Nurturing Changemakers With an ELA ProjectOne way to help students master skills is to let them cultivate their own English language arts content to explore. Here’s how Guided Notes are teacher-prepared handouts. They outline lectures, audiovisual presentations, or readings. The teacher leaves blank space for students to fill in key concepts, facts, etc. Guided Notes promote active engagement during lecture or independent reading. They provide full and accurate notes for use as a study guide. Guided Notes also help students to identify the most important information covered PowerPoint with 160 oral language prompts downloadable ESL Newcomers class, can begin with students spending ten minutes using their laptops to work on various English-learning sites of their choice. Then, the teacher would display an oral language prompt on the screen (a question and a sentence-starter as a response). Model saying it, and then students would write down the question and their response in a notebook. Next, students would go outside in small groups to share their answers with peer tutors, and each group would choose two students to go up in front of the class once we returned to the classroom. Then the representatives would come up and share, followed by applause, of course.Focus in this activity was to promote practice and comfort with speaking English. It was not designed to teach academic vocabulary.
The Three-Legged Strategy I’m Using To Teaching Grammar In My ELL Newcomers Class – Picture Word Inductive Model Example "Students create their own Picture Word Inductive Model. I gave them each an image from a US History topic we covered and created a template for them to use to create words for the image, sentences, categories, etc. It worked well for all the different levels. Highly recommend." Here’s a model, to download.
8 Engaging ELA Activities for Google Docs - How do you use Google Docs for writing, reading, and other literacy activities? including: Highlighting for summarization | Creating blackout poetry | Emojis for writing and summarizing | Close reading activities | Making "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories | Prewriting with embedded graphic organizers | Writing less to write better
Bilingual Quizzes From Activities For ESL Studentsis a project of the Internet TESL Journal. You can find a ton of quizzes using multiple multiple languages here. Goethe Tests covers vocabulary and language tests in twenty-five different languages.
Key Skill for World Language LearnersPresenting information is a great task for world language learners, and these four engaging activities will get them talking. Here’s What Our Teachers Have Learned About Teaching English Language Learners"Our school is doing a series of professional development sessions this year on ELL instruction for all our teachers. We did the first session with about fifteen or so teachers and ended it using this neat idea I learned from Andrea Honigsfeld:"
Sentence Navigators are a term and tool developed by English teacher Jason Renshaw. They are basically grids with words that challenge the reader to select the correct ones to make a sentence.“Examples | more Examples
The Electronic Village Online:Every January, there is a wonderful free professional development for teachers of English Language Learners — The Electronic Village Online: "For five weeks in January and February, TESOL experts and participants from around the world engage in collaborative online discussions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by land-based professional development conventions and allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible. Sessions are free and open to anyone around the globe. It is not necessary to be a TESOL or IATEFL member nor to attend the TESOL Convention in order to participate. All you need is access to the Internet."
The Building English Language Skills with Technology guide provides articles, samples, and lessons to help your language learners succeed through the use of art tools, listening and speaking tools, and multiple methods of sharing finished their understanding and ideas.
Life Feast is an excellent blog for teachers interested in using technology in elementary and middle school ELL/EFL lessons. Check out this post about using VOKI with EFL students for a sense of what you'll get by following Life Feast.
This interactivefor ELLs is about reflecting back on the school year. Student read about the importance of reflecting on their feelings, choose the correct definition of three words, and write about their best moment in class during the year.
YourKnow is an online collaboration area where the teacher creates a group and invites students to it. It lets you upload texts and create private or public discussion groups about them. ESL students can post their own writing here and get feedback, and comments in a private group.
Multiʻōlelo compiles research related to language learning. Here are some excerpts from its “About” page:Multiʻōlelo is a transmedia multilingual platform aiming to curate language-related matters in multiple languages from multiple voices. Multiʻōlelo promotes multilingual, multicultural perspectives and encourages different forms of scholarship for public access and interaction. The website is run by past/current students from the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi.
👀ELT Buzzis both a place of quality lesson content creation and a place of curation. We provide news and information about English language teaching and a directory for new teachers to find essential information about our profession. Our weekly newsletter sends out the new “buzz” every Monday to subscribers. ELT Buzz Teaching Resources is a huge lesson library for English language teachers. Quality vetted lesson materials on every imaginable subject, for every level and age. The focus is on a materials “lite” approach. Materials as a door to comprehensible input and not as a exhausting exercise.
BBC Learning English offers a wide variety of English learning and teaching resources covering areas such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, business English, English for everyday situations, free English courses, English for children, English language quizzes, and many more.
👀 Breaking News English Numerous gems for teachers and students. News articles at three different levels. However, if you click on the primary link to an article there is a lesson plan that includes role playing and discussion ideas. Listening activities at different speeds and accents that you can listen to online or download. Also dictation listening activities. It is easy to miss some of the site's capabilities, so I suggest you watch this video for a walk through
Footsteps 2 Brilliance offers a number of bilingual (English/Spanish) “talking books” for early readers (and ELLs). Students just have to go to the site and click on one of the book covers.
Simbi. It provides thousands of narrated books children’s books to read in several languages. If you pay $99 annually, you can get access to premium features, but anyone can read the books for free. That’s nice, but that’s not really what makes this site truly unique. The key feature is that the books are narrated by young people all around the world, and any student can provide an audio narration of any book on the platform that can be accessed by other readers. There’s nothing more motivating than having an authentic audience, and Simbi provides one with tens-of-thousands of them!
New feature on Fluent Key: Peaksay Pronunciation Game has users repeat phrases and uses AI to “grade” its accuracy.
