Geneva Upper High School English Students:

You are our future , and your education is our first concern


Grammar	Writing	Reading Sites	Literature	Online Exercises	Test Prep	Dictionaries


	Active places (where you can actually find activities to DO yourself) - including listening activities (marked with ). . .

	Dave's ESL Cafe This site was created and is maintained by Dave Sperling. He describes it as being for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World. You'll be able to get HELP from English teachers and other students all over the world, learn all about SLANG, find Key Pals, do a Grammar Quiz , and much, much more. Come back to visit this site often - it is constantly changing!
	Visit the English Learner site. You will be able to find exercises at your own level (ask your teacher to tell you your level!).
	At the 1-Language site you can find a great many activities to interest you. There are ESL chats (chats with other English-language learners), Flash games, Grammar Quizzes, Forums, flashcards, and many, many more activities which I'll let you explore.
	It looks like a joke poem, but this is a serious look at the immense difficulty of English pronunciation (you must have noticed how horrendous it is!). You will need Real Player, and then you can read the poem starting "Dearest creature in creation" and listen to it in segments. Even native English speakers get stuck on some of the words!
	English Maze is a place where you can improve your pronunciation, speaking, reading, listening and writing skills. The site contains hundreds of hours of material, much of which is free. I recommend that you do the placement test first.
	The BBC has a wonderful series on pronunciation. You will need to have Flash installed on your computer, but I suggest you try the Pronunciation tips! Make sure you have the speakers on, or that you have a headphone if you are working in a room where there are other people.
	The Tower of English is a site where you can find lots of things to do. Be sure to explore all the wonderful possibilities: Check just how good your SPELLING is, look at the listening site, including some really "cool" listening activities about a Japanese girl called Takako . Be sure to have Shockwave installed on your computer!
	Randall's ESL Listening Lab . This is a fantastic site where you can improve your listening comprehension through a variety of audio and video activities. This site was created and is maintained by Randall Davis, in his home in the USA. The accent is American and the activities are worth many visits. Please be sure that you have RealPlayer installed!
	You can do listening exercises in a self-access situation (YOU decide when you do them, and you decide when you stop)! Visit Self-Access.Net and click to do the lesson. You should open a new window for the listening activities (PC users: click with the right button of your mouse, then with the left button on "open in a new window"- MAC users: click for a long time, then click on the indication "open link in a new window"). Visit regularly to do their new listening activities. There is NOT a listening activity every week, so visit often!
	Do you want to hear English spoken with different accents? In that case, visit: E.L.Easton English Online . Click on ENGLISH, then choose the accent you want to hear. You will need to have RealAudio on your computer.
	Have you heard about Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech? Well, you can do an exercise based on this speech (you will have to fill in the blanks while you listen to the speech). This exercise was prepared by Michel Barbot. There are other audio exercises on his site .
	At the BBC Skillswise site you can read and listen to news stories in various categories, and then do quizzes about them. Here is a news story about "Why would you want to be famous?" Click on the link, read and then listen before doing the quiz. If you want more stories, click here.
	Are you interested in movies! In that case, visit Bruce Vorland's Web-Guide for the Internet Movie Database. You will learn how to use the Internet Movie Database to find out about movies.

Sites for improving your grammar:

Do you know the difference between STATIVE and DYNAMIC verbs? Has anyone seen the latest tv advert by a well-known fast-food giant? You can see two explanations for STATIVE and DYNAMIC verbs: the first one here, on the website made by the late Dr. Charles Darling; the second here (on the University of Victoria's website), and this page is also followed by two exercises. After doing the exercises, you will know why the the tv advert is grammatically incorrect! In passing, many thanks to Sandra H. (our charming exchange teacher), for giving me the idea for this item.

Some of you asked me how to work with prefixes. The BBC has a brilliant series of pages for just that topic... The main page is HERE, then you can go to where you can find out WHAT PREFIXES ARE (there are "factsheets" to print out), worksheets, and finally, you can do quizzes - at several levels.

If you wish to improve your grasp of Phrasal Verbs, try the Cambridge Dictionaries ELT (English Language Teaching) site for Phrasal Verbs . You will need Flash on your computer, but once you've got that, you will be able to test yourself on more Phrasal Verbs than you ever thought existed!

