HOW GOOD
ARE ESL/EFL WEBSITES?
by Maria Teresa Ciaffaroni
ITC- Liceo Linguistico “L. Lombardo Radice”
Rome, Italy
ciaffaroni @ gmail.com
Abstract
The article features the
review of three well known EFL/ESL websites, evaluated against some general
criteria, based on SLA principles, and some specific ones, in order to find out
whether the may provide any added value compared to currently published
materials, as well as to highlight what they can actually offer learners. The
article also sets out to discuss whether the Web has fulfilled any of the
numerous promises it seemed to offer EFL/ESL learners when it first came
around.
Dave’s ESL Café, http://www.eslcafe.com/
LearnEnglish, http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/
English-Zone, http://english-zone.com/index.php
Introduction
The World Wide Web has been
about, in its full potential, for more than ten years. Though continuously
evolving, this technology can be considered as quite settled both in its
general features and in its basic tools. Welcomed by many enthusiasts as a
revolution, it seemed to hold wonders in store for EFL/ESL learning. It promised constant
exposure to the target language, with loads of ready available
resources; easy, fast, autonomous learning, and interesting,
varied and challenging activities; endless interaction with
native and non-native speakers through e-mail, forums, chats and virtual
environments of any sorts. All this more or less for free.
Has
the Web lived up to its promise? Or has it petered out, as many other modern
utopias? In particular, are EFL/ESL websites likely to fulfil any of the
promises stated above? Do the materials they provide offer any added value,
compared to published ones? Have they evolved or remained more or less the
same? What do these sites actually have to offer EFL/ESL learners? The article
sets out to answer at least some of these questions, through a review of three
widely popular EFL/ESL websites – Dave’s
ESL Café, English-Zone, LearnEnglish – evaluating them against some
general criteria, based on SLA principles, and some specific ones.
1. Overview of the three sites
The three websites have been chosen because they seemed
to supply suitable examples of what EFL sites have to offer to general
learners. In fact, though not featuring structured language courses, they
provide extra practice and support to learners who are studying English either
on their own or in some sort of formal setting. In addition, the three sites
are organised according to varying approaches, thus setting forth the
opportunity to compare/contrast different features, in order to decide which
ones best suit learners’ needs and requirements.
Dave’s
ESL Café and English-Zone have been around for nearly
ten years. ESL Californian teachers David Sterling and Kaye Mastin Mallory,
respectively, created them and still keep them going, updating materials and
offering support to learners. LearnEnglish has no indication on when it
was set up, is probably more recent and is due to the joint effort of a team of
“teachers and educationalists employed by the British Council and partner
organisations” [1].
Dave’s
ESL Café, which mainly relies on interaction, is made up of 3 sections. Stuff
for teachers, Stuff for students, Stuff for everyone – the fourth
section, Jobs, has recently been added.
Stuff for students features a Help Centre, which is
actually a forum where learners can post language related questions of any
kind. Dave Sterling himself, or some other learner, will answer them. There are
also subsections on Idioms, Slang, Quizzes on different
topics, and a wide set of student Forums, ranging from Computers
and Sports to Science, Learning English and even The
Strange and Mysterious. Stuff for everyone, on the other hand,
contains a Chat Central, to which learners can register if they wish to
experience a chat in English in a protected environment, a section on
Podcasting and a wide collection of EFL links.
English-Zone,
which claims to be “the BEST English-Learner's site on the
'Net”, focuses, though not exclusively, on language form. It features as many
as 16 subsections on any possible ESL topic: Grammar, Idioms, Verbs,
Pronunciation, Conversation, Dictionaries and even a Fun Stuff section,
just to quote a few. The sites claims to be updated on a daily basis, thus
providing fresh sets of exercise and activities, while keeping up a huge
archive of older materials for revision
and/or extra practice.
LearnEnglish
is conceived as a repository of materials to help learners
practice and improve their English, particularly the Learning Central,
meant for general learners, which has 6 sub-sections dealing with different
topics – Magazines and Themes, Grammar and Test, Sport and
Culture, Fun Stuff, Your Turn, Science and History –
plus a recently added section on Listening. Every week new content is
added to each section. Previous weeks’ content is archived and easily
accessible for further practice. Activities range from gap filling to multiple
choice, from matching to sentence re-arranging, covering all possible kinds,
from highly structured to completely free ones. The site is highly organised
and different sections and activities are clearly marked.
