I hope this website will be of use to both my fellow teachers and students in further developing your interest, knowledge and proficiency in the English language and the many ways in which it is used throughout the world.

The links below represent those websites which are HOT ... progressive, enjoyable and extremely useful in terms of teacher and student applications either within the classroom or for private study. I have used all of them in my current classes and have been very impressed with the student feedback and response to such varied activities.

http://accent.gmu.edu/ - The speech accent archive is a project established at George Mason University by Steven H. Weinberger to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers. The website allows users to compare the demographic and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers in order to determine which variables are key predictors of each accent. The speech accent archive demonstrates that accents are systematic rather than merely mistaken speech. Students will enjoy exploring the world of English accents and will also enjoy trying to read the passage for themselves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/index.shtml - The idea for a programme about the language of English came from the controller of Radio 4 who wanted to celebrate the history of English over one millennium. They started by looking at how the language varied all over England and the reasons why various dialects had come about and altered over time. England is an exporter of language, by people leaving the country and taking their language with them. Often these people were Londoners, which is why present day Australian has many links to Cockney. As the BBC crew travelled around the world they looked at how English continues to change, but change differently depending on the influences from other local languages. English has become the language of preference for the exchange of ideas between people in science and commerce and non governmental bodies such as aid agencies and international organisations. But whose English is it? English spoken in America is radically different from that spoken in India, yet we are all speaking the same language. It is the exploration of these non English Englishes that takes up this new series of the "Routes of English". The website has many interesting ideas and themes which can be adapted to the classroom.

http://www.chatmaker.net/ - The great appeal of Chatmaker is in its simplicity. Within 30 seconds of going to their website you can have a class chatroom set-up and ready to go. The chatrooms are easy to use and students are assigned numbers when they join the chat. I have found this really useful when having a class discussion through the chatrooms, student enjoy not knowing who in their class they are talking to. I usually set up five or so chatrooms for my class and then assign each student randomly to one of the rooms. When the students enter the room I have usually prepared a discussion question for them. It is a surreal feeling sitting in a silent classroom whilst looking at five active conversations on my computer at the front of the class. I have always found that students are more willing to chat online than to contribute to class oral discussions. This is a fun way to tackle difficult or sensitive issues as well as being great for icebreaker lessons. The downside is that the chatrooms are all open access so it is best if you name your room something not so obvious. Take a look for yourself. It is so simple !

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/ - This is one of the best websites I know of and one of the best ways to spice up any language classroom. This website focuses on student created subtitles which are used in short Bollywood movies. The movies available are usually about 30 seconds long and feature between 3-6 character exchanges. The student must add dialogue to this exchanges to create a meaningful movie. This is really great fun and the possibilities are endless. You could have a whole class create different subtitles for a single movie or have pairs/groups working on different movies. All stages of planning, production and presentation always prove to be very stimulating and immensely enjoyable for all participants. It is also nice as in it introduces Bollywood culture rather than relying on western movie genres. You can take a look at two sample movies I created here and here. When you have got the basics you can move on to Bombay TV 2 which offers a little more creativity or try Football TV. Excellent !!

http://www.zapdramatic.com/mod1.htm - This web 2.0 technology is an awesome tool for the advanced level language classroom. Zapdramatic have created a series of online negotiation games which focus on decision making and creating individually constructed outcomes to engaging/ drama based stories. The Move or Die story begins when a man and woman are driving their car at night and find a man with $10,000 in cash, dead at the side of the road. The player or student then has to make a number of decisions which change the course of the story and thus determine each characters fate. The stories are fun, real-life and very stimulating for both teacher and student. The stories features English subtitles and high quality audio. I have only used this activity once and although the students loved it I found that the adult orientated content and the high-level of vocabulary required mean that the teacher should select the class carefully. A fantastic tool to have in the classroom.

http://www.magneticpoetry.com/poetgame/mpgpick.htm - Magnetic Poetry is a great take on the classic and rather addictive fridge magnet word tiles idea. The student has the chance to select one of six specialist word kits. These are: The Gardener, The Poet, The Office, The Artist, The Genius and The Romance Edition. Each kit features a number of words specific to that particular genre as well as a large selection of basic words required to make simple sentences. The student can click and drag any word on to the open space and make either regular sentences, poetry or even song lyrics. The student then has the opportunity to submit their work to the website or read the thousands of other submissions which have been made. This is a nice tool to use to promote creative thinking and freedom of expression among students. It takes a little time for most students to get used to this kind of activity but once they do they always seem to have fun.

