ESL Bits (23rd Feb)

I've added a link to BITS Interactive Exercises on End Tests and Interactive English. These use British texts and can provide good practice for meaning and gist for Level 1 literacy tests, though the questions are on the easy side. Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for this.

Online Dictionaries (Feb 5th)

I've reviewed and updated the dictionaries section on the General English page. New links include the Shahi page which links to Flickr photographs.

More thoughts on the Skills for Life Blog.

Dyscalculia Page (Jan 6th)

I have updated the dyscalculia page. Since I last did this - over three years ago - there are now useful information pages from The BDA and from SEN Teacher. I have also found a good research site from New Zealand and an American forum which is both informative and contentious.

ESOL Grammar Activities

I have added a page called ESOL Grammar Activities, linked from both the Teachers and Students pages. This page will carry our quizzes and links to other sites' activities for aspects of literacy grammar which particularly cause difficulty for second language learners.

More details on the Skills for Life Blog.

New Quizzes (17 October)

I have added some new quizzes for:

• Maths: easier subtract, multiply and divide for learners starting towards Level 1 tests
• Interviews: a selection from the Moodle project I am developing for Travel and Tourism students which make use of video and are mainly but not exclusively on listening skills. I hope tutors will feel that many students will benefit from seeing the videos.

More details here on Skills for Life Blog:- Numeracy, Inteviews

Red Kite Learning (Sept 24th)

I've added a number of links to Red Kite Learning:

• The main page and newsletters (to Background)
  
• CV and Interview Assistant (to Jobsearch and Topics)
• An interesting video on listening skills to the Speaking and Listening Page

Connected to Red Kite are the numeracy activities from LLU+. The demos are mostly fine, though some of the Level 2 are difficult. I'll add some to Maths Activities. You can access more if you register and create your own for the bank of activities.

Skilled to go (July 3rd)

I've put a link to Skilled to go on the English and Maths page.
The site contains excellent learning materials for both literacy and numeracy. The development has been done for the Office of Fair Trading on the theme of consumer protection. Most of the materials are good quality paper-based, though I noticed at least one listening exercise with an mp3 file.