The
three sites seem widely popular. David Sperling claims his ESL Café gets
million of hits every month, though the statistics show that it has had about
20 million hits altogether [2]. English-Zone
provides no information on overall visitors, but single pages highlight
hundreds or thousands hits. Though there’s no indication as to the number of
visits to LearnEnglish, given the popularity and
reliability of the British Council, it must get lots of hits. This popularity seems
to point out that there’s a demand for the materials and services provided by
these sites.
Both
Dave’s ESL Café and English-Zone are privately funded, though
they have gradually accepted selected advertising to face costs. English-Zone
has recently shifted to paying membership for some content and services. LearnEnglish
is completely free and does not contain advertising, “it does however promote
English language courses, publications and educational services” [3].
2. Procedure
Comparative
reviews of EFL/ESL websites have been
attempted many times, even on an extensive scale [4], but
as often as not, they simply provide a rubric of tools and materials. To my
knowledge a principled evaluation on the learning potential of websites has
never been attempted, probably because evaluating them is not easy. First and foremost, it is
almost impossible to select specific target learners. Webmasters claims do not
help, being, if possible, even vaguer than publisher’s claims. Here’s the gist
for each of the three sites.
Dave’s
ESL Café intends to be “a colourful, fun, interactive, and
friendly virtual community that connects both students and teachers together”.
“English-Zone’s goal is to provide
visitors with engaging, entertaining, yet educational activities, language
lessons, and interactive language exercises”. LearnEnglish is “a safe,
fun, educational place on the Internet [...] It is like a restaurant with a
long menu of learning activities, not designed for complete beginners or very
advanced learners, but every learner in between should be able to find
something they can understand and practise” [5].
Thus,
target learners might be young adults, or teenagers, who wish to improve their
English, but also want to have some fun. They have a computer, basic technical
skills and some time to spare. They may be studying in a formal learning
context - language course, school, university – they may need extra resources
or clarification on specific points
and be willing to try some sort
of interaction. They might either know what they need perfectly well or just
browse around out of sheer curiosity. Learners
of this sort might be very demanding or very easily contented. Vague as
all this sounds, one can hardly get any closer to outlining a learner’s profile.
Whatever
the case, one cannot but agree with Tomlinson (2001) that good language
materials should provide “learners with engaging and purposeful interaction
with language in use”. This ought to be especially true for materials in
EFL/ESL websites, since they are mainly meant for self-use. That’s why it is so
important to set up some principled criteria against which to evaluate them.
These criteria should be based on SLA principles and ought to measure the added
value offered by technology at the same time. The three sites will be evaluated
after choosing the criteria and establishing a grading scale, in order to
better compare the results.
3. Evaluation criteria
Though not specifically referring to EFL/ESL websites, Tomlinson (1998a)
[6], suggests a set of basic principles for self-access
materials and activities, which can be useful in the selection of criteria for
the evaluation of ESL/EFL websites. Here are the criteria formulated from these
principles along with a brief rationale. For a complete list see Appendix.
Impact
With ESL/EFL websites meant for self-study, the
materials and activities they contain should achieve impact in the first place.
According to Tomlinson (1998b) “impact is achieved when materials have a
noticeable effect on learners, that is, when learners’ curiosity interest and
attention is attracted”. Impact might be created by different factors, the main
one being choice.
Affective engagement
As well as achieving impact, the materials and the
activities in a website ought to involve the learners affectively. In fact,
according to the affective engagement principle, foreign language is more
easily acquired if learners feel relaxed, confident and successful and if they
are able to respond to the target language holistically, with their whole
beings (Tomlinson, 1998c).
Maximisation
of the brain’s learning potential
The materials and the activities in a website should stimulate the
learners to use both their previous experience and their left and right brain.
This principle from Suggestopedia (Lozanov 1978) states that language
acquisition is enhanced when the input materials are stimulating and the
learning activities are not too simple, so that the learners need to use their
previous experience and both their left and right brain to complete them.