Do you find the English irregular verbs difficult to learn? You are not alone!!! Visit Aardvark's English-Forum and do the Irregular Verb interactive Quiz . You can choose your level

For irregular verbs in English and German, try Anthony Goubard's irregular verb site. You will find all the verbs collected in one place, and very well presented.

If you want help NOW, then visit Grammar Slammer , the help file that goes beyond a grammar checker. As they say themselves: "Grammar Slammer contains the rules and tips you need to write your best and make yourself clear. Grammar Slammer uses the familiar Windows® Help file format to make it easy to find what you are looking for. It even has a an easy-to-use glossary to help with those grammatical terms you
can't remember. It will truly Slam your Grammar Agony!" I also noticed that it is really easy to use!

Have you forgotten how the tenses work together? Visit the Tenses Timeline Chart to see a reminder of how to use the Present Perfect, the Past Continuous, and all the others. . .

If you want to find exercises to do, type the topic in the box below, for example simple past or conditional . The search engine will help you find something that YOU need!

TESL/TEFL/TESOL/ESL/EFL/ESOL Links

Browse: Links for Students

ESL Blue is an excellent Canadian site, where you can find help if you are at the following levels: Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate and High-Intermediate. There is also a Diagnostics Quiz that you can take to see where your problems are.

The University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) has a whole series of English exercises for different levels. Go to the English Language Centre page and choose your level. There are FIVE levels (200 is the lowest): 200 , 330 , 410 , 490 , 570 and one level marked Extras , with something everyone could need.

For more advanced students, I suggest that you visit the OWL site (Online Writing Lab) to study the PASSIVE Handout

Pearson Brown has created a multitude of different exercises (all excellent)! Visit his site , but more particularly see his Grammar Exercises , or his Multi-Word Verb (Phrasals, anyone?) exercises. There are lots more, so be sure to explore the site. . .

ESLGOLD.COM has some very interesting activities for you. You can work on your speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar or vocabulary. For each of these sections (and there are more!) you can choose the level you want to explore.

If you click here , you will go to Interactive English Exercises - where you can do five different grammar exercises , as well as a vocabulary exercise - a country and flag quiz...

If you are one of those students who have trouble with the Present Perfect , then this is the page for you! Colin Mahoney, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, has created some marvellous material to help you. Click here to go to his site. You'll find more than you need, but it's all very useful!

Many students have problems with verb tense sequences. What tense do you put after a simple present to show "same time" action? How do you express a "future in the past"? You can find very good tables explaining this at the Sequence of Verb Tenses page.

Would you like to be able to use Reported Speech properly? Try Mary Nell Sorensen's page on Reported Speech !

Another problem for French-speaking students of English can be the Infinitive and the Gerund! Mary Nell Sorensen, at the University of Washington, has a considerable online document on the forms and uses of infinitives and gerunds. Click here to see it.

If you want some explanations about ARTICLES and DETERMINERS , then visit the Guide to Grammar and Writing! Read the explanations attentively, and then do the quizzes.

Sites for improving your writing:

Before you can start to write properly, you need to increase your word power, in other words, you need to learn vocabulary! Please visit the excellent site prepared by Maria Pitsas, Vocabulary Power . You will find lots of excellent activities to help you help yourself. . .

Spelling in English is horrendously difficult, as I am sure you will agree! I suggest you visit the Absolutely Ridiculous English Spelling site, where you will be able to see how to avoid a few of the many difficulties, some of the time!

A Guide To Grammar and Writing is an excellent site which will give you a choice of the following activities: Plague Words and Phrases we should avoid, Words we confuse, and many more. Be sure to visit the index pages

There is a lovely site with interactive tutorials for writing essays (for the student who needs help, but who wishes to remain ethical in his work.). It is called Help with your Essay, and looks excellent.

The Paradigm Writing Assistant is an interactive site where you will be able to get help with many topics: Discovering what to Write , Organising your writing, Writing Informal Essays, Revising , Editing , and more.

Writing Resources for English Language Learners , has the following page of interest for you: 10 Rules for Good writing - with examples. I only chose that one possibility, because some of the other pages are a bit difficult, but you can explore them if you like.

Another excellent site for WRITING is the University of Victoria in Canada. It is very advanced, so only use this if you feel very confident with your English already.

If you change your tenses all the time when you write, you might want to see the Consistency of Tense and Pronouns page. If you have a problem with subject-verb agreement, then look at Subject-Verb Agreement . There are more, go explore!