🎯USA Learns Video lessons and 1000s of activities. English speaking, listening, pronunciation, reading, writing. New U.S. citizenship course. USA Learns is a wonderful free site for Beginners and Intermediate ELLs to learn English. A new feature on their site, called Access America. Here’s how they describe it: USA Learns has a new course! Access America is a course for students with an intermediate level of English who want to improve their language skills while learning about how to succeed in the United States. The course includes more than 100 videos, along with vocabulary, speaking, and grammar instruction. Follow the progress of an immigrant family as they learn about life in their new country, and practice English skills for everyday activities like using public transportation, renting a home, banking, and getting children into daycare and public school. The course also covers important workplace topics like searching for jobs, interviewing, job skills, and how to find the right career. In addition, Access America teaches the English language you need to improve your digital skills, with information about computer security and instructions for how to use many useful websites and apps.
The Building English Language Skills with Technology guide provides articles, samples, and lessons to help your language learners succeed through the use of art tools, listening and speaking tools, and multiple methods of sharing finished their understanding and ideas.
Ingles.com An amazing site for Spanish-speakers learning English. It has a zillion interactive, including many connected to English textbooks, and they appear easy to assign to Google Classroom.
Free Online Access to Spanish-English Educational ResourcesThanks to an international partnership between the Mexican Ambassador to the US, Martha Bárcena, and the Center for Applied Linguistics, teachers across the United States have free online access to hundreds of multimedia Spanish resources, including complete textbooks, lesson plans, videoclips, and maps. The resources are age-appropriate for K–12 settings and can be adapted to adult learning.
Vocaroo has to be one of theeasiest tools to use to record audio. Develop student's fluency-simple tool and idea-Record audio in seconds. So this is an ideal tool for getting your students to record themselves speaking. The good news is they have made Vocaroo even easier!! The new HTML 5 version doesn't use Flash. Implementation ideas Students work in pairs, Partner with another student and listen and comment, Check and comment,
Readlistenlearn has articles that students can read and/or listen to. Teachers can select reading level and isolate vocabulary. There is a free and premium version. Watch this video to learn how to navigate the site and find hidden tools. The video also demonstrates creative strategies for using Google Translate and Quizlet for language learners.
Speaky Reads Free – for now (9/20/20 It looks like they might charge in the future.) It has a library that appears for now to be comprised of literature in the public domain (hopefully, that will expand). You choose a text, and then have a few options. You can follow along as it reads to you . You could also record what you just read and compare it to the recording you just heard
ESL Galaxy offers over 2368 free printable worksheets for ESL lesson plans and ESL Activities; and there are more additions every other day .The worksheets include:
Dreamreader.netlearners can practice and improve their English reading skills. There are over 250 free reading lessons on a wide variety of topics and skill levels. The site has five different kinds of content to suit the various goals of learners:
The “Easy English” section is geared towards beginner learners and tests basic sentence-level reading comprehension. In these lessons, learners look at a photograph and answer questions about it.
In the “Interesting English” section, learners who are interested in the “nuts and bolts” of English can find articles about English grammar and usage.
The “Practical English” section gives learners a taste of English being used in authentic materials (such as reading road signs, coupons, or business memos).
The “Fun English” section is meant to offer learners a chance to read short articles on a mix of interesting topics such as video games and pop music.
Finally, the “Academic English” section is full of lessons and quiz questions in the style of a standardized English test.
Each lesson features a number of quiz questions along with a free downloadable PDF of the lesson and free audio. Learners can use this to help them with independent study while teachers can use it to supplement classroom learning. In the “Academic English” section, there are also downloadable vocabulary worksheets that students can fill in to help them learn and retain new words.
Voice of America Learning English This is a site for both teachers and students.Voice of America is all free and you don't even have to sign up. Great features like vocabulary explained, US history, short stories with audio, quick grammar explanations, news with subtitles. The video focuses on 5-6 of the best features. video tutorial on features
Remote Theatre is a site designed to support ELL teachers and students use drama in remote teaching settings.
Learn English with Let's Talk A convenient way to learn English that combines audio and Video lessons. Their mission is simple: to make learning easier by taking advantage of modern pedagogical principles and the latest web technologies.
VoiceTube (Also an App) It has free video content with scripts, definitions but also allows for note taking. The notes become clickable, so students can click on them and go straight to that part of the video. You can also click on a word to get a definition. video tutorial
USA Learns It’s free, engaging, lets both Beginners and Intermediates practices for all language-learning domains, and makes it easy for teachers to create virtual classrooms. They’ve just unveiled a new expansion of their site: English 1 Plus is a beginning high / intermediate low course based on videos from the Voice of America Let’s Learn English series. Learn English with fun videos about Anna, who works in Washington, D.C. Watch stories about her work, friends, and activities while you learn English vocabulary, listening, grammar, writing, reading, and spelling. This English course has 5 units, with six lessons each. We recommend that you complete this course after the 1st English Course.
EFL Classroom created to share, to gather, to cull resources and also to have discussions around these teaching resources.
Online Grammar Learning Websites This collection features handpicked grammar websites students and anyone interested in learning English language can use to develop their grammar. The collection offers access to grammar lessons, videos, guides, downloadable worksheets, quizzes, exercises, and many more.
Best Language Learning Apps Check out this collection I curated featuring some of the best iOS apps to help students learn new languages. From video lessons, interactive games and quizzes, to 1 on 1 tutoring with English teachers, these apps provide students with the necessary resources to start their language learning journey.
Best vocabulary Websites for Students Vocabulary is key to language learning and a strong grasp of vocabulary is a prerequisite especially for improving one's writing style and speaking skills. This list features some of the best vocabulary websites that you can use with your students and kids to learn new vocabulary items, improve vocabulary practice, and ultimately enhance one's grasp of the target language.
Best Dictionary Websites for Students This is a compilation featuring some of the best dictionary websites online. You and your students can use them to search for word definitions, word usages, grammar tips, synonyms and antonyms, and many more.
Using English Using English offers a wide range of English learning and teaching resources organized into various themes including: teaching grammar, grammar quizzes, vocabulary quizzes, teaching vocabulary, phrasal and irregular verbs, idioms, articles on learning English, writing tips, spelling and punctuation, citations, exam tips, and more. The site also includes three forums; Learning English, Analysing Language, and ESL Questions. The Ask a Teacher service enables students to pose their English learning questions directly to teachers and English language teachers.