Comprehensible input
Since ESL/EFL websites are virtual self-access
centres, with little or no support from teachers, they should provide
comprehensible input. Krashen (1985) first elaborated the idea of
comprehensible input of a slightly higher level than the learner’s. As well as
being comprehensible, input needs to be as challenging and as varied as
possible, in order to trigger the learners’ interest. Thus, selection of input
is a key factor for SLA, which needs to be properly reflected in self-access
materials.
Self-discovery
An ESL/EFL website needs to be particularly suitable
for the learners to invest effort and attention in their learning activity.
This principle, explored by many researchers (see, e.g., Ellis, 1990 or Bolitho
and Tomlinson, 1995) maintains that learning materials and activities should
help the learners to make informed decisions and self-discoveries.
Learning styles
As ESL/EFL websites are meant for the general
learners, they should consider that users might have different learning styles.
Thus, the activities and the materials they provide should cater not only for
the analytic but also for the reflective and experiential learners and take
into account the kinaesthetic as well as the auditory and visual learning
styles (Ellis, 1990; Oxford, 1990).
Layout specifications
As well as responding to SLA principles an EFL/ESL
website should maximise learner ease of use through a series of devices, such
as
- Functional layout
- Clear
instructions
- Easily retrievable activities
- Teacher
support
- Opportunities for interaction
4. Report on evaluation
Though the
results of evaluation cannot but be subjective - both for the selection of
criteria and the judgements - and though reviews by different reviewers would
produce different results, they might point out some common trends and
highlight a few meaningful features to reflect upon.
None
of the websites got a high overall score. In a total of 80 points LearnEnglish
got 48 (60%); ESL Café scored 46 (57%) and English-Zone - 36
(45%). LearnEnglish scored better in SLA based criteria, while ESL
Café and English-Zone obtained higher marks in layout
specifications. In fact, LearnEnglish is a fairly wide repository of
language resources, ESL Café offers good opportunities for interaction
and feedback and English-Zone provides online support for registered
users. These results apparently point out that the selected websites might not
have a very high learning potential, notwithstanding their popularity and
claims. A closer look at each of the criteria in detail will help to gain
deeper insight.
Impact
The three
websites, and particularly LearnEnglish, offer so wide a choice of topics and materials that
they seem able to achieve impact. It’s a pity no audio or video materials are
available in any of them, even though they contain links to audio and video
resources. The popularity of the three sites confirms that at least some
specific features are likely to attract the learners’ curiosity and attention:
the problem is whether the activities provided are able to keep them up.
Unfortunately none of the three sites features very motivating activities,
providing multiple choice, gap filling, matching, cloze, that is, activities
suitable for self-marking and focused feedback. As Tomlinson (1998a) rightly
points out, “the development of self-access material has been a positive
feature of the foreign language pedagogy in the last decade (or so)” but “in
order to make sure that learners can work entirely on their own and still
receive feedback, there’s been a limiting tendency to restrict activities to
those which can more easily be self-marked”. The underlying pedagogical
approach of the three sites seems to be PPP, with a focus on the first two Ps,
that is, the same approach informing most published ESL/EFL materials for the
global market.
Affective engagement
If affective engagement is achieved by lack of
stress, all the sites would manage to involve even the most anxious learners.
If it is achieved through catching materials and challenging activities, none
of them is likely to get very far. They all provide a fun stuff sections with
jokes, stories, games, funny pictures, but the main learning activities are
neither affectively engaging nor cognitively challenging, being of the
restricted types described in the previous paragraph. Of the three websites,
LearnEnglish makes at least some attempts at providing some
open-ended activities. For instance, in Stories And Poems,
after reading The Banyan Tree by Tagore, learners are requested to
complete the following task: “Write a poem about a tree or another type of
plant. Send us your texts”. The same task is proposed for any poem or story
presented. In fact, quite a few learners from all over the world actually sent
poems or comments on articles and stories. Some are really good, confirming
that open ended, challenging activities do appeal to learners.
Maximisation of the brain’s learning potential
Unfortunately, neither the materials nor the
activities included in the three website make much reference to the learners’
experience or life. They are up to developing explicit, declarative knowledge,
with almost no attempt to develop procedural knowledge of the language, that is
of how language is used to achieve specific purposes. See Tomlinson (1998a):
“Many self-access materials designed to individualise learning treat learners
as though they are stereotypical clones of each other”. ESL/EFL websites seem
to follow no different pattern from currently published materials.
