subject: Want to improve your English? Try these websites [print this page] To promote independent revision among students, websites should be attractive enough to draw students to try out the quizzes and read what they offer. They should also be easy enough to navigate. At http://www.funbrain.com/ . You can find out by playing stay Afloat at this site. So how much do you know about the Harry Potter series of books? As in the game Hangman, players have to select letters of the alphabet that make up the word. Pick too many wrong ones and you lose the game. The site is chock-full of activities like this that test the language skills of students of all ages. The section for 12 year olds contains games related to idioms and the plural forms of words, alongside exercises that test your knowledge of decimals and the countries of the world. Did you know that the plural of axis is axes ? And that if you say, Cross my heart and hope to die, it means you are telling the truth and nothing but the truth? In another game, you are given a list of 20 commonly used words, some of which are spelt wrongly, and asked to correct them. The site teaches a new word each day. It also has a fill-in-the-blank where you are asked to select the right word from two similar sounding ones. For instance, was it the censor or sensor who said the movie should be related ? The answer is censor.
To access all the information on these two sites. http://www.abcteach.com/ and http://www.wordsandtools.com/ , you need to pay a fee of at least US$30. There are some free exercises and games too. The first site is more for those under 10 years old. It contains comprehension exercises ...passages followed by questions to show you understand them. The site has a grammar section, where you are given lists of words and asked to determine which are verbs, nouns and adjectives. In games sections, you can tackle the crossword puzzles, each of which is on a different topic, like the solar system, global warming and gold. You type in your answers to the clue and when you are done, you can check to see if you got them right. Another game offers a mass of letters and asks you to come up with the words hidden in them. The ideas is not just to find the words but to see how quickly you can do so. The second site, which is useful for upper Primary Students is packed with fill-in-the-blank exercises. You are given a sentence in which one word has been italicised. You have to fill in the blank in the next sentence using a form of the same word. For instance, the first sentence reads: He was an able man. The second is : He has great................ The correct word is add is ability.
