Reflection 1: Websites that may help students

We are working with a group of students who came from Africa. These students only arrived to United States last year, hence they do not understand English very well. They cannot communicate easily; they have pronunciation issues; and their writing skills are very basic.

They need to look for meanings of words that they do not understand. In classes they do not understand several words and they ask the teacher, but the teacher cannot explain every word they don't understand. Like in all classes some of the students are shy, so they don't ask for questions.
They have computers in the classroom, so I think it would be easy for them to get up, go to the website and look for meanings they don't know. They don't use dictionaries so I think that online dictionaries would be a great tool for them.

Links:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

http://wordreference.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://visual.merriam-webster.com/index.php

http://www.rong-chang.com/dict.htm

They also need to improve their listening. This skill will help them to know the differences between words, and also to have a better communication and pronunciation. They could see videos at NatGeo and NOVA; talk to ALICE and also practice writing; they could see ESL podcasts at BBC and learn about different topics; and they could go to real-english.com, and practice listening and writing, grammar, and listen to different accents and ways to greet. They could use these websites at school: in classes and at the library; and at home.

Links:

http://alicebot.blogspot.com/

http://www.npr.org/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/

http://www.real-english.com/new-lessons.asp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/re/

I would suggest students to use these websites and use them as a tool to improve their English.