Computers and technology can be a great way for teachers to further aid English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the classroom and at home. Word processing programs such as Microsoft Word provide a great opportunity for ESL assignments that will help students gain a better understanding of spelling and new vocabulary while teaching them real-life skills sure to help them outside of school.

Prepare a story or letter on your word processor, depending on the age group and focus of your students. Examples include a fairy tale for younger students, a narrative with phrasal verbs and/or idioms for more advanced teenage students or a business letter for adults. Include several spelling mistakes in your piece.

Have your students' computers turned on and ready with the document open for each of them. If this is an out-of-class assignment, save the document and email it as an attachment to your students.

Give the students a list of instructions for the assignment. For example, they can find the words underlined as misspelled and correct them. Other options include: give them a list of words they must look up in the thesaurus to find a replacement, ask them to add a certain number of images from the word processor's clip art selection that illustrate or suit the story or letter, have them cut and paste one section from one place to another to rearrange the order, and have them find and report the total word count.

Ask the students to save their documents and name them. Those working from outside the classroom should email the project back to you for grading.

Tip: For larger classes with varying levels of technologically savvy students, pair them up or put them in groups in a way that ensures the students who are less familiar with computers have a more experienced student to work with.