Learning and Teaching Resources

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The resources below are designed to help both teachers preparing lessons, and learners practising English in their own time. As a guide, we have divided resources into “teaching resources” and “home learning”, but you are welcome to use any resources you wish for lessons or independent learning.

Teaching resources

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English Assessment

Please feel free to download  and use our assessment materials to find your students’ English levels. These include:

General Scheme of Work for Beginners

Feel free to use our scheme of work for absolute beginners. It is intended as a guide and will need adapting according to the needs of your learners. Each lesson could be between 1 and 2 hours. Some learners will need more or less time on certain topics and it’s also a good idea to include regular revision lessons to recap language previously learnt.

Intensive Courses

We recently designed intensive courses for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners, focussing on practical, functional language skills to help students navigate real-life situations with confidence and gain some insight into life in the UK and Devon.

These courses are designed to run for 40 lessons at 2 hours each, for a total of 80 hours. You are welcome to use our schemes of work for these courses:

General ESOL resources

Beginner Level:

Intermediate/Advanced level:

  • Tefl.net: stand-alone, topic-based lesson plans for intermediate to advanced learners. The site also provides discussion-based lessons and individual activities.
  • Breaking News English: lessons and activities based on current affairs, available in different difficulty levels.

All Levels:

  • Excellence Gateway: Sets of lessons for all levels, from complete beginner to advanced (level 2)
  • British Council: Lesson plans and activities for all levels, from beginner to advanced
  • ISL Collective: Thousands of high-quality worksheets, power points and other resources covering all aspects of language learning, as well as interactive video lessons.  A very easy-to-use search function to find worksheets quickly on any topic.
  • ESL Cyber Listening Lab: Interactive listening exercises of all abilities, covering hundreds of topics including everyday situations. Note: the audios mostly use American English accents.

Industry Specific Support

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Industry-specific English resources to help speakers of other languages pass professional exams such as CITB, food hygiene level-2. There are also multi-lingual phrasebooks to help communicate with colleagues in the workplace, and advice/guidance on career paths in specific industries.

English for Driving

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Resources to help learners pass the driving test:

  1. A full set of lessons from “Teacher Phili” on parts of car, to hazard perception, driving theory, and road signs and a blog on using these materials
  2. Lesson on Learning to Drive from the Excellence Gateway 

Driving documents:

  1. Driving in the UK – documents (lesson 1)
  2. Driving in the UK – documents (lesson 2)

Additional teaching resources on driving:

  1. Reading/comprehension lesson on learning to drive from Skillsworkshop
  2. 26 English ESL worksheets from the ISL Collective
  3. intermediate lesson from the British Council in the differences in driving between countries
  4. Theory Test translated into Arabic and Urdu
  5. Theory Test Languages – Theory Test

Home learning

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Useful websites

Video courses

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Podcasts

  • BBC 6 Minute English 6 minute language videos for intermediate and advanced students
  • British Council Learn English Podcast many episodes with drama, stories and quizzes. Each episode has a transcript so you can practice reading as well – for an intermediate level
  • BBC The English We Speak  3-minute programs about English expressions – for intermediate or advanced level
  • English Podcasts – beginner and intermediate podcast episodes to help you improve your conversation. There are also videos to watch, as well as transcripts and quizzes.

Apps

  • BBC Learning English: all BBC Learn English lessons and activities in the app
  • Duolingo: free app, very easy and fun to use, suitable for adults or children
  • Rosetta Stone: you can pay for the premium version, but if you click “no thanks” and click the cross to close when it asks you to subscribe, there are plenty of free 10-minute lessons for beginners to intermediate
  • Memrise: lots of free vocabulary, listening and matching games. The app is free, just click “maybe later” when it asks if you want to buy the paid version
  • Drops: the program is useful for vocabulary, fun, with a variety of memory games. Free, if you haven’t subscribed just click the cross to close when asked if you want to upgrade.

More English language support:

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