FL Teach The folks in FL Teach have done a great job collecting and organizing this huge library of web links to English language teaching and learning resources. I spent some time checking out these materials and find them helpful. These resources are organized into different categories including: media , clipart for teachers, dictionaries, collections made by teachers for teachers, primarily ESL, activities, online language journals, links to learning other languages (e.g., Chinese, French, German, Hebrew,Italian, Japanese, etc), and many more.
English Current English Current is another website that offers tons of ESOL resources. These include English practice exercises, idioms and proverbs quizzes, lesson plans, songs, writing-related lessons for learning ESL, games for the ESL classroom, business English materials, and more. The site also offers various types of tests including the Barton Vocabulary test, Check Your English Level test, The Barton Idiom Quiz, Listening test, and Verb Tense quiz.
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab offers online English listening comprehension activities and resources for ESL and EFL learners.
ELLO ELLO which stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online offers more than 3000 free listening activities and several other ESL learning materials including grammar based lessons (e.g., sound grammar and Grammar Talks), academic English resources (e.g., animates news stories to learn academic English, idioms, short animated articles with Academic English), natural listening lessons, and many more. Activities 'focus on everyday English comprehension skills at three levels based on content, voices, vocabulary, and natural speed. A combination of adult, teenage, and children’s voices are included.' Other features provided by the site include: short culture videos that introduces ESL learners to different cultural aspects of English, listening quizzes for academic purposes, interviews with native speakers covering different topics, and more.
ELTTeaching directory. New teachers can get essential lists / buzz of what is the best in ELT for many categories. Vote things up to show you think they are quality and the best..
Blogging. View the blog. Or submit your own blog post. We use canonical URLs so we won’t cannibalize your original blog post or site. We’ll just get you a wider audience. Post a new blog post here.
Resources. View the Teaching resources category or the Top Videos category – all with resources for teaching with those videos.
Newsletter. A key part of ELT Buzz. Weekly update of all the news and new things in ELT. See our first issue. Subscribe to get it in your inbox. Also see our constantly updated ELT Buzz News Feed.
Language Textbooks Resources is a collection of excellent materials to help learners develop their language skills. It features a wide variety of guides, textbooks, books, courses, and many other resources students can use to learn new languages. From learning the basics of Arabic to mastering the grammar of Spanish, this collection is absolutely a must have resource for language teachers.
Amplify ELA is a blended learning experience for grades 6-8 that enables students to explore complex texts, debate evidence, interact with engaging multimedia, and share creative and analytical writing
Free English learning content for your studentsThe content is ideal for older teenagers and young adults. Here is a video that highlights the website with listening, vocabulary and grammar activities. It is ideal for older teenagers and younger learners. They can watch videos and then do the exercises with automatic feedback. This site is based around up-to-date songs from popular bands and singers. There are also film trailers and news stories. Students can work through this material on their own. Free English learning content for your students
MyLanguageExchange.comis a social networking website that allows language learners to connect and help one another learn their respective languages. For example, a native English speaker who wants to learn Spanish can do activities in Spanish and receive feedback from native Spanish speakers who, in turn, are learning English and want feedback from native English speakers. MyLanguageExchange uses a method of language exchange in which small groups work together doing activities half the time in one native speaker’s language, and the other half in the other native speaker’s language. Learners form practice groups when they are at the intermediate fluency level. Before this stage, they can form penpal relationships, communicating in emails and text chats.Click Here to Visit Website
FluentU. FluentU helps you teach a language with music videos, movie trailers, news, and inspiring talks. It’s a fast and effective way to incorporate authentic content and cultural immersion into your language learning lessons. As a web based tool with a companion iPhone app it makes learning mobile when students are on the go. FluentU lets students watch a video with interactive captions – students can tap on any word to look it up to see useful pictures, definitions, and example sentences. It turns videos into interactive language learning lessons and games. Scenes from movie trailers become questions that help students learn grammar and conversational phrases. FluentU is available for learning Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and English and features for assignments and progress tracking is available
Ingles.com looks like an amazing site for Spanish-speakers learning English. It has a zillion interactive, including many connected to English textbooks, and they appear easy to assign to Google Classroom
StoryBots Classroom teachers set-up free virtual classrooms for students to read engaging texts with audio support, along with having the option of having student pictures in books to make them stars of their stories. There are also math activities.The materials are geared toward emerging readers, and would be very good for Beginning English Language Learners of all ages.
WhizRead Free online reading comprehension tool that would work well with ELLs and others. Even though all the photos on the site show it as an iPad app, it also works on any computer (though I’m not sure if some of its functionality is limited there). Students can choose texts from a Kindergarten to Grade Six reading level, it’s attractively designed, provides audio support for text, and students can take a comprehension quiz. You can’t create a virtual classroom to monitor student work, unfortunately.
True Stories series of books for English Language Learners.
5 Educational Youtube channels for Learning English
BBC Learning Englishgrammar, drama, news, study, pronunciation, vocabulary, music, interviews and celebrity videos. Everyday we have a new video to help you with English. We also produce regular 'extra' videos across the week so come back every day to see what's new.’
Learn American English Onlineprovides free English language instruction. It covers a wide variety of linguistic features with more focus on grammar.
Speak English with Misterduncan an English teacher who has been creating video tutorials and instructional clips to help learners from all around the world learn English.
Learn English with Let's Talk a convenient way to learn English that combines audio and Video lessons. Our mission is simple: to make learning easier by taking advantage of modern pedagogical principles and the latest web technologies.
Jennifer ESL free online instruction from an experienced teacher. The lessons will introduce new content to some and serve as a review for others’.
