8 Free Resources for English Learners
Textbooks are expensive and not everyone has the luxury of affording book after book after book. Thankfully, the Internet is always there to solve our problems. It’s knowing where to go that’s the hard part.
Here’s my collection of favourite free online resources for English learners:
For content (and some grammar):
While access to the full site is by paid subscription, there are lots of free worksheets, minus the full lesson plan. I’ve found though that the worksheets and video/audio complements are pretty self-explanatory, so no lesson plan needed.
A great page for listening, reading, writing, and grammar. Complete with level testing for new students!
The web layout is a bit outdated and not super user friendly, but once you get used to it, it’s an absolute treasure trove. They cover three of the four language skills skills (listening, reading, and writing, you’ll still have to make them speak) and provide a nice array of topics. My favourite are the phrasal verb activities. They even include a list of 700 (yikes!).
This all-inclusive website covers general English, business English, and all four skills in articles, podcasts, and video series. There’s even online social media communities students can join to keep their writing muscles working outside the classroom.
For intense grammar:
This blog includes information about almost every aspect of English grammar. With hundreds of self-check exercises, you and your students could take literal years to get through it.
Just exercises. Pure, beautiful exercises.
For vocabulary:
This website does have more than vocabulary, but the advanced vocab section is one of the best I’ve seen. Definitions and exercises included.
And my favorite…
This is a tool for anyone interested in the English language. Search for a word and it will give you synonyms, definitions, antonyms, and examples! (The examples are very random and sometimes don’t make sense, but if your students are doing homework, or if you’re a student studying alone, it’s better than nothing.) You can narrow your search by filtering results by parts of speech and tags to find exactly what you’re looking for. Make an account on the site and it keeps a log of the words you’ve searched for, so you can build your own/your students’ vocabulary lists on one convenient site. I could go on and on about how great this website is, but I’ll let you discover it for yourself.
Stay tuned for more, I’ll continually update this article as new free resources come my way. Happy teaching! :)