Links to Useful Sites for Students

These links are to web sites that the teaching staff at Bellerbys College think you may find useful. The date by each one shows the last date on which it was checked. If you find that a site has moved, please do let Richard know so that he can update this page. Thank you.

General

Journey Planner helps you to plan journeys involving buses, trains, coaches or underground. You specify a starting point and destination, and it gives the details of the route, connections and times.

Last checked: 2nd December 2002

www.tfl.gov.uk/journeyplanner does a very similar job.

Last checked: 7th January 2003

Streetmap is a site that provides maps for any location in Britain, if you tell it a street name or place name. The maps for the London area are particularly detailed, and excellent for finding places.

Last checked: 15th December 2002

Push Online is the independent guide to finding the right university. It also gives impartial information about student life in individual UK universities.

Last checked: 4th December 2002

Hobsons is an educational establishment linked to Bellerbys College. Its website gives information on education services, universities, careers and job searches.

Last checked: 4th December 2002

These are some of the numerous Higher Education and Career-related sites:

http://www.ucas.ac.uk for all information about application to universities to study undergraduate courses.

List of autonomous learning web sites and resources for IELTS Students

        Please note. Before you download any of the listenings from these web sites, check that you have the right equipment, which may mean speakers or headphones and a media player such as Real Audio or Video Player. Bellerbys computers do not have this software (and you won't be able to download it onto the Bellerbys computers - so don't waste your time trying!) but if you have a computer for personal use, it is very easy to download.

1. Listening

http://www.selfaccess.com/

This site contains a variety of listening, reading and writing tasks. You will need headphones or speakers for the listenings. Many of the exercise formats on this web site are suitable for IELTS practice. There are some sample exercises which are free, but to gain access to most of these sites you will need to become a member and pay monthly.

http://www.eviews.net/library.shtml

This site is highly recommended by English Teaching Professional magazine especially for its listening sections. Unfortunately it does require a subscription! It is best suited for those who are roughly IELTS 5 or above.

http://www.esl-lab.com/ This is a free site and has a wide variety of listening exercises for beginngers to advanced including special sites for academic English. It is very well organised. You will need Real Audio plaayer to play the audio clips and real video for the video clips.

http://www.englishlistening.com/

This is a fee paying site but there are also some free listenings. Click on the contents button and you will be offered at least ten listenings for each level.

http://www.esl-lab.com/ (last checked 24th November, 2003)

This is a free site with lots of listenings especially for low level students.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/news/index.shtml

Yu can get simplified world news stories on this web site, which offers a variety of activities for learning English.

2. Reading

http://www.self-access.com/

This site contains a wide range of IELTS style reading activities from Reuters newspapers. There are a variety of exercises to be done against the clock, which will test your comprehension. All answers given promptly. A fee paying site, but there are some free sample exercises for you to try.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/news/index.shtml

You can get simplified world news stories on this web site, which offers a variety of activities for learning English.

http://www.gutenberg.net/

If you are interested in downloading any reading material from the net, this is the place to go. You can download whole novels of works of non-fiction.

3. Writing

http://selfaccess.com/

In amongst all the listening and reading exercises, there are writing exercises as well. There are a variety of exercises which will help you with building an essay, grammar and discourse markers. They are helpful exercises with quick feedback, all based on Reuters newspaper stories. Again this is a fee paying site, but there are some sample exercises you can try for free, so take a look!

http://www.gettoefl.com/practice.htm

This site is designed for TOEFL candidates who want to improve their reading and writing, but the principles are the same as they are for IELTS. The site contains sample multiple-choice reading tests.

http://www.essayedge.com/graduate/essayadvice/course/

This is a service you might want to use when you have finally got into university! It is a team of American academics who will edit and rewrite your essays and theses to improve their quality. Of course you have to pay for it, but in some situations it might well be worth the money. Also they will help you with your personal statements. They do work to American standards however, which are a bit different from the UK.

4. General

These sites provide links to many other English teaching sites with various exercises on writing, reading and listening.

http://www2.actden.com/writ_den/index.htm
http://www.ielts.org
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml
http://www.rong-chang.com/grammar.htm
http://www.englishpage.com

The following site offers help with both grammar and vocabulary:
http://iteslj.org/quizzes/grammar.html
http://iteslj.org/quizzes/vocabulary.html

Economics

Here are some sites recommended by Zoe for economics studies:

www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/business

www.s-cool.co.uk (Click on "A level + AS level")

www.revisionguru.co.uk/economics

www.bized.ac.uk (Click on "Learning materials")

Law

Here are some web sites for law students:

www.u-net.com/bureau/

Last checked: 28th January 2003

Jonathan's favourites

Here are a few of Jonathan's recommendations - well worth a visit!

"I think the Time Out website is pretty good: www.timeout.com/london takes you straight to the section on London (it also does one on New York and some more general guide book selling stuff, which you get by going to just www.timeout.com)

Another good one, which basically is a collection of links to other good websites about individual attractions (National Gallery, the various museums, Buck Palace, etc) is www.capitalday.co.uk. This takes a different slant to Time Out as it doesn't actually write about the attractions, preferring to direct you to the particular website for the attraction you're interested in. This homepage also points you to its sister site, www.capitalnight.co.uk, which as you might expect, is all about nights out in London, with a Top Ten places to visit and guides to finding bars and restaurants in town."

I would like to thank my colleagues, Carolyn Parker, David Rowson, Neil Robbie, Zoe Brass and Jonathan Smith, for their help in compiling this list of web links. If you can think of any useful links that I have missed, please do let Richard know.