Awesome
EFL/ESL sites
Multi-purpose English
It is an essential resource for
the EFL/ESL teacher. Why not take some time to explore other tools that we have
to offer including free worksheets,
flashcards, ideas for vocabulary, and teaching ideas, just to name a few.
You will never know there was so much available to you so close to home.
This site offers a bounty of
information to the ESL teacher. Here you can read articles about teaching ESL
as well as find lesson plans
for different times of the year. Are you out of ideas for
games, vocabulary or activities for your students? Get some inspiration here.
Welcome to English Club online, helping you learn English or teach English. You'll find
everything from lessons for learners to jobs for teachers, including fun pages
like games, videos, quizzes and chat - all free!
This website, hosted by
an organization called "Language Dynamics," provides a wide range of traditional language exercises & activities
to expand vocabulary, improve grammar and listening (fill-in-the blank,
vocabulary lists, etc.) The site is free to use, but does generate a lot of
popup ads.
Reading English
If you teach literature in any of
your ESL classes, PinkMonkey.com has seemingly limitless resources for you.
Here you can find book notes and
activities for
you and your students for free. With over 460 books listed, you will never need
another set of Cliff’s Notes again.
This page contains links to some of the best and most
interesting free reading activities and
tests on the internet. They are arranged according to the levels: easy, intermediate and advanced. And
when you've done those you might want to test your aptitude for speed reading
by doing the test here. All of the below
reading links are based on interesting
stories and are highly recommended for anyone wanting to improve their reading skills in preparation
for English exams such as Cambridge PET, FCE and CAE!
Welcome to EnglishClub.com Reading for ESL learners. This
is where you'll find help to improve your reading
skills. Reading is the third of the four language skills, which are: 1. Listening
2. Speaking 3. Reading 4. Writing.
This site includes: Mini-stories with cloze exercises,
Speed reading exercises, Extensive reading, Science reading and Text
Adventures
Make
a habit of reading regularly. Read as many English books, newspapers
and magazines as you can find. Again this should be fun so make sure the texts you choose are not too too
difficult for you. If the book or article you are reading is a chore, then find
something easier. You could even try reading graded books written especially
for ESL learners.
Writing English
This
is the official site for the series of writing
style handbooks written by Diana Hacker. The student site provides
companion websites for each book. The websites offer a sample paper in each style (e.g. MLA or APA), and lists of
directions for in-text citations and
post-text lists of references. The site is user-friendly.
Guide
to Grammar & Writing
This
site, associated with the Capital Community College Foundation in Hartford, Connecticut,
provides mini-lessons on various
aspects of grammar and writing,
complemented by activities that one
can complete online.
This I Believe essays and listening (NPR)
National Public
Radio runs a series called "This I Believe," where individuals are
invited to write and read out loud
500-word essays about their beliefs
and values. Those essays which have been broadcast
on the radio feature audio recordings that can be streamed on the web as
one reads the transcript. This
material provides listening practice as well as models for expressing one's
ideas in writing and with expressive
intonation in speaking.
OWL
(Online Writing Lab) ESL Resources. A
comprehensive writing site with many useful links. This link takes the user
to the "English as a Second Language" section, where one can link
back to the full OWL site if desired. Overall, more appropriate
for freshman composition, but also
has sections on research paper
writing, citation formats, business writing and plagiarism.
Marquette.edu/wac
Writing Across the
Curriculum
at Marquette University is full of useful information
about how writers make decisions about organization,
content, wording and citations based on specific audience expectations. Users
can link to an academic paper checklist
to review before turning a paper in, and even find extensive information about typical expectations for papers in a
variety of major departments in any university.
Speaking English
EnglishBaby! is a site dedicated to teaching common slang based on its
usage in pop-culture, particularly in internet and print media stories about
the lives of celebrities in the U.S.
music and movie industries. One can sign up for an email with idioms and slang
terms to arrive weekly. A large proportion of the terms selected are in common
usage, though some are only appropriate in extremely casual settings. Chats
and discussion forums are also available.
Conversation
Starters for English Students
One of the best ways to improve communication skills is to become familiar with the language by reading, building vocabulary, and
discussing what you study in daily conversations. Too often, ESL/EFL
students spend time reading about topics that they normally wouldn't use in
daily conversation. This site presents short
conversation starters or readings that you can study and then try to apply
in everyday situations.
Learn-english-today.com/index.html
This site, managed by an individual
teacher, offers a nice list of idioms grouped by theme, rather than just
alphabetically. In its idioms section,
most idioms offered are in high-frequency use in everyday and classroom
speech—much higher than most idiom lists. The classroom exercises section offers both descriptions of how different grammar forms work and
traditional fill-in-the-blank exercises with answer keys. The wordgames section offers some
reasonable vocabulary activities for
those who like puzzles.