TeachersFirst’s Adapt-a-Strategy web page includes freeELL lesson plan modification strategies for a wide range of common classroom activities. Clicking on the desired classroom activity leads teachers to descriptions and directions for making adaptations to best suit English language learners. Included in the descriptions are links to Internetresources to help teachers implement the strategies effectively. Although created specifically with English language learners in mind, the resources and strategies can be used for differentiation with all students. Click Here for More Information
Simple English Wikipedia- You may know about Wikipedia but are you aware of Simple English Wikipedia? This is a wonderful site that includes articles for children and adults who are learning English, or just want the regular Wikipedia article broken down in a more basic structure and vocabulary
Inspiration Lane is an online magazine for all levels of ESOL, ESL and EFL classes. Each day the reading content automatically changes. The site can be projected onto a whiteboard and enjoyed by the whole class. The daily readings and interactive languageexperiences are intended to provide a free, engaging and encouraging experience for students learning English—especially during those last minutes of class time. Click Here to Visit Website
ReadWorks provides research-based units, lessons, and authentic, leveled non-fiction and literary passages directly to educators online, for free, to be shared broadly. The ReadWorks curriculum is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and the standards of all 50 states.
Read & Write for Google Chrome is an excellent teaching tool to use with students having reading and writing difficulties.It is also ideal for EFL and ESL students. It provides a number of powerful literacy tools to help students enhance their learning and improve their reading and writing skills. Read & Write works with web pages as well as Google Drive and several other files including Google Docs, PDFs, ePub and Kes. It also works with Macs, Chromebooks and PCs. The Pro version of Read & Write for Google Chrome is free for teachers, fill out this form to get a license. video tutorial Some of the features Read & Write offers its users include: listen to words, paragraphs or entire article read aloud with easy to follow dual color highlighting; provides both textual and visual definitions of words, hear text translated to different languages, voice type your text, create and listen to voice notes directly, quickly summarize text on a web page, highlight different parts of a document or web page and use them in other documents
The English Blog is a good resource for teachers of high school age and older ELL/ ESL students. The English Blog regularly features political cartoons and news clips that can be used in ELL/ ESL lessons.
Read Conmigo free bilingual literacy program. Includes books, activities, games ...
Readworks.org high quality reading passages for students. This website offers a wide range of lesson plans, comprehension units, and reading passages organized by skill and Lexile level. Whether you’re looking for a fiction passage for a guided reading group or want to find a informational text when teaching test taking skills, Readworks.org may be a worthwhile resource
World Digital LibraryThe World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
Learn English Kids is a great collection of resources from the British Council for children learning English as an additional language. Play games, listen and watch stories and learn songs.
ESL Collective A nice site where ESL teachers can exchange and download resources.
22 Frames is a service that provides a central location for locating captioned videos for learning English and for Internet users who have hearing impairments. 22 Frames provides more than just captioned videos. Along with the videos 22 Frames provides a list of idioms, slang words, and commonly mispronounced words in each video. Viewers can click on any of the words in the lists provided by 22 Frames to find a definition for each word and to find pronunciation tips.
ESL Basics is a site that provides short video vocabulary lessons for beginning and advanced ESL students. For teachers, ESL Basics has a small collection of suggestions and ideas for teaching ESL. ESL Basics is adding new content on a regular basis.
English Club A huge site with lots resources to teach English as a additional language. Find games, ideas, lesson plans, quizzes and a helpful online community of students and educators.
Rewordify This is an site that not only helps English language learners it helps students who are having trouble w/ hard sentences or paraphrasing sentences. The way this works is simply by copying/pasting text or URL and click "Rewordify". Also, there is a neat "smart highlighting" tool which brings up definitions of words as you highlight as well as a fantastic tutorial on how teachers can use Rewordify.
GCF Learn Free’s reading site has been on several “The Best..” lists for its simple reading instruction, which is excellent for English Language Learners and new readers. They’ve kept that site, and have also added several multilingual features to specifically help ELL’s. You can visit their Learn English site here. They plan on adding many new activities there in the coming months.
Lingua.ly is a free language learning service that initially launched as a Chrome app. This week Lingua.ly released an Android app (iOS coming soon) to help you learn a new language. The Lingua.ly mobile app creates flashcard activities based on the words that you select. To get started select the language that you're studying (Lingua.ly supports 20 languages) then enter words by typing them or pasting them into your account. After entering your words Lingua.ly creates flashcards with pictures. The app will read the words to you. After studying your flashcards Lingua.ly will search for web articles that utilize the words you're learning.
ESL Partyland Interactive quizes for students and lesson plans for teachers.
¡Colorín Colorado! website ¡Colorín Colorado! ¡Colorín Colorado! is a wealth of information for all educators of ELLs. It also provides information, activities, and advice for Spanish-speaking parents of ELLs. Teachers are invited to print and distribute the information on this site.
ESL Prinatbles English worksheets, lesson plans and other resources submitted by teachers.
Flashcard Flash is a great search engine for finding flashcards. The way this works is by search flashcard sites for publicly shared flashcards.
StudyBlue can do text, picture and audio flash cards
Tools
***Supporting English Language Learners with Free Digital Tools***
Google’s Interpreter Modeto the mobile Google Assistant app. Download the free app, say something like “Be my Spanish translator,” and it will automatically translate in writing and in audio what you say in English to Spanish, and then what the other person says in Spanish into English. It can do this in forty-four languages. Obviously, the translation is not even near perfect, but it can certainly work “in a pinch. New “Interpreter Mode” Makes It Easier For Teachers & Parents To Talk If They Don’t Speak Each Other’s Languages
Kansei. "Immerse yourself in real conversations and connect with life-like personas in Spanish, English, Italian, French, German and Japanese. Elevate your language skills through roleplaying, and personalized practice with our chat AI."
ChromeOS - Right-click on any word to pronounce and define
Free translation extension with many of the common translation features, but with a couple extra unique features including:
Multiple subtitles for videos so you can view up to three different translations simultaneously.
✅ Option to view images of any selected word (along with normal translation and pronunciation).
