| Three basic ways of locating resources (What are resources?) Resources in the database are thoroughly cross-referenced, meaning there are different ways of arriving at the same piece of material. 1 Starting with a language point A simple way to begin your search is to start with the language point you intend to teach. For example, the past perfect tense, or 'food' as a skills topic. You can either use the search box (avoid words of three characters or less) or browse the list of language points. These are divided into 'grammar', 'functions', 'vocabulary', 'writing', 'skills topics', and 'pronunciation', and can be accessed from the navigation bar at the top of every page. There is also a 'miscellaneous' category for items that do not usefully fit under any of the others. Click on a language point to take you to its main reference page. A bar at the top will indicate the numbers of available resources of each type: printed materials, book references and online resources. (These are currently divided into 'external' and 'online resources - local, a distinction which will be abolished shortly ). You will also notice that language points are linked to others at the top of the reference page in a kind of classification heirarchy. ('kind of' because it is not always so simple to classify and order language points). So 'past simple tense' comes at the end of the chain: grammar > verbs > tenses> narrative tenses > Other language points that are related, but not in a clear heirarchy, are shown in the 'see also' box. Thus, 'time expressions - past' appears in the 'see also' box for narrative tenses (and vice - versa). 2 Starting with the course book unit you are teaching This is another way to quickly locate resources. Find your course book under 'books' (a red link on the navigation bar), and follow the links to the unit you are teaching. All of the main lanuage points covered in that unit are displayed in a table. Clicking on the language point will take you to its reference page with available resources listed under printed materials, book references and so on. Any resources that relate solely to the book unit and not to a languge point - a worksheet that accompanies a specific course book listening, for example, are listed on the page for the unit under the table of language points. 3 Starting with the type of resource Say, for example, you are interested only in video material. By clicking the appropriate link on the navigation bar, you can view all available resources of that type indexed by language point. All this simply shows that there are a number of different ways of reaching the same end, depending on your precise needs. What if the language point or ELT book I want is not listed? The list of langugage points and books is constantly expanding. At the moment additions to these lists is controlled. However, this will change shortly - once a reliable system of user-control has been established. (This is tricky as there are potential problems of duplication and listings that are in some way erroneous. It is of little help to the user if the language point 'diphthongs' is listed three times, once spelled wrongly - 'diphthongs', 'dipthongs' and 'complex vowel sounds'.) |