Study English on the Web
General E.S.L.
ESL Gold has everything you could want for learning English. There are hundreds of lessons for speaking (including common phases for conversation, & role play/conversation topics) grammar, vocabulary, idioms, pronunciation, reading, writing, etc, and most lessons include audio. There are also hundreds of quizzes, good links to other ESL web sites, and textbook recommendations.
Real English uses authentic videos (of interviews with ordinary English speakers on the street) to teach basic listening, vocabulary, and grammar skills in a meaningful context. Each interview video is accompanied by a series of related short audio or video segments that are used in matching, sentence completion/construction, and other exercises. The registration process for this site is a bit cumbersome, but the quality of the videos and exercises make it worth the trouble.
English for All has five exciting video stories about workplace situations. After watching a video segment from the story, you can practice vocabulary, grammar, listening comprehension, and "life skills" based on the segment. There is a simple way to get a native language translation of any word you don't understand. You can also print out video scripts and exercises.
The ESL Resource Center offers practice in reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, idioms, pronunciation, and listening (with audio).
Web-Book's Interactive Audio-Picture English Lesson lets you practice simple vocabulary by matching pictures with words. It also includes an audio component, which allows you to hear a word and select the corresponding picture. The internet picture dictionary, and Learning Network's Funbrain game are set up in a similar fashion, but offer no audio. Similarly, Language Guide and Vocabulary Match Game offer illustrations with corresponding audio, but no interactive practice.
Homework Help's English as 2nd Language Pages have all sorts of practice for English students, including listening, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, writing, and TOEFL. Some of the lessons include audio recordings, featuring speakers of both British and American English.
E-Z-slang features recorded conversations that incorporate lots of natural-sounding examples of slang, idioms, and “reduced” speech (“wuh-d’yuh-mean?”). Each conversation comes with a written transcript, definitions of the slang/idioms/reductions, additional sentence examples, and a practice quiz.
The Idiom Connection offers explanations of hundreds of idioms, together with quizzes to practice them.
Interesting Things for ESL Students has games, quizzes, exercises and lots of other activities. Includes many audio recordings: for example, listen to songs in the Listening Room as you try to fill in the missing words in the text version, or work on pronunciation through various listening exercises.
Activities for ESL Students offers short practice activities for almost every ESL topic you can think of, at every level. There's no audio, but many of the activities include visuals.
English Language Listening Lab Online offers short authentic interviews/monologues with English speakers from a variety of countries. There are listening comprehension quizzes, photos, and transcripts for each conversation.
OM Personal offers more than 50 conversations on a variety of topics, (in both American and British English), along with a transcript, Spanish translation, photo, and completion quiz for each conversation.
Live Mocha lets you view a photo, hear corresponding audio, see the word/sentence in English, and see a translation. There are various quiz modes for listening, reading, and sentence construction based on each series of photos. Registration is required but it’s free.
MCED Services offers easy lessons on prepostions for beginning level students. The lessons use audio, photos, and simple text to teach about location of objects, signs, calendar skills, and appointments.
At 1-Language.com each grammar lesson begins with a short audio segment, a page of text explains the grammar lesson, and then students can practice new skill using several interactive practice exercises.
English Skills, by Natasha Cooper, is a commercial site, but it offers a useful free sample lesson (with audio) on scheduling appointments. A similar site, English Practice, offers a sample lesson on social introductions.
Lauri's ESL Website offers short conversations and listening passages with interactive exercises to test comprehension.
CBC/Radio-Canada uses radio and TV stories, (on distinctly Canadian themes), with interactive exercises, to help students practice vocabulary and listening comprehension.
Learning Edge, a Canadian site, offers feature stories and practical life-skills lessons with animated video, text and audio.
Global English Salon: Recorded conversations and feature articles, with explanations of vocabulary, and cultural information, but no exercises.
Pronunciation
E.L. Easton offers the Authentic American English Pronuniciation site where you can learn pronunciation by listening to audio recordings of the sounds of American English. (Requires RealPlayer)
At Train Your Accent, you can listen to short recorded speeches on various topics. Each speech comes with two transcripts. One shows the speech in formal written English, and the other highlights all of the instances in which the speaker uses more natural-sounding English.
Listen & Read
English Baby offers audio recordings of fun, authentic conversations on contemporary topics (popular culture, sports, travel, etc.) between college-age speakers. They are challenging because they include lots of idioms, slang, reductions, and cultural references-just like most ordinary conversations between native English speakers. It provides explanations of new vocabulary and expressions, and gives you a chance to test your comprehension of each conversation.
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Café offers lots of easy-to-use audio exercises for practicing listening skills at all levels. (Requires RealPlayer)
At Focus English, you can listen to audio recordings of all sorts of conversations, then practice the vocabulary and expressions in interactive exercises. (Requires RealPlayer)
The California Distance Learning Project has news stories (some recent, some not), and information about voting, safety, and jobs that you can hear on audio, and sometimes see as video recordings, while you read along. After you listen to/read each story you can try a variety of listening comprehension and vocabulary exercises. Almost all of the print at this site is also available on audio, so it's a great study site for students who have limited reading skills.
