Using CL to Teach Vocabulary

Craigslist.org is very popular in the area in which I live and teach. In fact, I do all my advertising for new ESL students there (it's free!). You can find anything you want there.

For an ESL teacher/tutor in an area in which Craigslist.org is popular, it's also a great resource to teach life skills (how to find a job or an apartment) and especially useful for teaching acronyms and abbreviations and other vocabulary. I stumbled across this fact last week when a student asked me what "420" meant. He was looking for an apartment and found the phrase "420 friendly" in several advertisements. This isn't the sort of thing taught in most ESL classes!

In addition to developing lesson plans to deliver in class, ESL teachers and tutors can also ask students to bring back new words or expressions they find in some of the ads. However, you need to be careful that all students have internet access before giving such an assignment.

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