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Links to great language websites
(for more links, check out our Delicious page and the MisCositas.com wiki)



    
Multilingual Sites
  • Alien Language - cool interactive games for practicing body parts, prepositions and other vocabulary in English, French, German and Spanish.
  • Net TVBD and BeeLine TV - Watch free online TV channels from around the world. Both sites provide a selection of broadband internet television channels with news, TV shows, movies, music, entertainment and sports.
  • Childtopia.com - a large collection of educational games, tales, listening and reading comprehension activities and even arts and crafts project videos in English, Spanish, French, Catalan and Euskera
  • Hello-World - games and activities in English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Indonesian
  • Idiomatic Expressions - a database of idiomatic expressions in English, French and Spanish. Choose an expression from a drop-down menu and find its closest equivalent in another language.
  • International Children's Digital Library - an amazing resource for online children's picturebooks in many languages. You can search for books by country of origin, title, author and even theme!
  • Kindersite Project - this site has links to games, songs and stories in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swahili!
  • LangMedia - a collection of video clips of interviews, scenes, and conversations from a huge list of countries; an AMAZING resource for the teaching of language in an authentic cultural context!
  • Languages Online - games, songs and vocabulary practice in French, German, Indonesian and Italian
  • National Library of Virtual Manipulatives - Math manipulatives and graphic organizers (i.e., bar graphs, pie charts, number lines, spinner and math games) in English, French and Spanish.
  • Panwapa - from Sesame Workshop, this interactive site in Arabic, Chinese, English, Japanese, and Spanish allows students to create an online persona and safely "visit" Panwapa kids all over the world.
  • PowerPoints - downloadable PowerPoint presentations in Spanish and German including stories and games; and more PowerPoints (tons!) in French, Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch.
  • UCLA Language Materials Project - this site offers materials (textbooks, picture dictionaries, audio, realia, maps, etc.) for over 150 less commonly taught languages on all levels.

Spanish
  • Adivina, Adivinanza - a collection of adivinanzas (guessing games) organized by topics/themes
  • BLAA Digital - Solo Para Niños - this excellent site from Colombia houses a collection of short stories, biographies of indigenous children, games and links to museums like the Museo Botero.
  • BrainPop Español - 100s of animated cartoon/video clips about Science, Math, Technology, Health, Art and Music (note: after signing up for a free 5-day trial, you will want to subscribe!)
  • Kokone.com - a huge collection of games, homework help and information for kids in Mexico. Kokone means "kids" in Nahuatl, one of the many indigenous languages of Mexico - very fun!
  • Las tres mellizas - for Karaoke in Spanish: click on the "¿Quién quiere jugar a...?" image and follow the links to "canta con las tres mellizas" (cartoon video clips with the text highlighted on the screen)
  • Live Radio and Periodicals Online - media from the Caribbean, Central and South America
  • México para Niños - a fantastic interactive site with information about Mexican history, government, biodiversity, songs, stories, recipes and games.
  • Música en español and Canciones para la clase - both sites contain lists of popular songs in Spanish organized by grammatical point or theme, including cloze activity printables with lyrics from the songs and links to music videos!
  • Spanish Language and Culture - Barbara K. Nelson's site contains fantastic cultural and music-based study modules like Juan Luis Guerra's "Ojalá que llueva café" and hundreds of practice pages of grammar and vocabulary
  • Ver-taal.com - a site with vocabulary practice and authentic listening activities with TVE reports