Comprehensible input
The three
websites certainly offer rich and varied exposure to language in use,
particularly LearnEnglish, which provides a wide range of text types and
genres, including literature and songs. English-Zone has a comparatively
narrower range of texts, being mainly focused on language form, but has a
really good section on language curios and strange facts, which may appeal to
many learners. None of the three site contains extensive reading, audio or
video materials. English-Zone and
ESL Café partly compensate this with direct interaction, while LearnEnglish,
in the FAQ section, provides links to audio, video and
speaking resources. The lack of audio and video further impairs the
learning potential, since exposure to aural and oral language is a key factor
in SLA. Thus, the greater pity since technology developments would allow ample
use of both.
Self-discovery
There’s almost no room for self-discovery and
language awareness in any of the sites. English-Zone contains detailed
explanations on any possible tricky or trivial language question, with plenty
of practice activities of the structured type. LearnEnglish features a
specific grammar section, with brief explanatory notes followed by practice
exercises. ESL Café provides no grammar section. It is up to the
learners to ask for clarification, explanation, examples of use, or whatever
they may need Sometimes questions are directly answered, more often a link to a
resource is provided. This is the real added value of ESL Café: learners
have to work out a solution for their specific problem on their own browsing
online resources.
Learning
styles
The
materials and the activities in the three websites, particularly in English-Zone,
mostly cater for analytical, reflective learners who prefer to learn with
written language and like to focus on discrete bits of it. There’s little or no
opportunity for global kinaesthetic learners, that is, those learners who would
possibly benefit most from self-access materials to do things their own
way.
Layout
specifications
Though
completely different, the layout can be considered functional for the chosen
focus of each site. ESL Café and English-Zone have remained more
or less the same since they were first created; LearnEnglish has
recently undergone a restyling, moving most materials and activities to a new
site. Specific sections and different types of materials and activities are
quite clearly marked in all the sites. Some activities can be retrieved from
more than one place causing a bit of confusion that does not seriously impair
ease of use. Instructions are quite clear and up to the point, even though they
do not sound particularly friendly in LearnEnglish, while they are
somewhat confusing in ESL Café. In English-Zone, instead, it is not always clear what is meant for whom, or what is
the purpose of some activities. Materials are quite easy to retrieve and load
in all the sites, even though in LearnEnglish, loading activities can
take too long at times. ESL Café provides feedback from teachers
on specific topics for free; English-Zone does so only for paying users,
while LearnEnglish has no such service. No doubt, this is an added value
for ESL Café along with the availability of interaction tools,
completely lacking in LearnEnglish.
5. Overall
evaluation
ESL Café is
the website with the highest Layout specifications
score. Even though it has no restriction, it has quite a clear target: late
teenagers or young adults still in formal education. It is particularly useful
for learners with specific questions or problems, who are aware of their
learning needs. It is perfect for interaction with peers from all over the
world. It is not particularly good for extra practice, since it has little
choice of materials and activities and, even though it provides a huge amount
of links to language resources, they are not easily available, unless you are
very experienced at searching and retrieving info.
English-Zone
is the site with the lowest global score. Wishing to cater
for any language learner it ends up having no clear target. In fact some
materials and activities seem more suitable for young learners, others for
adults, others for no learner in particular. Indications of level are somewhat
confusing. It might be useful for reflective learners requiring guided practice
on specific language points, but it has not as wide a choice as LearnEnglish,
and an even more limited availability of activity types. The site offers tools
for Interaction and feedback from teachers but only to paying users, while one
of the best sections in the site is the fun stuff.
LearnEnglish
is the site with the highest overall score. Though aiming to
reach as wide an audience as possible, it sets up an implicit target, late
teenagers-young adults, wishing to improve their proficiency. It has a huge
availability of resources and might be useful for extra practice on specific
language points or for reading. A very good section is the fun stuff with
games, cartoons and trivia. It is the best repository of resources.
Unfortunately it does not provide any tools for interaction, either with peers
or teachers.
Conclusions
Apparently the selected sites do not have a very high
learning potential, notwithstanding their claims. In fact, at a closer look,
they show no substantial difference from current published materials, either
for self-access or classroom use, apart from the huge amount of resources they
contain. None of them seems to exploit the technology potential of the Web to
its full extent. Possibly they never will, since they have undergone no
relevant change over time.
