Free Websites to Practice English at Home

 

 Below you'll find online resources—some with a focus on listening, some on vocabulary, others on grammar, and some with a range of activities.

Activities for ESL Students
Grammar and vocabulary practice for all levels, including many bilingual quizzes for beginners. Also includes a link for teachers, with conversation questions, games, and many other ideas to put to use in the classroom.

BBC Learning English
An array of wonderful activities for practice, some relating to current events. Includes videos, quizzes, vocabulary practice, idioms, crosswords, and much more, though all with British accents.

Dave's ESL Cafe
A forum for both ESL teachers and students around the world. Includes quizzes, grammar explanations, and discussion forums for students. For teachers, includes classroom ideas on all subjects as well as discussion forums.

Duolingo
Free English courses for speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Greek, Hindi,Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish,Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. Start at the basic level or take tests to move to higher levels. Practice vocabulary and grammar with short lessons that are like playing a game. You will need to sign up with an email address or a Facebook account.

Easy World of English
An attractive, user-friendly website including grammar, pronunciation, reading and listening practice and an interactive picture dictionary.

ESL Bits
Audiobooks, news stories, short stories, songs and radio dramas. Choose between faster or slower listening speeds and read along with the texts of the stories and songs. For intermediate and advanced learners.

GCF Learn Free
A well-designed site with interactive tutorials for everything from operating an ATM machine to reading food labels. This link will take you to the section on reading which has resources for English language learners as well, including stories to listen to and read along, and picture dictionaries.

Language Guide
This is an online picture dictionary, with everything from the alphabet to parts of the body to farm animals.

Learning Chocolate
Vocabulary exercises organized by theme.

Many Things
This website includes matching quizzes, word games, word puzzles, proverbs, slang expressions, anagrams, a random-sentence generator and other computer-assisted language learning activities. The site also includes a special page on pronunciation, including practice with minimal pairs. Not the fanciest or most beautiful website, but with lots to see and use and no advertising.

Oxford University Press
This site from Oxford University Press has activities to practice spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and listening. A bit difficult to navigate, so more suitable for advanced learners and savvy internet users.

TV 411
This site includes videos with native speakers explaining key reading concepts like critical reading, summarizing and scanning, and key life skills like signing a lease and reading a medicine label. Following each video is a comprehension quiz. Click on the blue tabs across the top lead for lessons on reading, writing, vocabulary and finance.

Ventures Arcade
An online supplemental tool to the Ventures textbook series to practice vocabulary and grammar in theme-based contexts.

VOA English
Multimedia source of news and information for millions of English learners worldwide.

WeSpeak NYC
We Speak NYC (formerly We Are New York) is the City’s English Language Learning program. It provides civic-focused instruction through videos, web and print materials, and free community classes in all five boroughs.

Eight excellent digital resources for English language learners

  

Eight excellent digital resources for English language learners I frequently have students asking for advice on how to improve different areas in which they are struggling. These are my top eight digital resources for learners, broken down by skill. (Also, they’re all free!) 

 Reading My pick: ESL 
Lounge Organized by level, this website has about 25 reading comprehension exercises per level where you read a short text and then answer some comprehension questions. I would suggest giving yourself a time limit when doing these exercises to also increase reading speed. After you’ve answered the questions, take some time to look up any new words. 
 Writing My pick: Write and Improve 
 This is a cool website for students who are looking to improve their writing, especially in terms of grammar and spelling. There are a variety of prompts according to level that you respond to and are given immediate feedback. It’s not perfect, of course, and may miss some mistakes, but overall it’s a really great tool for improving your writing.
 Speaking My pick: Record function on your device 
 For students who want to improve their speaking, one of the best ways is by recording yourself. You might feel a little uncomfortable, but I know students who have done this every day and really seen improvement. Here’s what I suggest: Find a quiet place where you won’t be bothered. Choose a topic or discussion question from one of your classes. Then, turn on your recording device and answer the question, talking for about two to three minutes. You can just use the microphone, or use the video recorder (with or without you in it the shot). Then play it back and listen to yourself. I know, I know, we all hate the way our voice sounds, but I promise you, it’ll be worth it. Do you notice any mistakes? Were there pauses, places where you were searching for a word but couldn’t think of it? Can you look for that word in a translator or dictionary now, so that you’ll be ready the next time you want to use it? Also, simply the act of speaking can help you become more comfortable and fluent.
 Listening My pick: TED Ed TED talks
 are quite popular, and with this website, students can find any number of videos related to a topic they are interested in. Each video is accompanied by a lesson that includes comprehension questions to check for understanding as well as open-ended questions and links to explore more about the topic. Most of the videos are pretty short, so you can easily watch it twice if you need, and you can usually find the transcript as well. 
 Grammar My pick: The EF English Grammar Guide 
 The EF English Grammar Guide is an easy-to-use resource with tips about usage, explained simply with examples (and counter-examples!) to illustrate. It can be accessed by teachers or students at anytime. Perfect English Grammar is another website to bookmark. You can search it by grammar topic, read an explanation, and then do an exercise with 10-20 sentences. It doesn’t help very much with using the grammar in context, but it provides great practice for mastering the grammatical structure. Pronunciation My pick: Voice-to-text 
function on your phone or device This is the best way I know of to improve pronunciation. You can use pretty much any app on your phone: Notes, Pages, Word, an email, etc. Simply make sure the keyboard language is set to English, press the little microphone, and begin speaking. You can either read a text or talk freely for about 20-30 seconds; then press done. Read over what your phone typed, and see if it understood you correctly—was that what you wanted to say? If there are words that your phone didn’t understand, practice these words and go back and try again. The technology isn’t perfect, of course, but it’s fairly accurate so it’s a good way to check and improve your pronunciation.
 Vocabulary My pick: Free Rice 
 If you’re looking for a fun way to improve your vocabulary that also helps people, check out this website. It’s just a multiple choice vocabulary quiz, but the questions are endless, and as you master new words, you can move up levels. In addition, the organization that runs the website donates ten grains of rice for each question answered correctly! 
 All skills My pick: EF SET exam 
 The EF SET exam is a free language test to identify your level, with scores aligned to internationally approved standards developed by the European Council, meaning it’s understood by employers and universities. The EF SET is extremely user-friendly, with quick and complete test options available, plus an online certificate that can be attached to your LinkedIn profile to easily share your level with your network.