Speakable Pronunciation Feedback can also be used for reinforcing vocabulary and grammar lessons –This is a rough description of how it works: A teacher creates an assignment (you can copy and paste one from Quizlet or find one created by another teacher on the site – or create your own). For example, I found one on food that I assigned to my class (it has a Google Classroom integration). Students saw a word, like apple, along with an image of an apple. Next, they clicked on “listen” and heard a voice saying “apple.” They then clicked record and said “apple.” Artificial Intelligence would then show what it heard – “apple” or “abble” or “attle.” The idea is that the student says the word correctly twice, and then moves to the next word.
ANIMATIONS: English Language Learners should be able to make simple animations pretty easily at DoInk. I especially like what sounds like a strict and pro-active policy at ensure classroom appropriate content on the site. COMIC STRIPS: This is a little tricky because of concerns around hosted content. I’d say the site that’s easy to use, and is the least likely to have objectionable content, is going to be Pixton.
City Stories are interactive projects designed for students with different English-level proficiencies. You basically take an engaging tour of a city mixed in with different tasks that need to be accomplished.These are nice, but the best thing about the site is that you can create your own tours of other cities. Register – for free – at the Story Builder and begin.
Aloud. If you create a video in one language, you just upload the text narration and Aloud will “dub” your video in one of several languages (and they plan on adding more). So, according to Google, it would be simple for a teacher who creates their own videos in English to make others dubbed in the home language of ELL students.
Quill A free adaptive learning tool that uses Artificial Intelligence to help students develop their grammar and writing skills. My students love it! They take a diagnostic test and, then, based on the results, Quill recommends a series of exercises to help them develop their skills. Once they complete them, they can take the next level up diagnostic, and the process continues. Importantly, they have an ELL “track,” including multilingual instructions.
Fluentize creates modern, engaging, and interactive ESL lesson plans for English s based on real-world vilanguage teachers with teenage or adult students.
The No Project Lessons with audio files on modern day slavery
Mate's pro version offers even more advanced features that include:phonetic transcription, unlimited shortcuts, noun articles (e.g., learn how to use words in German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese"), beautiful dark mode, translate speech (it supports over 40 languages), personal phrasebook and many more.
Toucan Learn a new language just by browsing the internet. Learn a new language the natural way Toucan helps you absorb new languages naturally by blending them into your online activities. Because the more you see and hear a new language, the faster you learn it.
Quazel - With Quazel you learn a new language simply by talking like you would to your friend. The AI analyzes how you speak and reacts to anything you say.
VocabBoost Boost your language learning. Make a language test out of any website.
YouGlish is an excellent website for ESL students and everyone else interested in learning English pronunciation. The way YouGlish works is simple and easy: you type in the word you want pronounced and hit 'Say it'. YouGlish returns videos where the word is spoken in real communicative situations. Alternatively, you can type in 'how to say+word' (e.g.,how to say avocado) in Google search box then click on the listen icon next to the phonetic transcription of the word. You can switch between American and British pronunciation 'at the top of the pronunciation result'. The unique thing about YouGlish is that it provides several pronunciation types or English accents. You can choose among Canadian English, American English, Australian English, British English, Scottish English, Irish English, and New Zealand English. Or, you can choose 'All' to access all of these pronunciations video tutorial
LearEnglishLearEnglish is a platform that provides lessons and resources designed by the the folks in the British Council to help adult learners develop their English language skills. These resources include self-study courses, live online classes with teachers, quizzes, games, personal online tutoring and more.
WordReference is a free bilingual online dictionary and translation platform. It offers dictionary services in several languages. The strength of WordReference resides in two main areas: First, besides its own dictionary services it also incorporates professional and reliable print dictionaries such as Collins allowing users to easily compare definitions and get deeper insights about terminology and language use. The second main service that stands out in WordReference is Language Forums which are discussion forums where language learners ask questions about word usage, translation, synonyms and get help from native language speakers and fellow users. offers the following services: Verb Conjugators, Grammar and Usage, Language Forums, and Bilingual Dictionaries Also available for iPhone and Android. It is also available as Chrome and Firefox
Engaging ELA Activities with Google Docs Eric Curtshas Google Docs activities for ELA teachers in all grades. He offers six different activities using Google Docs that that will help students become better readers and writers. These include activities involving highlighting, emojis, choose your own adventure stories, graphic organizers, and more.
The Building English Language Skills with Technology guide provides articles, samples, and lessons to help your language learners succeed through the use of art tools, listening and speaking tools, and multiple methods of sharing finished their understanding and ideas.
Slides Translatorthis Addon will allow kids to VOICE TYPE into Google Slides. Not just the speaker notes. Use this Add-on to translate any textbox on the slide, great for students who are English Language Learners. ALSO use the speech to text options to allow students to voice type into any textbox.
TeacherTools.Digital. The site is great for setting up speaking activities with your students. Students can record themselves speaking and you can provide feedback on their work. It is all saved and tracked on the system. You can also do this with video files. There are about 6 other activity types. Really useful site for language teachers.
🎯Mate Translate is a Chrome Extension that enables you to instantly translate web pages into more than 100 languages. You can translate single words, phrases or whole pages. Alternatively, you can open Mate's pop-up window and type in (or paste) the text you want translated, select the target language and click on translate. Besides being a translator and a dictionary, Mate also provides pronunciation for translated words allowing you to learn how words are spoken in their native tongue.
Create Your Own Rebus ActivitiesSolving a rebus puzzle can be a great learning activity for students of any age. Because it uses non-linguistic representation of familiar things, it is one of the high-effect-size strategies. And it can help with spelling and vocabulary skills as well. You can create your own rebus at this free website. The site will let you choose between using their own images or emoji characters. You can also turn on the ability for hints about some of the drawings to be shown.
Microsoft Office has fantastic tools for ELL Learners. *For those of you who do not have Office, there is a FREE web-based version (office.com) Tools Immersive Reader, Powerpoint Captioning in different languages, and Translator Video Immersive Reader - designed to support students with learning a new language or dyslexia and dysgraphia. You can select text for it to read to you. Select text, right-click, and Microsoft's Immersive Reader will help you read it
The ability to show syllables, verbs, nouns and adjectives from any text U
Use voice to text in the online version of Word and OneNote.