One reason
might be cost-effectiveness. Putting up, maintaining and updating a website is
quite costly, time consuming and difficult to make it pay, so each site had to
find direct or indirect ways of making a revenue of a sort. LearnEnglish
seems to be kept there to attract learners and redirect them to learn English
somewhere else - paying language courses, exams. English-Zone lures
learners with sample materials and activities just to get them pay for the real
thing. ESL Café provides help and support but gets selected advertising
and book selling in exchange.
What
will happen to ESL/EFL free websites? Will they be discarded? Will they be taken
over by publishers? Will they die of their own accord? Or will they completely
shift to paying membership? One thing is clear from the evaluation: the ideal
online resource for self-access ESL/EFL learning would have to combine the rich
repository of resources in LearnEnglish, the opportunities for
interaction and support in ESL Café and English-Zone, the audio
and video resources one could find, say, in BBC, plus some sophisticated
collaboration tools for voice interaction. Add to this meaningful, challenging
activities, which hopefully maximise the brain’s learning potential and cater
for any type of learner, and you get... a chimera, that is, a cyber combination
that will never be.
Let’s
wait for new technology developments and see what they get in store. Let’s also
hope that a few pioneers with a vision - like David Sterling ten years ago -
may be willing to invest time and energy to make experiments for the benefits
of language learners, hopefully keeping in mind a few sound SLA principles
while so doing.
Notes
1 See the section What
is Learnenglish?
2 There’s no way to decide how many are repeat hits and
how many are the idle surfers and browsers.
3 See the section About Learnenglish
4 See, for instance Krajka (2002)
5 These statements are from the three websites FAQ
or About us section respectively.
6 The principles include: be self-access, with
choice of learning routes, type, time and pace; be open-ended, with a variety
of acceptable answers; engage the learners affectively; involve the learners as
whole human beings; require the learners’ personal investment to foster
self-discoveries; stimulate left and right brain to maximise the brain’s
learning potential; provide varied and comprehensible input.
References
Bolitho,
R., Tomlinson, B. (1995). Discover English.
Oxford: Heinemann.
Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: OUP.
Krajka, J., (2002).
EFL/ESL portal sites - An attempt at a comparison. TESL-EJ, 6 (2).
Retrieved October 29, 2005, from http://writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej22/m1.html.
Krashen,
S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon.
Krashen, S. (1985). The Input Hypothesis. London: Longman.
Lozanov,
G. (1978). Outlines of Suggestology and Suggestopedy. London: Gordon and
Breach.
Oxford,
R. L. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know.
New York: Newbury House/Harper and Row.
Tomlinson, B. (1998a)
Affect in the course book, in Arnold, G. (Ed), Affect in Language Teaching, IATEFL Newsletter, 145, 20-21.
Tomlinson,
B. (1998b). Introduction.
In B. Tomlinson (ed.), Materials Development in Language Teaching, 1-14. Cambridge: CUP.
Tomlinson, B. (1998c).
Self-access materials. In B. Tomlinson (ed.), Materials Development in
Language Teaching, 320-336. Cambridge: CUP.
Tomlinson, B (2000). A
multi-dimensional approach. The Language
Teacher. Retrieved October 29, 2005, from http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/articles/2000/07/tomlinson.
Click for Appendix
MORE ON LEGAL ENGLISH ON THE WEB
By Mª Victoria Fernández
Universidad de Vigo
Vigo, Spain
victoria @ uvigo.es
Introduction
This paper attempts to help the
Legal English (LE) teacher of non-native speakers (NNSs) find useful web-based
resources for his teaching. Even though there are many websites which approach
the task of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), this is not the case
with LE. We have few printed resources to approach the task of teaching LE and
we have even fewer on the web. Therefore, the aim of the present author was to
search the Web and find some of the available websites which could help LE
teachers in their daily practice.
Legal English on the Web
The reason
why I call this paper “More Legal English on the Web” is that we already have “Recommended websites: Top
Ten Web Sites for the Legal English Teacher”, in which ten different websites
for the legal English teacher are the subject of analysis. But I have come
across other interesting sites on the Web for the language teacher and in this
paper I have also included sites which will help us with the world of legal
Latin, so common in legal English texts.