There are some words and phrases you should avoid in your writing, to make it more interesting, to make your teacher give you a better mark! Look at the list on the page Plague Words and Phrases , so that your writing can become really, really good!

Reading places (where you mostly READ, but apparently don't DO much)

Dave Sperling's Slang Page This page is part of Dave Sperling's hugeESL Cafe, and you will like it if you
want to sound "cool" and "with it". You can either check the slang in alphabetical order, or look at random slang expressions.

You might want to visit Tom Robb's students' (at Kyoto Sangyo University) Famous People of Japan web-site. There you will be able to get information about famous Japanese people from all walks of life (ask your teacher what that expression means).

Some French-speaking learners of English have problems with "False Cognates", or "Faux-Amis" (words that look as if they might mean the same as in the other language, but don't!). To see lots more about this problem area, visit the Laura K. Lawless Guide to the Faux Amis .

Visit the New York Times article about Lunar Travel ! You will need to fill in the boxes in the question file , so please click on the question file BEFORE you open the Lunar Travel article! Then, you can shift back and forth from one window to another and write a project for a holiday in orbit.

The study of literature:

Please remember - nothing can replace your own careful reading of works assigned by your teacher!

If you are reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, then you might want to test yourself. Visit the self-study Quiz at the GradeSaver site. Or, you might just want to study the play using the GradeSaver Guide for it. Click here to visit the main site for the novel.

Is your class reading John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men? Belmont High School has created a wonderful Student's Survival Guide to this novel. You really should visit this site. Be sure to share this URL with your teacher!

There is also a Student's Survival Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird ! A wonderful site, full of useful vocabulary guides, allusions, idioms, etc., Be sure to share this URL with your teacher!

Students who are reading one of Shakespeare's plays should visit the Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet site. Click here !

You will be able to find Study Guides for a variety of works of literature at the Novel Analysis Novel Guide site. In particular, you will be able to see Animal Farm (George Orwell), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Lord of the Flies (William Golding), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) among others. . .

Here is a "web-quest" for you to fill in - on Jean Rhys, the author of The Wide Sargasso Sea , and the collection of short stories called Tigers Are Better Looking , among other titles. You will first of all need to download a Word document called Rhys.doc , with the questions for you to answer. Be sure to fill in your name in the header! [To do that, just click twice where your name should go, and fill it in, then save your file on your desktop.]. There is also a version in HTML, but you won't be able to fill it in as well. Click here to see the HTML version.

Here is another "web-quest" for you to fill in, this time on Brian Friel, the playwright who wrote Philadelphia, Here I Come, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, and many other titles. You will first of all need to download a MicroSoft Word document called Friel.doc , with the questions you need to answer. Be sure to fill in your name in the header! [To do that, just click twice where your name should go, and fill it in, then save your file on your desktop.]. There is also a version in HTML, but you won't be able to fill it in as well. Click here to see the HTML version.

	The study of literature:
	Please remember - nothing can replace your own careful reading of works assigned by your teacher!
	If you are reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, then you might want to test yourself. Visit the self-study Quiz at the GradeSaver site. Or, you might just want to study the play using the GradeSaver Guide for it. Click here to visit the main site for the novel.
	Is your class reading John Steinbeck's *Of Mice and Men? Belmont High School has created a wonderful Student's Survival Guide* to this novel. You really should visit this site. Be sure to share this URL with your teacher!
	There is also a Student's Survival Guide for Harper Lee's *To Kill a Mocking Bird* ! A wonderful site, full of useful vocabulary guides, allusions, idioms, etc., Be sure to share this URL with your teacher!
	Students who are reading one of Shakespeare's plays should visit the *Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet* site. Click here !
	You will be able to find Study Guides for a variety of works of literature at the Novel Analysis Novel Guide site. In particular, you will be able to see Animal Farm (George Orwell), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Lord of the Flies (William Golding), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) among others. . .
	Here is a "web-quest" for you to fill in - on Jean Rhys, the author of *The Wide Sargasso Sea* , and the collection of short stories called Tigers Are Better Looking , among other titles. You will first of all need to download a Word document called Rhys.doc , with the questions for you to answer. Be sure to fill in your name in the header! [To do that, just click twice where your name should go, and fill it in, then save your file on your desktop.]. There is also a version in HTML, but you won't be able to fill it in as well. Click here to see the HTML version.
	Here is another "web-quest" for you to fill in, this time on Brian Friel, the playwright who wrote Philadelphia, Here I Come, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, and many other titles. You will first of all need to download a MicroSoft Word document called Friel.doc , with the questions you need to answer. Be sure to fill in your name in the header! [To do that, just click twice where your name should go, and fill it in, then save your file on your desktop.]. There is also a version in HTML, but you won't be able to fill it in as well. Click here to see the HTML version.

