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Showing posts from January, 2010

Free interactive tests for ELLs (Part 2)

This is the second part of my list of websites with brilliant interactive tests written by English teachers for English learners. English Online - I love this simple site with lots of tests for different exams and a concise explanation of each of the exams. Parapal Online offers a wide variety of interactive exercises for different levels. It's also possible to choose the font size that suits you best. The English Speaker is regularly updated and contains plenty of interactive tests for beginner, intermediate and advanced students. English Club ESL Learning Centre has lots of interactive tests, quizzes and games, plus tips on how to improve your English. The ICT in FLT hasn't been updated for a long while, but I like this site because it was one of the first that I used with my students.

My fave sites with free online tests for English language learners

Last September, two of my colleagues and I set up a website called mojamatura where we help students from all over the country to get ready for the recently introduced unified school-leaving exams. We offer online preparation for the English, Math and IT exams, but we have plans to include other school subjects as well. In order to teach our digital natives how to use the Internet more efficiently, we follow these rules: 1) easily clickable exercises 2) there's an answer key. My two colleagues write their own material, but I don't. Firstly, because I'm not a materials writer and I know how difficult and time-consuming it is. (Up to now I have written only one quiz about books and it took me ages to build it.) Secondly, there are so many brilliant English teachers who unselfishly publish their tests on their websites for the sake of English language learners worldwide. This is my tribute to them: First and foremost: Free English Lessons Online not only because this brillia

What is web 2.0?

This fantastic video was created by a dear twitter friend of mine, Tomaz Lasic, an English teacher from Australia.

My NYR - part 2

In one of my recent posts I said that my only professional resolution was to meet my twitter friends. If it's true that good beginnings promise a good end, then I'm on my way to achieve my goal. Well, I know it's too early to talk about making my resolutions actually happen, but it's a great start, isn't it? As great as meeting @kenwilsonlondon and his lovely wife Dede in a cosy little pub in Bayswater, London. What I didn't mention in the said post was that I decided to set up a new blog for Croatian teachers and write about all these amazing tools that can be used in the classroom. I'm all enthusiastic about sharing the web 2.0 knowledge with teachers who want to keep up with the latest developments in the educational technology. My new blog is called The Fellowship of Twitter , because it's on twitter that I learn about new techie stuff from my PLN.

The Fellowship of Twitter

One of the most influential Croatian computer magazines published an article about the failures and successes of 2009 in its December issue. Twitter, according to them, was a failure of the year. I freaked out when I saw it and didn't waste a second to write them a letter and teach them what twitter is about. Can you imagine that they ran it in their January issue on the letters-to-the-editor page with the headline The Fellowship of Twitter . I mean, I'm just an ordinary language arts teacher, no one would say that I'm a computer geek, and my letter was published in a computer magazine?! How cool is that? And BTW, doesn't the title brilliantly depict the true essence of twitter?