An online German grammar reference, featuring zany post-modern Grimm's fairy tale characters, authoritative grammar explanations, self-correcting exercises, online audio and cartoon images.
Grimm Grammar is an online German grammar reference from the University of Texas at Austin. It is an irreverent revival and shameless exploitation of 19th-century Grimm Fairy Tales for honorable pedagogical purposes.
If you have found yourself searching for, adapting or creating materials for your heritage classes because of a lack of readily available commercial resources, this site is for you!
The growing body of online educational resources is helping to create universal access to language education. This is a good thing. Use this introductory guide to find open resources for your classroom. The OER ecosystem works best when everybody contributes content. Consider sharing your own. Educators often supplement foreign language textbooks. Perhaps your students need more grammar, authentic L2 materials, or listening practice exercises. Go to an open content search page. For example, Creative Commons offers a system of open licensing which enables resource sharing. Their CC search page is a great place to start. However, finding openly licensed educational resources (OER)—which can be edited, built upon, and shared without copyright restrictions—isnʼt always easy.
Free practice modules for Spanish language educators
Introduction to Oral Proficiency Levels is a free open educational resource that can help Spanish teachers gain a foundational understanding of how to evaluate Spanish speakers. The resource includes 17 video-based practice modules designed to strengthen your understanding of the ACTFL Speaking Proficiency Guidelines and to help you evaluate the speaking levels of your language students.
Le Littéraire dans le quotidien is an open textbook for use in French courses. The Literary in the Everyday represents a new pedagogical approach to reading and writing at the lower levels and is applicable to all languages. Teachers of foreign languages besides French can read about the approach in the Teacher's Guide. Go to Google Drive for individual chapters. Additionally, the Foreign Languages & The Literary in the Everyday (FLLITE) Project, a joint initiative of COERLL and CERCLL, two national foreign language resource centers, offers open resources for professional development in the publication of CC licensed FLLITE lessons in any language. Go to the FLLITE website for the lesson archive.
Les Conversations Mises à Jour is a collection of authentic conversations in French that targets mostly intermediate and advanced learners of French. Each conversation highlights the shared experience of two native or near-native French speakers and provides both an oral history of that experience and a trove of cultural references.
In Brazil, the term língua da gente (literally ‘language of the people’) refers to the way that people actually talk in everyday speech. And that, in essence, is the object behind this series. We hope to provide practical lessons that demonstrate how people really speak, and we do this by presenting brief, slice-of-life dialogs, which focus on some daily situation, scenario, or task that we encounter every day.
Each audio podcast, generally between 8-12 minutes, includes the presentation of a brief dialog, a line-by-line English translation, and more in-depth analysis of the pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural content in the lesson. Discussion blogs also accompany each lesson, providing community interaction for comments and questions. In broad terms, the lessons are subdivided into three levels of difficulty: Beginning, Elementary, and Intermediate. Additionally we have a cultural show that covers current events and related social issues.
An Interactive Course on Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation.
Pitch Perfect Pinyin is a two-part interactive website for learning Pinyin pronunciation.
A compilation of nearly 350 brief video clips, together with a complete Portuguese transcription and English translation of native speakers of Portuguese from various locations throughout Brazil (and some Portugal) who talk about 80 different topics.
Selection of aural Italian grammar lessons (podcasts). Grammar examples and dialogs are built upon the escapades of Arlecchino, Pulcinella, and other masks of the Italian Commedia dell'arte. Lessons feature topical grammar discussions, dramatic readings, pdf grammar notes ... and general audio zaniness.
Reality Czech is a next generation openly licensed Czech textbook and curriculum currently under development by Dr. Christian Hilchey from the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies in collaboration with the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, a series of videos are available on the website.
Eventually, all materials will be freely available online under a Creative Commons license to any university or individuals who wish to use or adapt them:
- In-class Activity Book
- Online Grammar and Cultural Units
- Printable Homework Exercises
COERLL has partnered with Rose Potter and Betsy Arnold to publish Recorridos-Don Quijote, a pair of openly-licensed books for the study of Cervantes’ Don Quijote in upper level Spanish courses, including AP. The student workbook, accessible online for free, deepens students’ understanding of the text through reading, pre-reading, and post-reading activities and glosses. The companion teacher support facilitates the teaching of Don Quijote through student-centered strategies and activities, historical and cultural information, quizzes, exams and more.
Rockin Russian is designed to give students exposure to the Russian language and culture through the medium of Russian music videos. Students are able to perfect their grammar while rocking out to music videos from Russia's pop stars. Based on Russian music videos from MTV Russia, Rockin' Russian is supplemented with exercise materials focusing on pronunciation, vocabulary development, grammar and cultural features. Parts of the videos are embedded into exercises in each category that students can revisit, strengthening their language skills.
Welcome to Spanish Grammar in Context, where you will find detailed grammar explanations of the Spanish language. Unlike traditional reference grammars, each topic is explained using authentic video examples from the Spanish in Texas project. Accompanying practice quizzes are available on an open Canvas course site.
A compilation of brief video clips in which native speakers of Spanish from various locations throughout Latin America and Spain demonstrate various language tasks.
The purpose of these materials is to help future public school teachers of Spanish in their assessment of learners' levels of proficiency. These materials not only present videos of learners interacting with an interlocutor, but also direct the viewer to notice features about the learners' language and proficiency levels. The website also presents information on proficiency levels to help the viewer develop a greater awareness of differences in learner language.
The SpinTX video archive provides a convenient web interface to search hundreds of short video clips from the Spanish in Texas Corpus. The collection includes hundreds of video clips culled from interviews of native and heritage speakers of Spanish living in Texas. Each video is accompanied by synchronized closed captions and a transcript that has been annotated with thematic, grammatical, functional and metalinguistic information. All materials available on the site can be freely used, copied, and distributed under a Creative Commons license.
An online pedagogical reference grammar of the French language that combines authoritative grammar explanations, self-correcting exercises and online audio with surreal dialogues and cartoon images.
Tá Falado includes 46 podcast lessons on the pronunciation and grammar of Portuguese, specifically designed to help those who already speak Spanish. The lessons are built around Portuguese dialogs that are repeated in Spanish, providing a direct comparison of the two languages. All lessons include downloadable PDF files with the transcripts and notes, mp3 audio files, and blog discussions. Additionally all of the dialogs present cultural scenarios that illustrate differences between North American and Brazilian culture.