Online exercises. . .

There is a site where you can improve your English by learning "chunks of language". The page given here is part of a larger site, also very interesting, although it is not free. For that reason I am suggesting only the FREE portion of the site, and you can decide whether you can (or want to) pay for the larger site. It's Free Practice, by Olga Galperin.

You can find some excellent tutorials and exercises at the English Page site. This is a site with FREE online English Lessons. In particular, I can recommend the Tutorials for the Gerund and Infinitive. There are three different levels, Level 1,
Level 2 and Level 3. Then you can go to the various exercises (there are a lot of them!). Otherwise, try the Modals, Conditionals or Prepositions. You will find explanations and exercises.

The Sint Lieven Hogeschool has prepared some online exercises for the general public. You can find lots to do at the the Online Grammar Exercises homepage. The number of stars indicates the level of each individual exercise. At the bottom of the main page you will find links for more types of exercises (vocabulary - reading - miscellaneous). This is an excellent site!

Oxford University Press has prepared some online exercises for the Headway books. You can find lots to do at the the Headway Students' Ressource Site. You will be able to choose your level (the colour of the button is the same as the colour of your book).

If you are using the Headway Intermediate book, then click here to get to the site. You will find activities for all of the units, as well as for the "Stop and Check" sections.

If you want to improve your English, there are now some online exercises available for you. Click here to go to the introductory page. There are exercises for different levels, and you can ask your teacher what level you should do.

You can also visit Dr. Michael A. Riccioli's page of exercises - you will find umpteen (a large, unspecified number!) exercises to do there, of all kinds!

Super Quiz Machine for ESL Students , created by Charles Kelly, has a quiz that changes questions every time you visit it. Take a look at it! In fact, the Super Quiz Machine is part of a larger website called Interesting Things for ESL Students . You might want to visit that site too.

There are also some quizzes on the BBC World Service Site . When you finish the quiz on their front page, visit their ARCHIVE of interactive quizzes. They cover idioms, grammar points, vocabulary and so on. Have a go!

TEST sites . . . where you can prepare for TOEFL, etc.

Many students have asked me where they can prepare for the TOEFL. You can click here to prepare on-line. You must have Shockwave on your computer.

You can also try the FREE-TOEFL site, where you will need to register (but it's free !). You will need to have Flash on your computer.

You can also prepare the SAT online ! Please be careful, though, and "sign up" at once when you reach the page, otherwise you can be blocked from staying at or from returning to the page.

You might try, too, the Educational Testing Service Network , where you can try a variety of tests, and / or download software to help you prepare those tests.

Last, but not least. . . Dictionaries

As they say on their site [WordReference.com]: "Translate any word in any Web page with a few clicks, using the Collins translating dictionaries from HarperCollins Publishing." You can try here . You can not only find an English definition, but translations TO and FROM English, Spanish, German and Italian. You can have a button on your browser for all of these, so you won't even need to type! I have put their box for you below this section

Visit YourDictionary.Com . You can look up words (they have dictionaries in languages other than English!), or you can have a button on your browser so that you can look up words at any time, and from any web page.

You can get five dictionaries in one - at the Online Cambridge Dictionary site - 1) Cambridge International Dictionary of English, 2) Cambridge Learner's Dictionary, 3) Cambridge Dictionary of American English,
4) Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, 5) Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs

For some exciting vocabulary assistance, visit the VoyCabulary ^(tm) site. This is a site that will allow you to enter a URL (web address) or a text (that you can type in or copy), and all the words at that URL or in the text become hot-linked to a dictionary or thesaurus. There is even a translation module!