http://forvo.com/languages/en/ - Forvo is a self-access pronunciation resource for students. It features 181 languages and a database of 12,000 words. The student searches for a word which they would like to listen to and then simple click the word. Being a new web 2.0 website the quality is sometimes mixed and students can access a range of offensive words but for use with the mature learner this is a good site. Students can also add their own words by recording their voice and submitting it to the database. Many of the English words reflect a limited variety in speech community but for the purpose it serves this cannot be held against Forvo. A nice site to send your students to before a presentation or public speech.

http://1000words.net - A Picture's Worth was launched as a personal project by David Chin to highlight the emotions and memories triggered by a photograph of personal significance. By inspiring people to bring out the meaning or story behind a personal photograph, this website provides a haven for people to truly 'show and tell'. In line with the idea that 'a picture is worth a thousand words', you are invited to submit a personal photograph with a story to explain the photograph's significance to you. The mini essays which go with each photo can range from 300-1000 words. There are detailed search features and to know that each picture which you view has a personal story behind it makes browsing very interesting. I have used this website in my class as a base for students to write their own picture story and in some cases I have sent the stories on to David at his website for publication on the Internet. This acts as a great incentive for students to produce quality work.

http://www.yackpack.com - YackPack is an outstanding application for creating interactive voice and message groups. It offers private communication in a fun and user friendly environment. This application is great for setting up classroom communities. The screenshot below is one of my EAP classes in Japan. I created a character for the students (although they wanted to do this themselves which is also fine) in my class which allows us to communicate together or individually from any computer in the world. I really like this application because it offers both text and voice recording options. It is very easy to use and the students also enjoy posting voice messages. Recently, I have been experimenting with student feedback and live discussions. Registration is free and only takes a few seconds. A brilliant tool for any language teacher.

http://www.mypopstudio.com - My Pop Studio is a creative play experience that strengthens critical thinking skills about television, music, magazines and online media directed at girls. Because of this the website is very much created as a teengirl hangout. This though should not put you off from looking deeper as it is an excellent website to use with non-native speakers. Users select from four behind-the-scenes opportunities to learn more about mass media: My Pop Studio strengthens media literacy skills, promotes positive youth development, and increases awareness of the role of media in health promotion. Highly interactive creative play activities guide users through the process of deconstructing, analyzing and creating media. Video segments, flash animation, media deconstruction games and quizzes, and moderated blogs make the website lively, fun and educational. The website even features a downloadable teachers book with lesson plans and guidance. Try it once and I promise you will keep going back again and again.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/default.asp - This is one of those websites that when you first discover it you cannot imagine how class was possible without it. The Newseum is an online collection of 592 newspaper frontpages from 58 different countries. You can search an interactive map to find a particular frontpage from anywhere on the planet, after clicking on the frontpage a high-resolution image is displayed which is excellent for printing or showing on a large screen. This website is a great resource for global news and students will enjoy using the map search feature. The language is not limited to English and the number of activities which this website can be used for go beyond simple language learning. An excellent website which unbelievably, is updated daily. You can also play an interactive News Quiz called Newsmania which is a cool little game although some of the questions are pretty tough.

http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/ - ProVoc is a free and easy-to-use vocabulary trainer that will help you quickly learn and efficiently improve your vocabulary. ProVoc offers a rich variety of unique features that will greatly help you improve your knowledge of any foreign language or technical terminology. ProVoc allows users to easily send vocabulary to an i-Pod and take it with you wherever you go.You can use your i-Pod as vocabulary trainer (convenient for any travel), or as bilingual glossary (very useful abroad for instance). In addition, ProVoc not only helps you learn reading and writing a foreign language, but also allows to improve your pronunciation. You can easily record audio for each word in any language (e.g. by using the built-in microphone of your Mac, or just by dragging an existing sound file). During training, ProVoc can automatically play the recorded sounds for you but with English, you don't even have to record any sound: ProVoc can speak words for you too! Users can also create printable flash cards, share vocabulary over the Internet and embed the new words within the Dashboard Widgets application. Of course all of this excellent, free technology = only available on a Mac :)

http://www.mediaglyphs.org/mg/main.eng.shtml - MediaGlyphs is a project to create a new auxiliary international language based on multimedia ideograms. The goal is to allow all people to be able to communicate in their own language across cultures whilst at the same time protecting the diversity of local languages. Using a software interface, you can type sentences in your own language; the sentences are converted to mediaglyphs and transmitted to other users who can read them in their own mother tongue. This fun program is also a stimulating way to learn new words in other languages. The project is far from complete and there are a few holes in the process but there is also a substantial amount of work completed. I have never encountered such a website and I spent a good few hours enjoying the different functions on offer.

