4. EZ Slang
5. Daily ESL

This blog is designed to help ESL students to improve their English skills by listening, reading, and writing comments on language study and culture. Follow these steps:

1. Read and/or listen to the learning tip or idea.

2. Think about these questions: What is the topic? What are two or three main ideas about the topic? Do you agree or disagree with these points and why? How does the point relate to you or other learners?

3. Write and post a comment in English about the topic and questions listed above. Comments are moderated for appropriateness. Please include your first name and country so we can get to know you better.

Usefullness.

Randall has provided a new audio service that allows users to post audio comments along and to their social media sites including Face book and Twitter. There are many possible applications for such a service in those students and teachers can share ideas and create learning content online. Here is one example. Can you think of other applications for such a service? Share your ideas.

There are number of tasks given in this blog for both teachers and students: an interesting example is:

If you saw a classmate cheating on an English test, what would you do? The learners are asked to vote for it. This activity can later be used as a discussion topic in real classroom and thereby improve the thinking skills and speaking skills.

Other tasks given are with photos. For example Randall’s marathon with necessary objects. He posted a question like:

What supplies do you think language learners need most? Share your ideas .This activity could be adapted to teach learners integrated language skills.

 The speciality of this blog is that it is not just offering information about language teaching skill but a number of real world tasks and activities are given. Apart from this a number of videos and listening activities given for both teachers and learners. In brief I found this blog stands apart from other ESL blogs as it offers authentic materials for practising authentic language.