Online reference works: Merriam-Webster dictionary online

The Dictionary.com site has several other services also available, such as: Roget's Thesaurus , Bartlett's Quotes (a dictionary of quotations), Strunk's (Elementary Rules of Usage), etc. You can reach it by clicking here

You can visit the Online Dictionary (maintained by Bucknell University). If you are interested in languages other than English, then try their Multilingual Dictionary Page . If you want to translate one or a few words (from English) into Dutch, French, German , Italian or Spanish , then try the Allwords site.

Or you can try the One-Look Dictionary site, where they have, as of 21.3.01, no fewer than 2971029 words indexed in 684 dictionaries .

Or, to try something different, look at the Newbury House Online Dictionary . This site has photographs for quite a few of the words listed, so you can not only see the word, but also the object, whenever possible!

If you want to go overboard and really have a LOT of dictionaries available, then visit Anthony Goubard's dictionary site: you will be surprised by the sheer number of languages available!

Using your School E-mail

Using DIP E-mail: Step-by-Step instructions for students who have been instructed to use the DIP e-mail in Geneva.

Sending attached files (via DIP e-mail in Geneva)

Saving documents in Rich Text Format (for PC & MAC users) before sending them as attached files

Click here to take my Online Survey - If you are my student (and only if you are my student), take this (anonymous) online survey!

Click on the link (like a little hand) to take the Second Phrasal Verb Test

Page created on 4.10.97 - by Lilliam Hurst

Last edited on 29.04.2008

- Using Nvu

Teacher of EFL & English Literature at Collège Claparède, Geneva, Switzerland
Former CALL Facilitator at the CPTIC
(Centre Pédagogique des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication)
Formerly known as Centre EAO, then CIP and...
Currently known as SEM [Service Ecole et Médias]

	Sites for improving your grammar:

	Do you know the difference between STATIVE and DYNAMIC verbs? Has anyone seen the latest tv advert by a well-known fast-food giant? You can see two explanations for STATIVE and DYNAMIC verbs: the first one here, on the website made by the late Dr. Charles Darling; the second here (on the University of Victoria's website), and this page is also followed by two exercises. After doing the exercises, you will know why the the tv advert is grammatically incorrect! In passing, many thanks to Sandra H. (our charming exchange teacher), for giving me the idea for this item.
	Some of you asked me how to work with prefixes. The BBC has a brilliant series of pages for just that topic... The main page is HERE, then you can go to where you can find out WHAT PREFIXES ARE (there are "factsheets" to print out), worksheets, and finally, you can do quizzes - at several levels.
	If you wish to improve your grasp of Phrasal Verbs, try the Cambridge Dictionaries ELT (English Language Teaching) site for Phrasal Verbs . You will need Flash on your computer, but once you've got that, you will be able to test yourself on more Phrasal Verbs than you ever thought existed!
	Do you find the English irregular verbs difficult to learn? You are not alone!!! Visit Aardvark's English-Forum and do the Irregular Verb interactive Quiz . You can choose your level
	For irregular verbs in English and German, try Anthony Goubard's irregular verb site. You will find all the verbs collected in one place, and very well presented.
	If you want help NOW, then visit Grammar Slammer , the help file that goes beyond a grammar checker. As they say themselves: "Grammar Slammer contains the rules and tips you need to write your best and make yourself clear. Grammar Slammer uses the familiar Windows® Help file format to make it easy to find what you are looking for. It even has a an easy-to-use glossary to help with those grammatical terms you can't remember. It will truly Slam your Grammar Agony!" I also noticed that it is really easy to use!
	Have you forgotten how the tenses work together? Visit the Tenses Timeline Chart to see a reminder of how to use the Present Perfect, the Past Continuous, and all the others. . .
	If you want to find exercises to do, type the topic in the box below, for example simple past or conditional . The search engine will help you find something that YOU need!
	TESL/TEFL/TESOL/ESL/EFL/ESOL Links Browse: Links for Students
	ESL Blue is an excellent Canadian site, where you can find help if you are at the following levels: Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate and High-Intermediate. There is also a Diagnostics Quiz that you can take to see where your problems are.
	The University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) has a whole series of English exercises for different levels. Go to the English Language Centre page and choose your level. There are FIVE levels (200 is the lowest): 200 , 330 , 410 , 490 , 570 and one level marked Extras , with something everyone could need.
	For more advanced students, I suggest that you visit the OWL site (Online Writing Lab) to study the PASSIVE Handout
	Pearson Brown has created a multitude of different exercises (all excellent)! Visit his site , but more particularly see his Grammar Exercises , or his Multi-Word Verb (Phrasals, anyone?) exercises. There are lots more, so be sure to explore the site. . .
	ESLGOLD.COM has some very interesting activities for you. You can work on your speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar or vocabulary. For each of these sections (and there are more!) you can choose the level you want to explore.
	If you click here , you will go to Interactive English Exercises - where you can do five different grammar exercises , as well as a vocabulary exercise - a country and flag quiz...
	If you are one of those students who have trouble with the Present Perfect , then this is the page for you! Colin Mahoney, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, has created some marvellous material to help you. Click here to go to his site. You'll find *more* than you need, but it's all very useful!
	Many students have problems with verb tense sequences. What tense do you put after a simple present to show "same time" action? How do you express a "future in the past"? You can find very good tables explaining this at the Sequence of Verb Tenses page.
	Would you like to be able to use Reported Speech properly? Try Mary Nell Sorensen's page on Reported Speech !
	Another problem for French-speaking students of English can be the Infinitive and the Gerund! Mary Nell Sorensen, at the University of Washington, has a considerable online document on the forms and uses of infinitives and gerunds. Click here to see it.
	If you want some explanations about ARTICLES and DETERMINERS , then visit the Guide to Grammar and Writing! Read the explanations attentively, and then do the quizzes.