http://6billionothers.com - This is without doubt my favourite website for both personal and professional use. 6 billion others is a project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (renowned and internationally-recognised French photographer) and is available in French, English and Italian. According to the website 6 billion others tries to draw a portrait of contemporary mankind by asking questions about universal values. The site features hundreds of testimonials from people all over the world. The video is presented in a large, high-quality window with textual commentary alongside the window. This website is an outstanding success within the classroom. Whatever I write here could not do this great website justice so please just take a look for yourself.

http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus - This website is produced by Cambridge English Online Ltd. and is a fantastic way to teach or introduce the fun which can be had with phonetics and IPA symbols. The students can record their own voices and listen to play-back, they can play with a phonetic symbol typewriter which pronounces the sounds as they are typed. Teachers can use the great flashcard making tool which offers many simple options to produce excellent looking flashcards. There are also a variety of phonetic games for students to play. I see this website as a supplement to class activities and would be a good tool to use for drilling and practice of previously taught lessons. It also has the benefit of making a typically hard, dull subject interesting and fun for both the student and the teacher.

http://www.podomatic.com and http://odeo.com - These two websites are not really new as they have been around for a couple of years. They are both podcasting websites which host student or teacher podcasts on a publicly accessible server. One of the most productive applications of this free podcasting service is that teachers can podcast their classes or lectures so that students can revisit the class in their own time, either to review the material or if the student was unable to attend the class. One of the best examples of this can be found at http://odeo.com/channel/4983/view or http://odeo.com/channel/93074/view. Both of these coursecasts are produced by Professor Steve McCarty and allow students unrivaled access to audio learning materials. I attended a workshop by Professor McCarty two years ago in Japan where he promoted the benefits of podcasting. I would recommend that any teacher with a regular set of classes or lectures look into these easy to use facilities which extend the contact period between students and teacher to more than just the duration of a single lecture.

http://www.iquizmaker.com - Whilst teaching back in the UK last year I could not help but notice how many international student had ultra slim i-Pods. I first bought an i-Pod 6 years ago but the speed at which the design and technology have evolved is shocking. My once cool i-Pod now looks more like a house brick than a fashion accessory. This website brings the hugely popular i-Pod into the learning environment by providing a free quiz maker for quizzes to be taken on an i-Pod. The teacher can then download a quiz into i-Tunes or straight to their desktop for marking or re-designing. Whilst this is fantastic little tool students will have to purchase the i-Pod quiz software for their i-Pods, but at only $1 I can see a university, school or college paying for this as the originality and the benefits greatly outweigh this small financial burden.

http://www.dotsub.com - A student introduced me to this website as being one which they had used in their home country before coming to the UK. It is basically a Youtube style video upload website featuring a whole host a different videos. The interesting and educationally useful point about this website is that each video features sub-titles in a variety of languages. The user can choose which language they want from a drop down menu featuring roughly 15-20 languages. Other than providing a more educationally viable option to Youtube this website is also a great choice for students who have hearing difficulties. Users also have the option of adding their own sub-titles and altering the ones already in use. At the moment the website is in its infancy but it is growing up very quickly.

http://www.mylanguageexchange.com - This is an excellent website to promote to students for independent learning. My language exchange is exactly that - a website where members exchange languages. After completing a simple free registration form you can search for your target language friend. After selecting a language partner based on either age, gender, location or ability, you can then either chat online or send instant text messages. There are currently members from 133 different countries practicing over 115 different languages. This website is also a nice tool for TEFL teachers living in foreign countries as it offers assistant with almost any language from native speakers who want to help. I once used this website for a very enjoyable homework exercise. Each student was required to find a language friend and then report on that friend the following week. Of course the hope here is that the student will want to continue the relationship for whatever purpose which is great for student language development outside of the classroom. There are a couple of other websites which offer the same kind of services - http://www.italki.com - which has a Facebook interface - http://www.myhappyplanet.com , http://www.friendsabroad.com and http://www.sharedtalk.com.