ESL links

Here are some ESL Links:

BBC World Service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

A grammar page
http://english-zone.com/index.php

Voice of America (excellent)
http://www.voanews.com/english/

Listening Lounge (unreviewed)
http://www.englishlistening.com/

My personal favorite CNN Literacynet.org
http://literacynet.org/cnnsf/archives.html

This I Believe

One thing that often stops students from owning writing is the sense that they are not a "writer." Though the invention of blogs and other easily-published forms of communication have compelled more people than ever to risk writing for the public, they haven't necessarily provided a careful model of good writing. While I am pleased that the world is taking on literacy with vigor and most people have a new personal interest in expressing themselves with the written word, the expanded quantity of expression hasn't necessarily given us expanded quality of expression. Some students are still of the mind that anything found in print is a model worth emulating, which can have disastrous results.

Maybe as one small antedote to the extensive personal flotsam students see online, we can offer links to sites like the "This I Believe" series on NPR. "This I Believe" is a series modeled after an identically-named radio series in the 1950's. Each essay is written by a listener who has written a careful, thoughtful, but amateur essay. The upside of modern times is that the radio broadcast has an accompanying website which also publishes the essay texts.

I would like to see these available as models for our student writers. Not only can they begin to see models of expression worth reading, but also they can see that careful amateurs can produce worthwhile writing without having to "be a writer." The website is located at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138.