1. The
Onestop English for Specific Purposes bank (http://www.onestopenglish.com/Business/Bank/)
The Onestop English for Specific Purposes
bank is defined as a growing bank of lesson plans covering a wide
range of professions. The aim of this section, according to the website, is to
build a bank of practical materials for teachers of English who are working
with students with specific linguistic needs related to their professions,
including EAP (English for Academic Purposes), CLIL (Content and Language
Integrated Learning), Banking and financial services, General ESP, Hotel and
tourism, Human resources, Law, Marketing, Medicine, The oil industry, Sales and
Science.
The
lesson plans on a range of legal subjects
provided at http://www.onestopenglish.com/Business/Bank/Legal/index.htm include the following topics so
far:
2. About.com (http://esl.about.com/library/lexical/bllexlist_legal1.htm)
According
to this site, the use of this lexical approach is essential for successful
language acquisition in English for Specific Purposes. However, teachers are
often not equipped with the exact English terminology required in very specific
trade sectors. For this reason, core vocabulary sheets go a long way in helping
teachers provide adequate materials for students with English for Special
Purposes needs. In order to amend this problem, the site provides English for
Special Purposes Core Vocabulary Lists in the following fields:
·
English for Advertising
·
English for Banking and Stocks
·
English for Book Keeping and Financial Administration
·
English for Business and Commercial Letters
·
English for Human Resources
·
English for the Insurance Industry
·
English for Logistics
·
English for Marketing
·
English for Production and Manufacturing
·
English for Sales and Acquisitions
Additionally,
English for Legal Purposes section (http://esl.about.com/library/lexical/bllexlist_legal1.htm) features a
three-page Legal English Glossary, including legal terms or expressions.
3. Legal English Web Resources
3.1. Legal
Latin (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/)
Roman Legal System (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal01.htm)
Legal Roles - Then and Now (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal02.htm)
Roman Prisons (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/prisons.htm)
Legal Vocabulary (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal03.htm)
Latin Phrases used in Legal English (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal04.htm)
Activities (http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal05.htm sentence completion; game:
Caede Draconem; crossword puzzle; comprehension
questions; Heracles Meets the Law,
activity answer keys.
3.2.
Online law dictionaries
Dictionary (FindLaw.com) - http://dictionary.lp.findlaw.com/
HLS Library: One-L Dictionary (Harvard Law School) - http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/services/
research/guides/united_states/basics/one_l_dictionary.php
Law.com Law Dictionary - http://dictionary.law.com/
yourDictionary.com: Law Dictionary links - http://www.yourdictionary.com/diction5.html#law
3.3. Legal
news
American Lawyer Media's Law.com - http://www.law.com/index.shtml
CNN.com Law - http://www.cnn.com/LAW/
FindLaw Legal News - http://news.findlaw.com/
JURIST Legal News - http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/
Justice Talking (audio) - http://www.justicetalking.org/home.asp
3.4. Legal humor and lawyer jokes
The Funniest Darn Lawyer Jokes in the WDWW
(Duhaime.org) - http://www.duhaime.org/Law_fun/jokes.aspx
Lawyer Jokes and Legal Humor (ExpertLaw.com) - http://www.lawlaughs.com/
Legal Humour - http://www.legalhumour.com/
4. Resources on Latin:
Latin Legal Maxims - http://www.vancouverfamilylaw.com/maxims.html
Latin in Modern Legal Terms - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/9909/legal.html
Understanding Latin Legalese - http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-1435.html
Glossary – Latin Terms - http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/infoabout/glossary/latin.htm
Legal Glossary - http://www.uklegal.com/articles/latin.htm
(includes Latin and also English terms that are in common use in law)
Latin: It's All Around Us: Legal Phrases and
Sentences - http://www.bjupress.com/resources/products/latin/legal.html
List of legal Latin terms (from Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legal_Latin_terms
Legal Latin - http://www.swarb.co.uk/lawb/genLegalLatin.shtml
Conclusion
Even
though there is an enormous range of legal material to be found on the Web,
legal English teachers suffer a lack of teaching materials for the NNS LE
student. I have made a selection of different websites where NNS LE students
can get in touch with the legal language, not only with the legal English
language, but also with legal Latin. My main objective is to offer teachers
this website selection as a starting point for their own search of the Web
resources which best suit their students' language needs.