View Text one line at a time
Translate words to other languages and show an image depicting the word
Powerpoint Captioning - Closed captioning in numerous languages Tranlator - hold conversations in different languages simultaneously.
FluentKey - helps language teachers make listening fun and meaningful by turning real-life videos into an interactive game. We have hundreds of authentic videos in the world’s most popular languages. It “gamifies” watching a video and turns it into a Quizizz/Kahoot-like activity where students answer questions with a leaderboard. Plus, you can also create your own virtual class and assign videos for students to watch.
New feature that Fluent Key began: Peaksay Pronunciation Game has users repeat phrases and uses AI to “grade” its accuracy.
TeachVid - Multiple languages and activity types available. Create language learning content with interactive text reconstruction activities and quizzes based on short videos. Use the online version (free) of powerpoint.
Comics for Inclusive English Language LearningHigh-interest comics with audio support provided to the text. They are leveled based on English proficiency. It’s a place for Intermediates to get reading material. After each comic, readers learn the structures for writing essays through an image-based quiz system. Otteris a web tool and mobile app that allows you to record audio and generate live transcriptions of your recordings. With its AI (artificial Intelligence) capacities, Otter provides automated meeting notes for popular video conferencing services including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Students can use Otter to" take notes during lectures, transcribe research interviews, capture notes from group study sessions, and process public audio data for research purposes." ESL/EFL students will find the tool helpful. Besides taking notes, they can use it to learn new vocabulary and enhance their speaking skills. Otter has collaborative features. Otter users can invite each other to edit, highlight and work on their notes collaboratively. They can also 'start a recording inside a group to share the transcript live'. Other equally interesting features provided by Otter include: the ability to import and transcribe audio recordings, arrange notes into folders, generate word clouds from recorded notes, export notes as PDF, TXT, MP3, and many more.
How to Simultaneously Caption and Translate Presentations Use the free online version of Powerpoint where you can select the language the online version of PowerPoint (free for anyone who wants to use) you can select the language that you are speaking in and the language in which you want your live captions to appear. For example, I can speak in English and have my captions appear in Icelandic. In fact, that's exactly what I demonstrate in the following short video.
The Broadcasts program allows you to record audio files and distribute them to your students for playback on the computer or on their portable media devices.
Worksheets is a program that allows teachers to create worksheets that go beyond the capabilities of paper-based worksheets, adding interactive and multimedia elements such as drag-drop matching, instant feedback, and audio recording and playback.
Audio Dropbox is a virtual dropbox for audio recordings. Using this new tool, you can put a dropbox for speaking assignments on any web page.
SMILE (Server-Managed Interactive Learning Exercises) is a free online environment for creating interactive language-learning exercises...
How to Simultaneously Caption and Translate Presentations Improve the accessibility of presentations for ELL students. Try using the caption and translate option that is built into the online version of PowerPoint. In the online version of PowerPoint (free for anyone who wants to use) you can select the language that you are speaking in and the language in which you want your live captions to appear. For example, You can speak in English and have my captions appear in Icelandic. video. www.freetech4teachers.com
Tools for Learning English Through Movies and Video Subtitles Language Learning with Virtual Characters Users of Android devices can experience the most advanced way to learn languages in any setting. Mondly, is a VR app for learning a world language featuring speech recognition and chatbot technology. Users can choose from 30 languages and take part in real conversations with virtual characters in Spanish, French, German, English, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, and more. TheVR app provides instant feedback on pronunciation, suggestions that enrich vocabulary, and interactive scenarios that make language learning engaging. Users can take part in realistic dialogues inspired from authentic events—for example, they can make friends on a train to Berlin, order dinner in a restaurant in Tokyo, check into a hotel in Paris, chat with the hotel manager in Rome, or take a taxi ride in Hong Kong. A recent update offers a new type of vocabulary lesson that engages students in learning about topics such as animals, space, fruits, and vegetables. Currently this feature is only available for some language combinations. Costs: $4.99 for Daydream and $3.49 for Android with Google Cardboard.
Lingro is a useful tool for both the “wow” factor and its usefulness. Students type a web address into the field on the Lingro website and go to that site. Lingro then instantly turns the text on that website into a clickable dictionary. When students click on words they don’t know, Lingro displays several definitions. Lingro also translates 8 million words in 11 languages. The tool hides in the background until students need it.
Younglish is a web tool EFL and ESL students can use to learn pronunciations of English words. You simply type the word in the search box and Youngish provides you with a YouTube video in which the word is spoken by real people.
StoryBots Classroom teachers set-up free virtual classrooms for students to read engaging texts with audio support, along with having the option of having student pictures in books to make them stars of their stories. There are also math activities.The materials are geared toward emerging readers, and would be very good for Beginning English Language Learners of all ages.
Listen And Write is a language dictation tool to help improve your listening skills by using news articles. These videos go through all the different parts of the website to show why it is such a useful tool. videos
Worksheets is a program that allows teachers to create worksheets that go beyond the capabilities of paper-based worksheets, adding interactive and multimedia elements such as drag-drop matching, instant feedback, and audio recording and playback.
LingroChoose a website you want to read, place it into Lingro and then the whole site becomes clickable and you can find the meanings of any word on the site with just a click of a button. So if you are reading El Pais or Le Monde or The Times, then you can make any of the text clickable and it will immediately bring up a dictionary and tell you the meaning of the word. It keeps a record of all the words you clicked on and even creates games to practice and work with the words!!! You can choose from a variety of dictionaries too.
Text CompactorThis “free online automatic text summarization tool” was created by Knowledge by Design, which produces products for students with disabilities. The user plugs in a paragraph of nonfiction, sets a slider to the percentage of text that should remain, and the newly shortened or summarized text appears in another window.
