Tip Topenglishteaching.com
is a cut above the rest

Each of the headings comprise many sub-categories: Resources (dictionaries, grammar guides, clipart, worksheets, etc.); Activities (games and songs, and listening and reading activities, routines, etc.); Material (flash cards, worksheets, eBooks, etc.); and, Professional (information on qualification/certificates, forums for teachers, associations/organisations, etc.).

Search engine

The homepage contains a key feature that's missing from many education websites. It has a time-saving internal search engine. The main Topic box allows you to type in a search term - e.g., pronunciation, colours, and irregular verbs. Also, there are three drop down buttons: Level (any, elementary, intermediate and advanced); Age (any, 3-5, 6-7, etc., up to 14+); and, Skills (any, listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Combine all four tools to precision tune your search.

Under Grammar Guides, there's a guide to grammar and writing that contains scores of digital handouts on both grammar and English usage. It also houses many pages of free English resource materials that are categorised by skill and level.

The site is so smoothly designed that often you can't tell whether you are clicking deeper into topenglishteaching.com or whether you are being transported to an external domain. Every extraterritorial site I was transported to, however, seemed to be a solid, reputable site with useful resources. One transport page was called A Quick Guide to English Punctuation. This is also a good site and covers a subject that is always worthy of study.

Listening

The topenglishteaching.com site has over 60 unique graded (from pre- intermediate to advanced) listening activities. They are further divided by topics, such as: Names and Numbers; Charlie & the Chocolate Factory; Lord of the Flies, and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

Tucked away neatly on the site is a hotlink to Fonetiks.org, which has a great phonetics chart. Amazingly, it also has mapped the variations in sounds as spoken by native English speakers from various English-speaking countries, such as: America, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, Canada, India and South Africa. It also has an additional 40 audio files by native speakers. You can listen and compare the various English accents.

Dictation sound files

Fonetiks.org has a hot link to "63 Graded English Dictations". You might expect the "dictations" to just be printable copies for the teacher to read to students. No. The page contains graded (from elementary to advanced) sound files, each 10 to 30 seconds in length, by native English speakers reading classical and modern texts. The sound is crisp and clear, and there are many topics to choose from.

The idea is you listen once without writing; once while transcribing the dictation; and a final time to read and correct you writing sample. The readers repeat difficult passages and even dictate punctuation. Try it at www.fonetiks.org/dictations/ . The homepage also includes recordings from real radio broadcasts and a cyber listening lab to help students improve their English.

"Rejoice, we conquer"

Under topenglishteaching.com's Listening activities, there's a broad selection of stories. I clicked on Stories for Kids and my inner child decided on the legend of "The First Marathon". You can choose to open or download the .pdf (Adobe's portable document format) file.

It is a one page summary of the epic tale of Greece, a small city-state that had only 10,000 citizen-soldiers, being attacked by the huge Persian horde of 50,000 professional warriors. The Greeks beseeched Pheidippides to run 246 kilometres (147 miles) to Sparta for help as the invading Persians prepared for battle on the plain of the village Marathon. The Spartans declined. Poor Pheidippides had to run back to the battlefield and report the bad news, according to the tale.

The small Greek army, inspired by the allegiance of the god Pan - known for instilling fear in the minds and hearts of the enemy so fierce that it prevented rational judgment (hence the word 'panic') - attacked the mighty Persians. Score: Greeks, 192 soldiers dead; Persians, over 6,000 dead.

The remaining 40 thousand Persians sailed round Cape Sunium to capture the Greek women and children whom the victorious Greek soldiers had left undefended in Athens.

Now, Pheidippides had to run 46 kilometres (26 miles) from the Marathon battlefield to Athens to warn the unprotected townsfolk that the "Persians are coming, the Persians are coming!" He never got the chance, for he only made it to the city gates where, breathless, he whispered, "Rejoice, we conquer!" Then he died.

The one-page story can be downloaded at www.learnenglish.org.uk/kids/stories/docs/marathon.doc . Enjoy. Click Ahoy!

Editor's note: Another Greek, Spiridon Louis, won the first Marathon of the modern Olympic Games, held in 1896. Spiridon's father, like Pheidippides, was a carrier of messages - he was a postman.