	Sites for improving your writing:

	Before you can start to write properly, you need to increase your word power, in other words, you need to learn vocabulary! Please visit the excellent site prepared by Maria Pitsas, Vocabulary Power . You will find lots of excellent activities to help you help yourself. . .
	Spelling in English is horrendously difficult, as I am sure you will agree! I suggest you visit the Absolutely Ridiculous English Spelling site, where you will be able to see how to avoid a few of the many difficulties, some of the time!
	A Guide To Grammar and Writing is an excellent site which will give you a choice of the following activities: Plague Words and Phrases we should avoid, Words we confuse, and many more. Be sure to visit the index pages
	There is a lovely site with interactive tutorials for writing essays (for the student who needs help, but who wishes to remain ethical in his work.). It is called Help with your Essay, and looks excellent.
	The Paradigm Writing Assistant is an interactive site where you will be able to get help with many topics: Discovering what to Write , Organising your writing, Writing Informal Essays, Revising , Editing , and more.
	Writing Resources for English Language Learners , has the following page of interest for you: 10 Rules for Good writing - with examples. I only chose that one possibility, because some of the other pages are a bit difficult, but you can explore them if you like.
	Another excellent site for WRITING is the University of Victoria in Canada. It is very advanced, so only use this if you feel very confident with your English already.
	If you change your tenses all the time when you write, you might want to see the Consistency of Tense and Pronouns page. If you have a problem with subject-verb agreement, then look at Subject-Verb Agreement . There are more, go explore!
	There are some words and phrases you should avoid in your writing, to make it more interesting, to make your teacher give you a better mark! Look at the list on the page Plague Words and Phrases , so that your writing can become really, really good!

	*Reading places (where you mostly READ, but apparently* don't DO much)**

	Dave Sperling's Slang Page This page is part of Dave Sperling's *huge*ESL Cafe, and you will like it if you want to sound "cool" and "with it". You can either check the slang in alphabetical order, or look at random slang expressions.
	You might want to visit Tom Robb's students' (at Kyoto Sangyo University) Famous People of Japan web-site. There you will be able to get information about famous Japanese people from all walks of life (ask your teacher what that expression means).
	Some French-speaking learners of English have problems with "False Cognates", or "Faux-Amis" (words that look as if they might mean the same as in the other language, but don't!). To see lots more about this problem area, visit the Laura K. Lawless Guide to the Faux Amis .
	Visit the New York Times article about Lunar Travel ! You will need to fill in the boxes in the question file , so please click on the question file BEFORE you open the Lunar Travel article! Then, you can shift back and forth from one window to another and write a project for a holiday in orbit.

	Online exercises. . .

