Review of englishclub.com...A+

I was searching the web for resources that contained lesson plans with ready-made dialogues for speaking practice in order to help a fellow teacher friend of mine...I stumbled upon englishclub.com. After I found a number of dialogues including, ordering a pizza, booking an appointment, small talk practice, transactions with a cashier, greetings, more small talk practice, a doctor’s diagnosis - you get the point - I decided to check out the rest of the website for this week’s review!

For starters, there’s a lot of usable content for both teachers and students to choose from. When you arrive on the home page, you can look at the menu bar to see what areas of interest they offer, or you can just scroll down the page as they are all listed there in more detail. There’s quite a few options.

Language Skills:

Language Resources for Learning English:

And More English Language Resources:

As you can see, there are a number of different resources for both students and teachers, so let’s dive a little deeper and see how cool this EnglishClub is...

I started by investigating the Listening Skills link. I found a number of options including short stories for kids, podcasts, Radio/TV stations, excerpts from English classic novels, Aesop’s fables, English poems, easy to understand news stories...and more. The resources seem to be bountiful, so I scrolled down the page and decided to click on This Week in History.

June 16th, 1903, Henry Ford founds the Ford Motor Company. Cool, when do I get to the listening practice??? Right away. There is a short audio file about Henry Ford, along with a transcript, then a YouTube video about Henry Ford, also with a transcript. The passage was a 5-sentence paragraph, and the audio file was 1:03. The video was 54 seconds and the transcript was a 7-sentence paragraph.

Not bad for beginners and developing intermediates; listening, reading, and potentially speaking practice all in one. There’s even a keyword vocabulary list with parts of speech and definitions, and a short comprehension quiz included. The transcripts don’t include all of the keywords, but all of the keywords are either used, or very closely related to the content.

Next, I decided to Listen to News in easy English. The first thing I noticed was the news index ended on December 31st 2019....Perhaps COVID related? I don’t know, but the index of news stories goes back week by week to January of 2011, so there’s a lot of potential listening practice regardless.

I happen to have an interest in the economies of Japan and China, so I clicked on the link, China Officially Passes Japan as No. 2 Economy...

The instructions on the page were:

If you’re a teacher, they pretty much planned your lesson; the audio file is short (1:08), and as you can see, the English is simple, and the transcript doubles as a fill in the blank activity.

Here are the comprehension and discussion questions:

Not too much, not too little; decide for yourself based on your students’ levels and needs.

I decided to check out one more listening exercise, so I kept going and explored the Listen & Learn section. This section is a collection of stories and posts, each with an audio file, transcription, and quiz to help learners practice English. While scrolling through the topics, I noticed there are lots of historical, scientific, and social topics covered in this section, as well as important individuals like America's first female Vice President!

I clicked on Carbon Dating, and found the set-up is exactly the same as the news section; there is a vocabulary list with definitions, an audio file, a fill in the blank listening exercise, comprehension and discussion questions, and the complete transcript at the end.

I feel like I have a good idea of what the listening section is all about, but there’s still a ton on englishclub.com to explore. So I switched gears and started exploring what EnglishClub has to offer in regards to writing practice...

Similar to what I found in the listening section, there are lots of options to choose from; there are 18 writing skill items, and 11 articles and recommended websites students can access for additional help.

I found each category within the writing section to be useful, and well written. The information presented is exemplified in a very comprehensible manner for beginners through advanced intermediates; not too much information, nor too little.

Some of the pages I looked at:

The Signs and Symbols page lists the 18 most common signs and symbols in printed or typed writing, along with definitions and example sentences for each. I think this page will be very helpful for your students, not only when it comes to their writing, but it supports reading and general academic comprehension as well. When you see all of the signs and symbols they use, you’ll understand why I would think that.

The page on Plagiarism explains what it is, gives examples of plagiarism acts, explains why English learners plagiarize, it’s implications internationally, expounds on copying from the internet, and reasons why not to plagiarize.

