ICT 4 ELT Portals

Teaching Literature to Intermediate Students

Compiled and annotated by
Jaroslav Kubalík.

This webpage lists some web sites useful for Teaching English Literature to Intermediate Students.

The number of sites, web pages, directories and electronic libraries is inexhaustibly huge and my list is aimed at sites which are relatively easy to get to and user-friendly.

• Bartleby.com

  A huge, largely accessible e-text database of canonical English and American literary works; especially useful for working with extracts, similarly also Project Gutenberg.

• Voice of the Shuttle

  A well known and aclaimed web directory covering all possible literary resources including theory, criticism, primary works, journals, all genres, periods…

• BBC – GCSE Bitesize

  The BBC web site a very inspiring part devoted to teaching literature; generally articles on methodology, tips and suggestions for classroom activities.

• Complete Review

  this collection of reviews from a number of sources is useful for teachers when they are selecting a book to work with, creating reading lists or searching for critical voices.

• Microsoft Reader

  A free program by Microsoft; after an easy installation it gives a student / reader to read literary texts (downloadable e.g. at Virginia University Library) and listen to them read by a machine.

• SparkNotes

  A large web on literature, including reviews, links,discussion groups or boards.

• The Victorian Literary Studies Archive

  A useful gadget for online research, selecting specifis extracts and above all working with concordances ? finding specific words, terms etc. in a number of literary works.

• The Internet Public Library

  A classic in searchind info, texts and resources, lists a large scale of topics which enable the teacher to create lesson plans, activities or webquests in context.

• The Glossary of Literary Terms

  Lost in terms, schools, genres and theory? This Cambridge web should have enough term definitions to help the teacher out.

• Yahoo! Groups

  Though you may not be a great friend of chatrooms, groups etc., Yahoo! gives you a chance to echange ideas, or provide short and simple readers opinions on books, which can be used in classroom (offline).

• Poet Laureate of England

  This unique and traditional function has been given to a number of outstanding writers, this site will not probably become your main source, but a lesson or two can be done on poets lauerate, same applies for Booker Prize.

• Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

  Shakespeare himself would require a single category of the Portal, thousands of sites flood the internet, an English teacher may like to make a lesson on the Globe theatre for instance.

• Others

  I cannot help putting some links to my (subjective) favourite writers in order to give a teacher some tips for books to discuss and work with. Of course, I try to provide writers of different nationality, sex, background… So tell your students about: Ian McEwan, Alice Walker, Harold Pinter, Anthony Burgess, Ernest Hemingway and E. M. Forster.