	There is a site where you can improve your English by learning "chunks of language". The page given here is part of a larger site, also very interesting, although it is not free. For that reason I am suggesting only the FREE portion of the site, and you can decide whether you can (or want to) pay for the larger site. It's Free Practice, by Olga Galperin.
	You can find some excellent tutorials and exercises at the English Page site. This is a site with FREE online English Lessons. In particular, I can recommend the Tutorials for the Gerund and Infinitive. There are three different levels, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3. Then you can go to the various exercises (there are a lot of them!). Otherwise, try the Modals, Conditionals or Prepositions. You will find explanations and exercises.
	The Sint Lieven Hogeschool has prepared some online exercises for the general public. You can find lots to do at the the Online Grammar Exercises homepage. The number of stars indicates the level of each individual exercise. At the bottom of the main page you will find links for more types of exercises (vocabulary - reading - miscellaneous). This is an excellent site!
	Oxford University Press has prepared some online exercises for the Headway books. You can find lots to do at the the Headway Students' Ressource Site. You will be able to choose your level (the colour of the button is the same as the colour of your book).
	If you are using the Headway Intermediate book, then click here to get to the site. You will find activities for all of the units, as well as for the "Stop and Check" sections.
	If you want to improve your English, there are now some online exercises available for you. Click here to go to the introductory page. There are exercises for different levels, and you can ask your teacher what level you should do.
	You can also visit Dr. Michael A. Riccioli's page of exercises - you will find umpteen (a large, unspecified number!) exercises to do there, of all kinds!
	Super Quiz Machine for ESL Students , created by Charles Kelly, has a quiz that changes questions every time you visit it. Take a look at it! In fact, the Super Quiz Machine is part of a larger website called Interesting Things for ESL Students . You might want to visit that site too.
	There are also some quizzes on the BBC World Service Site . When you finish the quiz on their front page, visit their ARCHIVE of interactive quizzes. They cover idioms, grammar points, vocabulary and so on. Have a go!

	TEST sites . . . where you can prepare for TOEFL, etc.

	Many students have asked me where they can prepare for the TOEFL. You can click here to prepare on-line. You must have Shockwave on your computer.
	You can also try the FREE-TOEFL site, where you will need to register (but it's free !). You will need to have Flash on your computer.
	You can also prepare the SAT online ! Please be careful, though, and "sign up" at once when you reach the page, otherwise you can be blocked from staying at or from returning to the page.
	You might try, too, the Educational Testing Service Network , where you can try a variety of tests, and / or download software to help you prepare those tests.

	Last, but not least. . . Dictionaries

	As they say on their site [WordReference.com]: "Translate any word in any Web page with a few clicks, using the Collins translating dictionaries from HarperCollins Publishing." You can try here . You can not only find an English definition, but translations TO and FROM English, Spanish, German and Italian. You can have a button on your browser for all of these, so you won't even need to type! I have put their box for you below this section
	Visit YourDictionary.Com . You can look up words (they have dictionaries in languages other than English!), or you can have a button on your browser so that you can look up words at any time, and from any web page.
	You can get five dictionaries in one - at the Online Cambridge Dictionary site - 1) Cambridge International Dictionary of English, 2) Cambridge Learner's Dictionary, 3) Cambridge Dictionary of American English, 4) Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, 5) Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs
	For some exciting vocabulary assistance, visit the VoyCabulary ^(tm) site. This is a site that will allow you to enter a URL (web address) or a text (that you can type in or copy), and all the words at that URL or in the text become hot-linked to a dictionary or thesaurus. There is even a translation module!
	Online reference works: Merriam-Webster dictionary online
	The Dictionary.com site has several other services also available, such as: Roget's Thesaurus , Bartlett's Quotes (a dictionary of quotations), Strunk's (Elementary Rules of Usage), etc. You can reach it by clicking here
	You can visit the Online Dictionary (maintained by Bucknell University). If you are interested in languages other than English, then try their Multilingual Dictionary Page . If you want to translate one or a few words (*from English)* into Dutch, French, German , Italian or Spanish , then try the Allwords site.
	Or you can try the One-Look Dictionary site, where they have, as of 21.3.01, no fewer than 2971029 words indexed in 684 dictionaries .
	Or, to try something different, look at the Newbury House Online Dictionary . This site has photographs for quite a few of the words listed, so you can not only see the word, but also the object, whenever possible!
	If you want to go overboard and really have a LOT of dictionaries available, then visit Anthony Goubard's dictionary site: you will be surprised by the sheer number of languages available!

	Online Reference Dictionary, Encyclopedia & more
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