American
Slang. This
page provides lists of common idioms
& slang terms used by speakers in many different age, regional and socio-economic groups. There are no sound files
on the site.
Free activities to help you develop more natural conversation. Reduce your accent,
speak more naturally, and understand conversational
speech. EZSlang is designed to help you reach these goals rather than
sounding like an English textbook . Enjoy!
ManyThings.org/pp
American
English Pronunciation Practice. This site provides a series of audio recordings of minimal pair words, followed by quizzes for listening recognition.
What is the point of language study
if it is not to speak the language in question? Give your ESL students
something to talk about with this compilation of
discussion questions you
can use in class. Click on the topic you are planning on studying and find more
than enough questions to keep your class in conversation for as long as you
want to let them talk.
Neither you nor your students wants
to carry around a ten-pound English reference dictionary, but you likely
already carry something that gives you internet access. If so, bookmark
dictionary.com for easy reference. This site will give you definitions of English words as well as thesaurus
entries and a word of the day. There are also many other
helpful resources this site offers.
This site comes out of UCLA's
University Extension program, and focuses on practical English. There are some nice segments of this site with interactive activities on idioms and
listening, plus the site offers a few pronunciation
tongue twisters. The "build a
story" section, for example, focuses on grammar as users select gramatically accurate phrases to
describe animations. More materials are available when one registers for free
membership.
Chinswing
(Creating Conversations)
It is not an educational site, though
a number of language educators use it. Instead, this site enables users to record audio clips to initiate or
participate in a thread of discussion on
a given topic. Thus learners of English can listen to a wide variety of speakers of English from all over the
world on a wide variety of topics.
Professional
Word Web-Idioms.
This site, developed at the University
of Hong Kong, provides
paragraphs densely populated with idioms
commonly used in academic settings. Users can click on any idiom to hear it
(the speaker offers a British English
accent), to get a paraphrase of its meaning, and some offer additional examples of the idiom or more
information about the idiom.
Grammar English
Every ESL teacher has to teach
grammar, even if that is not one of your course names. This site lists the grammar rules of English alphabetically,
and they are easily accessible. Not only that, they provide PDF files of
lessons on these rules that you can use with your students.
Looking for something a little more
intangible than simple definitions? Check out the dictionary of idioms
available from usingenglish.com. There are hundreds of
idioms listed on
this site as well as phrasal verbs
and other grammatical irregularities your students may need help with.
If you are a teacher of English,
the odds are that you probably have not taken the TOEFL. Your students, on the
other hand, will be working towards a proficient score on that test to prove
their English skills. Familiarize yourself with the test and what your students
will have to know to succeed on it with the information here on the official TOEFL site.
Interactive
Vocabulary & Grammar quizzes. This
site sponsored by TESL Internet Journal provides links to many grammar and
vocabulary quizzes. Flash plug-in is required.
Guide to Grammar & Writing. This site, associated with the
Capital Community College Foundation in Hartford,
Connecticut, provides mini-lessons on various aspects of grammar
and writing, complemented by activities that one can complete online.
Listening English
Some of the materials on
this listening website are available for free. It contains a number of listening segments at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced
levels. Each listening clip has information about the speaker, plus comprehension questions and a transcript.
ComAudio Online. This site provides a number of ways to focus
listening on a sound file - poems,
songs, proverbs and other non-interactive speech. The close activities with
songs work smoothly.
This I Believe essays and listening (NPR)
National Public Radio runs a series called
"This I Believe," where individuals are invited to write and read out
loud 500-word essays about their beliefs and values. Those essays which have
been broadcast on the radio feature audio recordings that can be streamed on
the web as one reads the transcript. This material provides listening practice as well as models
for expressing one's ideas in writing and with expressive intonation in
speaking.
English Listening Lesson Library Online. This site, though punctuated by many
ads, offers a fair amount of listening
content, with a number of naturalistic speech hesitations, repairs and
overlap. Activities accompany lessons. Listening ranges from transcribed audio conversations, to
short video clips, lectures and
test-like listening passages.
Language learning
materials that have been used by students and teachers around the world in
more than 100 countries. You can find listening
quizzes, vocabulary lessons and learning tips here. This has been
especially fulfilling in that people have had free access to these learning
activities online.
Video English
English Central provides
sentence-by-sentence access to video
clips on popular culture, movies, news, and more. Each video is viewable
one sentence or so at a time, with a script of that line. Users can record themselves saying each line, and
are scored according to a software program's measure of the accuracy of each
sound in each word.
