What’s Exam English?

Exam English is a website for people studying or thinking of studying for an English proficiency test. It has materials covering TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS, BULATS, CPE, ECPE, LTE, CAE, FCE, LTE, ECCE, PET, and KET exams. Exam English describes the different elements of each exam and has online practice tests simulating some parts of each exam.

What Exam English Does Well

Exam English is probably the best place to go when you are deciding which exam to take. It provides samples that cover every major international exam.

There are a number of creative ways that you can use Simple English Wikipedia to study English. Lets get the obvious one out of the way now: read. Reading is good. Find an article that interests you and read it.

Okay, now for some more interesting ideas. As I mentioned in Part 1, anyone can write and edit Simple English Wikipedia. As a result there are grammatical errors in many of the articles. While this is not a good thing, it does present a great opportunity. When you read Simple English Wikipedia articles, try looking for any grammatical errors and fix them. This is a good exercise for yourself and it helps others who read the article later.

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the web. Right now, as I am writing this, Wikipedia sits 9th on Alexa’s list of the most visited websites in the world. Wikipedia has articles in over 253 languages, but, again as I am writing this, the number one language is English with over 2 million articles.
With its huge database of articles, the English Wikipedia is a great resource. However, Wikipedia articles are written in neutral language, which is not normally taught early in ESL/EFL studies, can be quite long, and are full of information. So Wikipedia is not the best for learning English.

What’s ICT Games?

ICT Games (Information and Communications Technologies Games) provides games to teach elementary reading and mathematics; however, the reading games are also appropriate for children learning English as a second language.

What ICT Games Does Well

The games on ICT Games are both fun and well-focussed on specific learning objectives. There are a lot of games that help children practice spelling, basic letter sounds, and blends (combinations of letters that produce a single sound).

One of the strengths of ICT Games is that many of the basic actions in the alphabet games trigger associated sounds. This gives children still learning to read important practice remembering which sounds go with which letters.

What’s Kindersite?

Kindersite is a directory of online English and Spanish games, stories, and songs for children aged two and up.

The resources that they feature appear in a frame through Kindersite. Better-known publishers include the BBC, Harper Collins, and PBS Kids.

What Kindersite Does Well

Kindersite gives children a safe way of finding online games, stories, and songs across a number of different sites. The directory covers a large selection of the best online games, stories, and songs.

What’s Storyplace?

Storyplace is an interactive website designed to provide children a virtual library. The site is split into two parts: the Pre-School Library, and the Kindergarten Library.

Storyplace is designed for children who speak English as their first language, or speak a different language at home, but live in an English-speaking country. However, it is useful for students in non-English speaking countries as well.

The Storyplace website was created by The Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County and is supported, in part, by book purchases generated through the site.