What I like about this page, is what it doesn’t do. It’s not written with the, “You better not do this kid or you’ll ruin your life!” kind of voice. Instead, it actually walks students through how plagiarism happens, intentionally or unintentionally, and is written in a way where students can self-reflect and examine their own habits.

The Sentence Variety page helps students avoid using the same structures over and over again, by explaining in very easy to understand terms how to add sentence variety, what the different types of sentences are, along with modes of discourse, examples of how to rewrite the basic SVO sentence pattern, a section on sentence length, and even a writing challenge. From a student’s perspective, I feel all of this information is not only useful, but it’s put into context so a student can relate. From a teacher’s perspective, the information can easily be adapted into a lesson, or used to supplement an existing lesson.

I really liked the Peer Editing page, because it provides a proofreading checklist, describes what the role of a peer editor is, provides an editor’s key for making suggestions along with explanations of each abbreviation, illustrates the editor key by demonstrating how to use it on a poorly written paragraph, and challenges learners to edit and rewrite another example paragraph. This page doesn’t just explain what to do, it demonstrates how to do it. Again, useful for both students and teachers.

So far, I have to say this is a pretty good website for both students and teachers. I found both the listening and writing sections to be easy to understand, absent of “fluff”, and pragmatically useful as a reference for students and lesson plan assistant for teachers. There’s too many sections on the website to go through all of them, but I wanted to check out at least one more before posting this review. The last section within the website I examined was the ESL Downloads page.

This page provides additional free resources for teachers; 2 ESL books, 40 different stickers, ESL posters, ESL greeting cards, ESL ringtones and wallpapers, ESL videos, eDocuments, worksheets, and tests. Not all of them are that great, like the stickers, ringtones, and wallpapers for your phone for example, but most of them are relevant, useful, and visually pleasing.

The ESL Videos page has a series of 7 films that explore aspects of English learning in 7 different countries: the UK, Brazil, China, Spain, the US, Romania, and Morocco. I watched the films from America and Brazil and felt like although the films are dated, the content is relevant. The language learners are asked about their experiences, goals, challenges and successes with learning English, teachers explain their methods, problems and solutions, and both provide tips and advice for learning English. Most of the English spoken in the videos is not perfect, so ESL and EFL learners going through the process of improving their English can identify, and the videos can be used as a demonstration of how communication, not perfection, is the most important aspect of language. You can download the videos with, and without, subtitles. At a minimum, they can spark meaningful conversation in the classroom.

The ESL eDocuments consist of a series of presentation kits and lessons for each stage of giving a presentation in English. They cover from the initial preparation to the conclusion and questions and answers, with presentation frameworks, guides, delivery tips, vocabulary, and more. I was actually quite surprised with how much the lessons and documents covered. There’s even a guide for teachers to teach presentation skills and a feedback form that looks like it was copied from Toast Masters (literally).

There is another section that provides students and teachers with an 8-page document and a 7-part lesson series on creating resumes and cover letters.

Finally, in the ESL Documents section, the Test page provides a 20-question, multiple-choice, paper based Written Comprehension Level Test. It’s the only test in this section which is unfortunate, but there are other sections throughout the website including the sections I reviewed above, English Exams, ESL Quizzes, another ESL Worksheets page, Resources for Teachers, etc. that provide both summative and formative assessment resources.

Now to me, this written test reads more like a reading comprehension test, or a sentence variety test, but it does correlate with writing. Like I mentioned, this particular Test section is not as robust as the pages I previously reviewed, but the activity is useful nonetheless.

The more I dig into this website the more impressed I am. Honestly, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface with what I reviewed for this blog, but everything so far seemed to be very helpful for students, and VERY helpful for teachers looking for assistance putting together a lesson plan. From what I’ve seen so far, englishclub.com gets an A+ in EVERY category.

Topic coverage...A+

Comprehensible language...A+

Accurate information...A+

Useful for ESL/EFL students...A+

Useful for teachers...A+

Overall...A+