While you are at it, why not make up your own quizzes from your favorite videos
on YouTube? With ESLvideo.com you can create your own quizzes
and even have your students search by teacher to find them. If you are looking
for comprehension activities that are ready to go, this site also has videos
and quizzes from other teachers sorted by fluency level that your students can
access anywhere and anytime.
This site links users
to movie commercials, or movie trailers,
from an Apple Computer site and from official movie sites, and complements the
trailers with a variety of English
language learning activities and a forum for discussing the movies online. The
"Conversation Catalysts" section of the site helps students build
original dialogues based on language found in the trailers. Summaries and scripts are offered, and a
glossary of words with meaning-in-context is provided. While login is not
required, registered users (with free registration) can access more resources
on the site, and can maintain records of their scores on quizzes and fill-in-the-blank cloze exercises based on
trailers.
English video lessons and interactive
exercises. You can practice
and learn how to use these structure and vocabulary
courses. You can improve your grammar, words and reading. Online training
system with courses in English Grammar
and Vocabulary from the beginner level to advanced.
Business English
This
comprehensive site is designed more with students in mind, and hosts a wide
range of activities for them to go on and complete in order to improve their own language skills. But
don’t be turned off by this right away, as there is still a lot of very useful
information here. For those who are stuck with ways of helping their own class
practice, then it is the perfect opportunity to gather some ideas from. Have a
look through the exercises, and see how you can customize them to suit your own
classes.
For those of
us who happen to be somewhat stuck for materials to read in the class, this
website can be a lifesaver. Discussing current events within the classroom can undoubtedly lead to a lot of heated debate and whilst it ought to be kept in
check, it will undoubtedly encourage the students to speak their mind and
practice their English more thoroughly. Regularly updated, this website is
something every teacher should keep bookmarked!
Much like the
previous website, this particular one will cater towards both students and
teachers and is another excellent place to pick up the likes of lesson plans and other ideas. It is
possible to sign up with this website in order to get the likes of flashcards and other resources pertaining to English teaching.
Definitely worth a look if one is seeking out some solid learning materials for
students.
Another great
site which has a huge amount of information on it. There is a section where a
lot of different activities are displayed and one can pick and choose from
these. Of course, they are just ideas and when stumbling upon websites like
this, it is important to tailor one’s classes to suit the students themselves.
This site also has sections for other
types of learners, should the teacher require information of various kinds for
teaching different age groups.
Another rich resource, not only for
people who are teachers but students can also gain a lot of benefit from this
website as well. This is a list of different
exercises which the student can participate in and, as teachers are
sometimes like magpies, it would often be a good move to have a look through
the exercises yourself and see how they can be taken and applied to classroom
situation.
ESLAmerica.us
Whilst business
English tends to focus more on conversation, sometimes students
might need to go over various
grammatical structures in order to reinforce them in the
mind. This website provides links to various different grammatical exercises
which can incredibly helpful to teachers who might need a little bit of
inspiration within this field. A lot of people do not enjoy grammar and find it
difficult; therefore this website will give simple guidelines in its instruction.
UsingEnglish.com
Another extra
website which will provide many different ready-made
Business English lesson plans and other sources of information. One can
never have too many of these on a favourite’s list, so it is important to keep
everything organized and pick from what is needed for the next class.
English for Kids
You can find FREE flashcards, worksheets, games and songs
for your little ESL students right here. This site has a unique worksheet and activities generator for creating your own
worksheets using words and pictures from themes such as shapes, weather,
family and Halloween.
Pumkin Online English is an online English language learning service for
children aged 3-10. Pumkin Online
English is a complete English learning
course that enables children to master all the key English skills.
Kindersite Project for ALL preschool and Kindergarten age children
and English learners.
The Kindersite has
1,000s of links to the best games, songs and stories for young children.
Lessons, worksheets,
games and PowerPoint presentations.
Short stories,
videos, phonics and lesson plans for your little English
learners.
English for Fun
Are you looking for some out of
the ordinary materials to use in your classroom? This site includes materials for
teaching with film and video, the internet and music.
Here you will find free online english lessons and english grammar,
english tests, a collection of english idioms with their meanings, a list of
common errors in english usage with the correct explanation and examples,
english alphabet with pictures of animals and sound files, games and activities
for ESL/EFL learners. Includes also poetry, lyrics, information and useful
links for learning and teaching English.
470 games! A great database of free
English games to practice one's English!
Easy English lessons:
surveys, travel, drive USA, and lots more. Homework and your personal teacher are
provided.
