Lesson Plans and Curricula

Beginners

• Bright Ideas was designed for elderly learners in community ESOL classes by the Chicago-based Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly (CLESE). All 16 units with complete lesson plans are available at the link above for free download. Units cover topics such as the weather and clothing, foods, people and places, and civics and community. This could be a great add-on resource or beginners' class curriculum for adults of any age, particularly if they have limited formal educational experience.

• The Queens Library has thematic community ESOL curriculum series for beginning and intermediate English learners. 

• Minnesota Literacy ESL Kits: These free downloadable kits include lessons and activities for phonemic awareness, speaking, and listening.

• One Stop English’s free curriculum for absolute beginners

• Pre-Beginning ESL Curricula from Minnesota Literacy: These free downloadable units are targeted towards learners who are just beginning to learn English.  Many of the plans do expect learners to read and write a little, so they may be more applicable for learners who are just beginning to read.  Their Beginning ESL Curriculum (for the next level up) is available here.

• English Language Lessons for Newcomers: SIL has adapted the Growing Participator Approach, a language learning method, for use for immigrants learning English, along with easy-to-follow lesson plans and guides with both British and American English.

• ABC English: Phonics textbooks, Easy English Readers, and other materials for adult English learners

• Caldwell EL/Civics Education Curriculum: Created for and by a North Carolina community college, this curriculum includes many modules of real-world activities and information for adult learners.

Advanced

• Teach With Movies provides lesson plans and curriculum materials for using full-length movies in the classroom. These are not created specifically for English learners. It also includes "Snippet Lesson Plans" for short portions of films.  Movies are not available on the website and must be purchased separately (although snippets may be available online). Movies may be sorted by subject, title, feature, target age group, and even moral/ethical emphasis, among other options.

Multiple Levels

• Friendspeak from Let's Start Talking: training and Bible-based curriculum for one-on-one conversation times with internationals.

• English Current - free lesson plans, tests, and ideas for teaching, including idioms and phrasal verbs, self-tests, grammar, listening, and more.

• Ricardo Barros ELT blog - conversation lesson plan ideas

• E.L.L. and Arts from the New York Times - offers lesson plans along with articles from the Times.

Pronunciation

• More Words - this site helps you find words that fit certain sound profiles (for example, words using "ph," words ending with "th," words beginning with "qu," etc. This is a great help if you're working on pronunciation with certain sounds and need more words for practice.  So if you're looking for a five-letter word starting with "z," enter z----. You should include a hyphen (-) for each letter that you aren't specifying. If you just want a word with a letter or sequence of letters, enter them between asterisks (*); for example, for a word with "ph" anywhere in it, enter *ph*.  For a full list of search instructions, read more here.

• Speech Accent Archive - This database includes speakers of numerous languages all reading the same passage in English, with a bit of analysis of how their accents affect their English pronunciation.  The explanations at the bottom are a bit technical, but even if you're not familiar with that terminology, it can still be helpful to listen to how they pronounce words to get an idea of what sounds might be difficult for a learner of a certain language. For example, you might listen to a few samples of Japanese speakers reading the passage, and notice that they struggle with mixing up "l" and "r," so you know to be aware of that with any native Japanese speakers in your class.

• Minimal Pair List from Home Speech Home - this site is made for English speech therapists, but this can work for student, too!