TESL 0130: UNIT 2 - Useful Apps for ESL Teaching

This unit was about how to use/adapt materials for teaching reading and vocabulary. Through this course we learned how to examine texts and their usefulness. The most interesting part of this practice was the app called readable . This app shows the average grade level of the reading, text statistics (like syllable count and sentence count) and text composition (like adjectives, propositions and conjunctions). I believe, this could be a suitable app for teachers with less experience to have a better understanding of a text they are going to use in the class and identify the level of the reading. For example, if a teacher wants to teach conjunctions for level 4, she/he can use this app to identify the conjunctions and the level of the reading and see how they are used through the text.

There are some app which where introduced in this course. This app snappywords works best for learners to find synonyms; this is a great dictionary to have in your smartphone.

The other app which is good for annotation is hypothes.is. With this app you can share ideas about an article, annotate it , share it on different platforms and it will keep you connected with your peers.

screencast-o-matic this website is suitable for teachers, especially for teaching online courses. The teacher can video tape her/his teaching by working on her/his computer and post it for students so the students can see the process.

Overall, this unite was a learning experience with online resources. It showed me that there are many online resources which could be useful for teaching and learning that I was not aware of.