Type It is a free online program for typing accent marks and other special characters that are often required for languages other than English. Type It supports twenty-one languages and currency symbols.
LetMeType LetMeType is word prediction software. Running in the background, it analyzes what you type. After it has collected enough information, it can guess a word after you have typed only the first two or three letters. A list of the most probable words is displayed, and you can select one with a single keystroke or just continue typing. LetMeType allows you to load your own dictionaries and associate dictionaries with individual instances of LetMeType, so that you can establish vocabularies for particular domains of knowledge. The program will work with most applications, offering completion suggestions in most any program you happen to be working in.
Lingualyis a free Google Chrome extension designed to help you learn a new language while browsing the web. With Lingualy installed anytime that you come across a new word you can double-click on it to hear it pronounced, read a translation, and read a definition. The words that you double-click are added to your Lingualy account where you can review them in a quiz format.
Talk EnglishTalk English provides educational resources to help learners become fluent English speakers. These include speaking English lessons, English video lessons, English listening lessons, basics of English grammar, interview English lessons, idioms and phrases, English pronunciation, and more. Talk English also offers a downloadable version of all its version for fee.
LyricsGaps - Learn a language by watching a music video. Includes karaoke mode, quizzes, and fill-in-the-blanks.
Forvo is not an app, but it is a website worth mentioning on this list. It can best be described as an audio wiki for word pronunciations. One of the problems with learning to speak a language that is not phonetic is trying to figure out how to pronounce the words. Forvo hosts hundreds of recordings of word pronunciations by native speakers. Along with word pronunciations, Forvo provides some basic demographic information about each language. Forvo's content is user-supported and user-generated. New pronunciations are added on a regular basis.
Lite Typeis a virtual keyboard that allows you type and search the web in your choice of 53 different languages.If you're a Mac user and would like to know how to type special characters on your keyboard, here are three free PDFs from
Go Squared that offer directions on how to type accents and symbols by using the correct combination of keys on your Mac's keyboard.
Frequency Level Checker an on-line tool to help language teachers quickly check the number and percentages of words in a particular text that come from different word frequency levels of English. This tool can be used to analyze the vocabulary level of a text to see whether it is appropriate for a certain group of learners. It can also be used to predict what words might cause difficulty for a certain group of learners. It can be used to make study materials for learners.
Classmint is a free online flashcard service. Classmint can be used to create and share sets of flashcards. A couple of aspects of Classmint make it different from some other flashcard services. First, Classmint will read your flashcards to you. Second, in addition to supporting the use of images in your flashcard, Classmint allows you to annotate those images on your flashcards. Learn more about Classmint in the video.
Lingt is a web application that allows you to create and edit language assignments incorporating voice, video, images, and text.
Voxy uses current articles from world news, pop culture, and sports to to help students acquire language. As students read an article they can click on highlighted words and hear them pronounced. Highlighted words when clicked reveal the Spanish translation. Clicking on highlighted words also adds them to a study list. The study lists can be used for quizzes and games. Voxy is available in English and Spanish.
Lingro- video This makes all the text of any website clickable and searchable using a dictionary. You have to see this to believe it. It works in several languages. It means you can just click on any word and a dictionary will appear explaining what that word means.
Breaking News English is a great site for ESL and English Lesson Plans that are built around current events and news. The site is always up to date and offers 1000s of FREE 13 page, ready-to-print handouts, downloads, and quizzes.
Microsoft Translator Bookmarklet is a simple little tool for translating the content on any webpage. Specify the language that you want content to be translated into then install the bookmarklet. Then whenever you're viewing a webpage you can click on the browser bookmarklet to translate the page. Installing the bookmarklet is a simple drag and drop process.
Kubbu Teachers can easily create a number of online exercises for students to complete, and you can easily keep track of how they do. It's free for one teacher and up to thirty students.
My Study Bar- a comprehensive set of portable open source and freeware applications to support learners with literacy difficulties. MyStudyBar is similar to popular commercial programs which use a floating toolbar to support literacy. The toolbar includes a range of tools to support inclusion such as mind mapping, screen masking, word prediction, talking dictionary, text-to-speech, Save as MP3 and voice recognition. PC Only. (Speech recognition only works in Vista or Windows 7, 8)
Vocabla is a service for learning English, Spanish, and Polish vocabulary. The service can be used online or with the free iPhone and Android apps. The concept behind Vocabla is similar to a lot of other language learning applications. In Vocabla you can create lists of words and phrases that you want to learn. Alternatively, you can select a list that was made by someone else and shared to the Vocabla library. You can study each list in a flashcard style until you feel like you're ready to take a practice quiz.
EnglishCafe is a website that offers a full range of tools for students who are learning English. A user can use the site to find a teacher, meet practice partners, take lessons, and more! This site is a great place for secondary students to learn or improve their English.
The Idiom Dictionary was created to help people understand the meanings of more than five thousand English idioms. To use the Idiom Dictionary just enter a phrase or part of a phrase into the search box and the Idiom Dictionary will offer an explanation of that idiom.
Casa Notes Tool Casa Notes is designed to allow teachers to quickly make, and customize, typical notes that are sent home to parents or given to the students. This is done by using templates and allowing the teachers to customize some of the content, choose a color scheme and add a graphic. Teachers can select whether the notes should be in English or in Spanish.
Google has introduced their new feature for Blogger called "Google Scribe". click for review of options Google Scribe is text suggestions and auto complete feature, which can now be found in Blogger in Draft. Google Scribe helps you write more efficiently by suggesting common words and phrases as you type. Google Scribe supports Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The language is automatically detected using the text in the post. Enabling Google Scribe is easy. Simply click the pencil icon in the toolbar within the Post Editor. After Google Scribe is turned on, suggestions will appear in gray as you type, and you can accept them by hitting the spacebar or by typing a punctuation mark, such as a comma, period or question mark.
