Here you will find reviews of websites of value to learners and teachers interested in culture in the classroom. Try both the review and the website.

Reviews currently available:

Sites chosen will for the most part be original UK sites and therefore designed for natives and as original sites they are designed to be read and used by natives so giving an insiders perspective. However there are limitations too, such sites assume a shared knowledge not available to those who do not live in the UK. Later we will have an article on how to interpret such native websites successfully and avoid the dangers in our How to… section of the Teachers’ Forum.

A criterion for choice is the presence of a large number of links so you can avoid spending too much time on search engines. Another criterion is their value for those wanting to investigate some aspect of real life in the UK. They could be used for example for a learner project, for a teacher looking for a sense of up-to-date reality in preparing lessons or perhaps to explore possible answers to specific student questions.

• Please send us your comments on how you find these sites - we could then add them at the end of the reviews - and suggestions for sites to review

Review approach

Each website will be reviewed under the following categories:

Ø       Value for ELT - main areas for which it might be useful

Ø       Producer of site - and intended audience

Ø       Description of site

Ø       Accessibility * - including time to download and ease of navigating

Ø       Range covered *

Ø       Language level

Ø       Value for students Age: 13+ * 16+ * 19+ * Lang. level:  pre-int/ int* upper-int/ adv*

Ø       Value for teachers *

Ø       Overall value * - including the personal opinion of reviewer

At each point marked * up to five stars will be awarded.

In Value for students, the stars represent value for interest and educational level for the age (the levels correspond to gimnazjum/ liceum/ higher education), and for language level to accessibility without undue need for dictionaries.