The Voice of America Radio Service has news and feature stories on a wide variety of topics. The language level of normal broadcasts is fairly difficult, but you can read a transcript while you listen to the audio recording. Or you can listen to news in "simple English" (spoken at a somewhat slower pace) with a transcript to follow along with.
The Learning Resources site uses video or audio clips of CNN news broadcasts along with the written story (you can choose to read the original story or a simpler, "abridged" version) to teach reading and listening comprehension. Each news story has vocabulary and comprehension exercises to go along with it. You can also write down your thoughts on the issue and send them in to share with other readers online. (Recommended for advanced levels.)
At ComAudio you can listen to songs, stories, poems, and speeches and read the texts at the same time. A ”wave form” feature allows you to start, stop, and repeat any part of the audio you like. Another feature allows you to click on a word to look up its meaning, and the “cloze” exercise mode challenges you to fill in missing words in the text as you listen.
The GCF Everyday Life Project offers interactive practice to help students build confidence with vocabulary and functional literacy skills. It’s fun, attractively designed, offers full audio support and is built around realistic life situations such as using an ATM machine, making a deposit, or reading safety information.
US Citizenship
For general info on citizenship applications, visit the Jones Library's Citizenship Page.
The Herald Sun newspaper offers an online multiple choice test and so does "Fact Monster": Test 1 and Test 2
Preparing for the US Citizenship Interview offers practice with the 100 questions and a dictation practice test (with audio).
Lynne Weintraub's Quia Games page offers free online flashcard practice for history & government questions from the INS study guide. There are more Quia games designed to practice vocabulary and civics facts from the first three chapters from the textbook "Citizenship: Passing the Test."
Ben's Guide is meant to help children learn about US Government. But it can also be useful for adults studying for the citizenship test. For fun, try the easy picture matching game, or the vocabulary puzzle.
US Culture
The creator of the Life in the USA site, Elliot Essman, has put together information (from his own point of view) on many different aspects of US culture for immigrants and visitors to the US.
Valuing our Differences: Celebrating Diversity is a web site that offers information on a wide range of US holidays.
The US State Department's Portrait of the USA offers information on U.S. history, government, geography, education, the arts, etc.
EduPASS offers information on American "social customs and cultural differences." The information is aimed mainly at international college students, but immigrants (and their tutors) can also find some interesting discussion/reading topics here.
City Family is an easy-to-read online magazine for adult immigrants who are learning to read English. It has short, attractive articles about life-skills topics like health, jobs, money, children, & housing. It also covers life-styles topics like fashion, home & garden, cooking, and relationships. Click on the "translation" link, and you can see the whole web page in another language.
New to America offers information (at a fairly high reading level) about topics of concern to new immigrants such as: social security, health insurance, taxes, medicine, immigration forms, etc.
TOEFL
The following sites offer TOEFL practice tests and or instruction. They're free, but some of them require you to register:
- Free English offers high quality, authentic practice with the new TOEFL iBT test format, with full reading, writing, listening and speaking sections.
- MBA Center offers a full iBT practice test (registration required).
- Princeton Review offers a sample iBT lecture with questions.
- TOEFLPod offers a variety of 10-20 minute lectures and conversation podcasts. Each one is presented at a slow speed, followed by explanations of various terms used in the lecture/conversation. Next, the same lecture/conversation is read at a rapid speed (similar to real TOEFL listening items), followed by practice comprehension questions. Scripts of the podcasts are available on the website, but, unfortunately, the vocabulary explanations and practice questions are only on the audio.
- The Linguist Library offers a catalog of short audio recordings on many topics, including conversations and academic lectures similar to those on the TOEFL listening test. Transcripts are available, and translations (into mostly European languages) are facilitated on the web site. What the site does not provide is practice questions to test your comprehension. However, if you go through a free registration process, you can use the site to create vocabulary flashcards (based on the audio transcripts you view) and use them to test yourself.
For help with writing essays:
G.E.D.
The official web site of the G.E.D. Testing Service has useful information about the test.
PBS's G.E.D. Connection is an online course for G.E.D. students. You have to register in order to use it, but it's free, and you can even get your own teacher who will check your work and give you feedback. Each lesson will send you to a different web site to gather information on a topic. Then you go back to the G.E.D. Connection to practice. You can also take a practice G.E.D. test when you're ready.
Steck-Vaughn aoffers a free on-line G.E.D. practice test.
The Five Paragraph Essay Wizard offers help on writing effective essays.
Jones Library card holders can take "Learn a Test"'s practice GED test at http://www.joneslibrary.org/ref/tests.html. Be sure to read the specific instructions page on how to enter your card number so that it will be accepted by the system.