3 Life-Saving Websites and Programs for Teaching ESL

I mean, “life-saving” might be dramatic, but roll with me. How about “Sanity-saving?” 

These are the three programs that I’ve been using religiously since starting online classes. I’ve been using these to help my students flow through the lesson without confusion (or without a thousand, “Teacher, what do I do now?” messages), and they make me look pretty stinkin’ professional as well.

1) Canva.com

I’m going to have to control myself while gushing over Canva. It’s probably going to sound like an info-commercial. My apologies in advance. But this is amazing. 

I use Canva for creating schedules to give to my students. I’m teaching pre-recorded listening classes this semester, so I needed a way for students to easily be able to know what they were expected to do in class.

Each week, I made a step-by-step schedule that shows them what to do. It might look something like this:

Since my students don’t have textbooks, I also use this to give them a heads-up about up-coming topics or assignments. My school has been doing online classes for seven weeks now, and it’s time to start thinking about mid-term exams. To help explain the exam, I created a whole PDF with several pages to act as an all-inclusive guide to how to write the assignment that will be their mid-term exam. Since I can’t just talk with them in class in the same way, these graphics have really helped everyone understand what they need to do and keep everyone on the same page. Organization and communication are key, people! 

Tip: Canva has a free version as well as a premium version, but there are so many free options, I haven’t found the need to upgrade. It’s super easy to see which templates are free, and which you have to pay for. The free templates can easily be changed to create a variety of options. 

2) y2mate.com

There are dozens of these websites, but this is the one I use to download YouTube videos. If your ESL textbook is anything like any of the ones I’ve used, it sucks. My textbook this semester is filled with out-dated information and tons of low-quality audio recordings. 

To make class more interesting, to give students a more exposure to native speakers actually speaking natively, and to teach more common phrases and idioms, I download YouTube vidoes to use in class. Just last week, I had a class on music, and I downloaded a clip of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke with Ed Sheeran. So many students sent me feedback, saying that they really felt challenged hearing two native speakers just have a normal conversation with each other instead of the overly-rehearsed conversations they would hear from the actors in the textbook. 

Tip: I’ve been downloading the videos had a fairly small MB, to make it easier for students to download, open, and save the video after I’ve sent it to them.

3) Quick Time Player

I’ve been using Quick Time Player, which is a super-easy program that I use for editing the audio recordings from the textbook and the videos I’ve downloaded. The audio files from my textbook are around 45 minutes long, so I go in and cut out just the section I’m focusing on right now. And, if a video is too long or there’s something inappropriate or irrelevant I want to cut out, I do a super quick edit in Quick Time. 

If you need a little bit of extra help making your online classes better, try out some of these programs! Also, they’re all free, which is even better.