Brian Gill's Home Page
Internet Resources for Teaching Second Languages

- Brian Gill -

http://fis.ucalgary.ca/Brian/ISLC2003.html
http://fis.ucalgary.ca/Brian/CCTC.html (version française)

Humanities
Language Research Centre
When we think of technology and language learning, we usually imagine a student sitting in front of a computer.  However, the computer, and especially Internet, are really even more important for the language teacher.  Let's look at some of the ways the Web can make our job easier and make us even more effective. 

1.  Google.  The first thing to do is to make sure you know how to take full advantage of Google to find information.  This is the equivalent of learning how to find things in a library.  It is essential if you are to save time and improve efficiency. 

  • If you use Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can download a Google toolbar, in English or in your L2, which will save you a lot of  time.  http://www.google.com > Services & Tools > Google Toolbar. 

    • Become acquainted with Advanced Search and Language Tools 

      In what follows, the words to type into the Google box are identified with a 

      • limit search to one language or country (Leonardo da Vinci Then click on Advanced Search, and choose French, or Spanish, etc. for the language)
      • find a phrase, using quotation marks: "ejercito de los Andes", "to be or not to be"
      • exclude pages containing a certain word (durazno, durazno -Uruguay)
      • find images (durazno, couscous, lederhosen)
    • Use Google for language work
      • as a storehouse of language examples (for preparing activities, tests): "avant que", recibir (cartas...),
      • to check gender or usage: "un ustensile" - "une ustensile" , culebrón telenovela, somptueux somptuaire, "à la Martinique" "en Martinique", ink-jet printer, "consister en" "consister de"
      • to find explanations or exercises for students: ejercicio por para, imparfait-passé composé, wann wenn, accusative dative german
      • to find cultural information (lederhosen, "día de los muertos" (+pics), Rezepte recettes recetas

    • Practice your query skills: try one thing, then another until you get the right sort of hits. 
    • When using Google, always remember to check the number of hits (top right). Very few hits mean the word or phrase is wrong (so if you type "une ustensile" and get 7 hits it means ustensile is not feminine, but masculine: "un ustensile" gets several thousand hits). There are always pages with mistakes...
2.  Make a Web page.  The second thing to do is to teach yourself how to make a webpage, so you can post information for your students and yourself.  Why?  What sort of information?  Check out http://www.medievia.com/mmekrause/fr2hw1stmp.html and http://fis.ucalgary.ca/Robert/principal.html
    • Homework, due dates, test and exam dates, explanations of what is required
    • Links to useful resources, exercises, information
    • Specific links for specific projects or topics
    • Student work - with student and parental permission - to celebrate their accomplishments and serve as models for their peers
  • Having your own page involves two different things: creating the page, and putting it on the web.
    • To create the page, you can use a special editor, such as Front Page or Dreamweaver, or you can simply use Word.

      • In Word, you can add pictures and links, and then save as a web page. 
    • To put the page on the web, you need space on a webserver.  Shaw offers 10 megabytes of web space to customers.  See http://teacherweb.com/AB/MaylandHeights/MmeSamson/ for a fairly cheap, very simple web service for teachers. Angelfire (www.angelfire.lycos.com) is free, as are many others, but with pop-ups usually.  Instructions on how to upload your files are given on these sites.
Now here are some examples of the sorts of useful things you can do on the web to help you teach a second language.