French
  • Africa Remix - fantastic video clips of African artists answering questions about l'art, la multiplicité des pratiques, l'africanité, la mondialisation, l'héritage; transcripts are provided for each interview
  • Africains de la Chanson Francophone - a very fun and interactive site about African music
  • Bonjour les amis! - animated stories plus listening , reading, writing and speaking activities - a very nicely done site from Canada, especially well-suited for French FLES and beginning students
  • Caillou- the PBS show online, fun activities for beggining students
  • Calendrier de l'Avent - over 50 holiday songs sung by French Canadian students; each song is presented with nice graphics and the lyrics on the screen (karaoke style!)
  • French Flashcards - a nice collection of printable flashcards for practicing French vocabulary
  • Galeries Lafayette - the famous French department store, a virtual mannequin that you can dress up!
  • Imagiers.net - a large collection of audiovisual materials in French - check out the clip using African masks to teach parts of the face (called "le visage - masque africain")
  • Joël Guenoun - for incredible animated wordplay videos, click on "Les mot ont des visages"
  • Kids Playground - a metasite with a collection of games and activities for immersion French and French as a second language; activities are arranged by level (beginning, intermediate and advanced)
  • Mon JT Quotidien - an excellent collection of current event and interesting videos appear alongside the written transcript with options to take a quiz, give your opinion and answer questions about the report - very nice layout too!
  • Online Intro French Course - part of Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, this 15 lesson French course contains video, audio and interactive lessons for beginning learners of the language
  • Point du FLE - an endless supply of entertaining grammar, vocabulary and communication activities
  • TF1 and TV5 - French television channels with news, sports, shopping, cinema, weather and traffic; also included are videoclips, music files, games and French learning activities - both endless sources of fun and material for French

ESL
  • Activities for ESL Students - interactive grammar and vocabulary games and self-quizzes
  • Colorin Colorado - a bilingual Spanish/English site for families and educators of English Language Learners - excellent resources (webcasts, articles, guides and toolkits) for teachers
  • Dave's ESL Café - "the Internet's meeting place for ESL/EFL students and teachers", includes a teacher forum and a student forum
  • E.L. Easton English Online - pages with topics such as pronunciation, listening activities, business English, grammar and etymology
  • EnglishClub - an ESL learning center, clubhouse, teachers' lounge and list of resources plus a selection of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation online activities.
  • English Banana - English and drama resources for students and teachers; download hundreds of worksheets for practicing vocabulary, grammar, speaking, reading, listening
  • ESLVideo.com - links to free videos, quizzes, transcripts, lessons and other resources for learning English through songs, videos, TV clips, interviews and more - very cool!
  • ESL Lesson Plans and Resources - links to sites containing lesson plans and activities, clip-art collections, games and songs
  • EverythingESL.net - lesson plans, teaching tips, downloads, discussion topics, and resources
  • 5MinuteEnglish.com - a nice collection of activities, resources, review materials, and more! (link recommended by Ms. Fiato's students from Bright Futures Charter School!)
  • Starfall.com - What an incredible resource for ELLs! This site is excellent for pre-literate students, absolute beginners and for more advanced learners; contains activites, games, stories and printable materials for learning to read
  • Teaching Tolerance - wonderful site for multicultural folktales, information and activities
  • Train Your Accent - provides audio clips for accent correction; select the lesson you want from the pull-down menu on the left

Chinese
  • ChinesePOD is an excellent daily podcast - two "newbie" lesson podcasts per week are free
  • Chengo Chinese Learning is a multi-media Chinese learning system; try the free trial to view some of the activities
  • Chinese Language in the Schools and a directory of Chinese programs from the Asia Society
  • A great page with a list of the benefits of studying Chinese from CLASS (the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools)

For Language Educators
  • FLTeach and Ñandutí - ListServs for language teachers. FL Teach is aimed at practitioners on all levels, while Ñandutí  is geared for K-8 teachers, administrators (Note: sign up for the digest on FLTeach; Nandu has fewer postings and is thus more manageable!)
  • Make Beliefs Comix  and Comiqs.com - these sites provide students with templates, charaters and speech bubbles to help them create their own comic strips in the target language.
  • Photo Story 3 and Animoto - create dynamic animated presentations using your own photos or images; Photo Story 3 can include text, voice and background music. Animoto just allows you to use photos and add background music to create a very professional looking short video.
  • Portfolio Assessment - a "one-stop-shop" for excellent information and resources (i.e., ideas, rubrics, checklists) for developing portfolio assessments for your world language classroom
  • RubiStar - find rubrics for all kinds of assessments in all subject areas (foreign languages and others), or create your own; requires registration, but the materials are all free
  • Teaching Foreign Languages VIDEOS - an excellent series of videos depicting master teachers and best practices for teaching K-12 world languages
  • WebQuest.org - search for exisiting webquests or use a template and create your own