Web Resources for Teachers 2: E-Journals and E-Newsletters
Simon Gill, PdFUP, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Simon Gill has been an EFL
teacher since 1980. He lives in the Czech Republic and helps train both future
and present teachers. His professional interests include creative writing, the
relationship of language and culture, and low-tech approaches to classroom
teaching-and-learning.
This is the second of two articles that have been prompted by two things
I’ve often heard teachers say. The first dealt with discussion
groups, which are groups of people who communicate with one another about
topics of mutual interest. This one endeavours to provide an overview of some
online journals and e-newsletters, which are similar to print
journals (such as the one you are reading now) but appear in electronic format.
The URLs for all publications mentioned are given at the end of the article.
They were correct and live at the time of writing, but may change with time; if
any of them do not work, a Google search with the title of the publication
should do the trick.
There are a
number of well-known and very good ‘dead tree’ periodicals for
teachers of English. However, they are not cheap and, unless you are lucky
enough to work in a place with a subscription, you have to make your way to a
library that subscribes to them in order to be able to read them. This is not
always easy or even feasible. Many of these, such as ‘Modern English
Teacher’, ‘English Teaching Professional’, ‘The Teacher
Trainer’, and ‘English Language Teaching Journal’, have
websites, but if you go to them you will not find the journals themselves
online; instead, there will be lists of contents, invitations to subscribe, and
in some cases a selection of articles or abstracts. Another well-known journal,
‘Forum’, is available for free from the American Embassy. It’s
also available online and can be downloaded in PDF format from a website that
also houses its back catalogue.
Besides these
hybrids, though, there are also journals which have no ‘processed tree
carcass’ equivalents and exist purely online. They have several
advantages:
- all you need in
order to get hold of them is a computer with an internet
connection;
- they are
completely free of charge;
- they don’t
take up any space in your office;
- they often have
archives where the good things they had in their back issues are stored.
What follows
is just a very brief description; go to the websites for more details. The
publications are listed in alphabetical order.
About English as a Second Language
is one of a large number of e-newsletters
published by About.com. At their website you can subscribe to their weekly
issue, as well as browse a large selection of resources that includes free
language courses, vocabulary lists, lesson plans, reviews, and
quizzes.
CALL-EJ Online is the result of a merger between two other
e-journals, one from Australia and the other from Japan. It is concerned with
the use of the new technologies in language teaching. It’s quite serious
and academic in style.
The Classroom Flyer
is an e-newsletter produced by an American
company, Riverdeep, and is sent to subscribers five days a week. It is aimed at
the American K-12 system but features a lot of resources which are of interest
to teachers elsewhere, especially, perhaps, those of younger learners. It
always includes a lot of links to useful sites and is perhaps particularly good
if you want to find resources related to a specific time of the year (for
example, in the run-up to Christmas it always features a lot of
Christmas-related activities and ideas).
Developing Teachers.com
is based in Spain. They have a very well
organized website with a good collection of activities, lesson plans, and
articles of interest to teachers, and they offer two free services, a weekly
Teaching Tip and an excellent and informative monthly
newsletter.
ELT Newsletter has a new article on a topic of professional interest
every Friday. They also have discussion forums, a good set of links, and a
complete back catalogue of all articles previously published (there were over
100 last time I looked), which they will happily e-mail to
you.
ESL Magazine is a subscription-based journal from the USA;
however, they do have an online archive of selected articles.
Humanising Language Teaching
is a yardstick by which e-journals could be
measured. It is run by Pilgrims, a well-known private language school in the
UK, and has been going over six years now. It’s a mix of long and short
articles, practical ideas, reviews, and more, and every article that has ever
appeared in it is still to be found on the website. You can also sign up for
regular updates that will be sent by e-mail.
The Internet TESL Journal
is a monthly based in Japan and is now in its
eleventh year of publication, with ‘Articles, Research Papers, Lessons
Plans, Classroom Handouts, Teaching Ideas & Links’. Their entire back
catalogue is on their website.
The Journal of the Imagination in Language
Learning, from New Jersey City
University, describes itself as ‘a publication for language
teachers at all levels, K-12 through College’ and has articles reflecting
the focus of its title. It’s been going for seven years and all back
issues are on the website.
Language and Civil Society and Language and Life Sciences are both
available from the same URL as Forum. They are explicitly designed to provide
content-based information to teachers of English as a foreign
language.
Language Magazine, “the online resource for language and education”, has a
free newsletter and its website has a full complement of all its considerable
range of articles going back to 1997.
MANTEX Newsletter is a monthly newsletter from the UK specializing in resources for
writing and technology; it’s most likely to interest you if you are a
‘techie’.
The Reading Matrix is a bit heavy and academic, but it is still a good publication. Its
main focus is on literacy and reading in foreign languages. It’s been
published twice a year since 2000 and is a purely online
publication.
The Storyteller
is a monthly newsletter from Michael Berman and includes stories and
activities for their classroom exploitation.
Surfing the Net with Kids is an excellent website from Barbara J Feldman in the
USA. It has a lot of resources for kids, albeit with a distinct educational
slant, and is aimed at K-12 educators and parents in the States, but, like the
Classroom Flyer already mentioned, it has a lot to offer elsewhere too. There
is a weekly newsletter.
Teaching English is jointly run by the BBC and the British Council and provides lesson
plans, teaching tips, articles, and discussion groups. Their regular
newsletters are basically to update readers on what is new at their very
comprehensive website.
Teaching English with Technology
is run by the IATEFL Poland Computer SIG and is
edited by Jarek Krajka. It’s been going for four years now and focuses on
the interface that its title suggests. All the back issues are available from
the website.
TEFL Inspire!
is a monthly e-magazine and includes articles,
reviews, practical ideas for the classroom; it is linked to a website where
there is a rich collection of resources.
TESL-EJ is American and quite serious and academic. It has a
mix of articles and reviews. All eight volumes are available from the
website.
TESL Reporter
is from Brigham Young University in the US and
is published semiannually; it claims to be “dedicated to the dissemination
of ideas and issues of interest to teachers of English to speakers of other
languages worldwide”. Their website has all back issues in PDF
format.
Tower of English
has an impressive set of links and provides a regular e-mail update
service to inform users of new additions to their collection.
World Wide Words is nothing to do with teaching but is a weekly newsletter (back issues
are all on the website) run by Michael Quinion from England, which focuses on
language, with a particular interest in new words and the origins of
expressions.
I
do not claim that the above list is a complete one, and for reasons of space I
have not gone into any of the publications in great detail; however, it should
provide any but the most greedy with more than enough reading to last them a
long long time! Like their ‘dead tree’ equivalents, the publications
I’ve mentioned vary enormously, from the heavily academic all the way
through to the light and easily digestible. Check them out and see what suits
you!
Two more resources I should mention before signing off, though:
Dave’s ESL
Café is the original EFL
website and is run by Dave Sperling; it has a splendid collection of resources
to help the teacher and is organized in an extremely user-friendly
way.
Simon’s ELT Golem is my own little collection of links to help language teachers find
the resources they need – just go to the front page and click on whatever
it is in the list of subject areas that interests you.
Enjoy!
URLs of
publications mentioned in the article
(in the order they appeared):
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