Google Translate Translate from dozens of languages to English, Spanish, or Arabic click here In Google Chrome there is Voice search extension you can add. You can speak and your voice will be transcribed. Then click on the sound speaker and the computer will read back what is read. Set it to go from English to English to use this technique.
Google Dictionary Extension in Chrome Add this extension Chrome when using Google Dictionary. Besides what is described below, if you have this extension, a reader can click on any word in a Web site and see the definition with a double click. Also word can be read aloud
Lingt Classroom This site allows teachers to create interactive online voice based assignments (that include, text, images, video) and then track/assess students progress. These assignments are geared toward using your voice and allows students to listen to teachers and record their own voice.
Interactive activities based around English songs 3 FREE websites. Students can study on their own, do the activities and get feedback. It can encourage autonomy and get students motivated. Video overviews and tutorials
VoicePods is a text-to-speech service that I started using last fall. It's a service that will create an MP3 file from any text that you enter or from a web address that you enter. You can listen to your recordings online or download them for offline use. When you listen the recordings online you can also read along while each word is highlighted in sync with the recording. A new feature that could be great for listening to dialogues.VoicePods has a new multiple voice feature. This feature lets you select more than one voice to be used in the creation of a recording. For example, if you enter the transcript of a dialogue you can have a different voice for each character in the dialogue. Watch tutorial (www.freetech4techrs.com)
Better @ English providers EFL and ESL learners with “genuine unscripted conversations that feature informal vocabulary, slang, idioms, and more. And you can read along as you listen -- go to http:/ www.betteratenglish.com/transcripts for FREE transcripts and vocabulary notes.”
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writingshort, friendly tips to improve your writing. Whether English is your first language or your second language, these grammar, punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. To download podcast episodes not shown here, visit QuickandDirtyTips.com
Splendid Speakingsupports advanced learners of English who want to develop their top-level speaking skills and communication strategies. Each podcast features a recording of non-native speakers of English carrying out short tasks individually or in pairs such as making presentations or taking part in discussions. Each recording contains expert feedback on the speaker's performance.
Effortless English PodcastLearn tips and strategies to improve your spoken English. Also learn about American language and culture. Be a successful English speaker and international leader.
Synth. lets you record audio for up to 256 seconds at a time for free, save it, and provide a link or embed code. It’s available as a SmartPhone app or as a web tool. Big deal, you might say, there are lots of tools out there that let you record audio online Here is why Synth is so good – it provide automatic captions for what you are saying! The captioning isn’t perfect, but what automatic captioning system is? It’s pretty decent Plus, you can set-up your audio recording so that others can leave audio recordings in response to yours.
RecordMP3 is a site that lets users record their voice using the microphone built-in to their computer. You can then share the link – or turn it into a QR code – so that anyone who opens the page can press play and hear a recording of your voice. Great for adding verbal instructions to a activity sheet or definitions to new vocabulary words for English Language Learners.
Lyrics Gap This is a site that is fun for learning a foreign language through the use of music. Basically, a user browses through a number of pop culture songs that are set to a certain language and then tries to fill in the missing words in the song. What makes this great for teachers as they can create custom exercises and select what words of the songs they want omitted and then share a link w/ students to let them try to fill in the blank.
Sound Cloud upload or record your originally-created sounds effortlessly to SoundCloud in a few clicks. Will deal with pretty much any audio format so you don't have to worry about that.Timed comments let you give valuable feedback at specific moments throughout the waveform.
Elllo Listen to English online at different levels Includes different accents. This site offers a wide variety of listening activities specifically for ESL students. The site is updated weekly with new interviews, games, news, talking points, and songs, all available for free. A huge audio archive stores items from previous weeks, months, and years. "Mixers" include opinions of several people. Students can listen to these short sessions, answer a main idea question and also see the transcript of the piece. Another feature allows users to see the transcript of interviews as they listen. There are quiz questions available after each interview. Video links connect users to offsite videos from a variety of courses; these are available with some articles and interviews.
Listenwise ( gr. K - 12) makes it easy to bring authentic voices and compelling non-fiction stories to the classroom. Teach your students to Listen with the Power of Public Radio.Curates the best of public radio to keep teaching connected to the real world and build student listening skills at the same time. Vast range of solid current event info and historical stories, 3- 6 minutes, from public radio let students make genuine connections.
ESL Stories This site has loads of stuff for LOW LEVELS. It has short recordings of stories and related exercises. It has loads of content and great for students that want to work alone. English only Short Stories with audio
VozMe Type in some text, click the Create MP3 button, and it will open a new window and play a male or female voice (your choice) reading the text. You can download the file as an MP3 using right-click save-as (PCs) or CTRL-click save-as (Macs).
Voice4MeWindows 2000 - XP Mac OS 10.0.x - 10.6.x Voice4Me is designed as a quick and simple way to bring speech to users who have difficulty speaking. There are 154 Text-To-Speech areas that can be customized to meet the users needs. Also, there is a text area for the user to type whatever he/she wants the computer to say. Students learning English can use this program to find pronunciations of words.
Speak and Spellis a fun site for younger kids learning how to spell and pronounce English words. They learn through these interactive online games, stories, and sounds.
ANVILL WebsiteANVILL is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers focused on the practice of oral/aural language. LiveChat, Quizzes and Surveys and TCast allows teachers to record and place audio or video files anywhere in a lesson.
Repeat After Us is an online library of copyright-free English texts and audio recordings. The purpose of Repeat After Us is to provide ESL students with a place to read and hear proper pronunciations of English words.
Translators is a short documentary, and here is its description:Every kid needs their parents. But for 11 year-old Densel, 13 year-old Harye, 16 year-old Virginia, and the over 11 million children across the U.S. who are the only English speakers in their family, sometimes that relationship gets flipped. This is the untold story of kids who act as their family’s translators on matters that are sometimes more adult than they are.
The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them). There are many ways to use them that promote speaking, listening, writing and reading (including having students describe – in writing and verbally – a chronological description of what they saw).
How to fix English captions in (your own) YouTube videos. Automatic captions usually have small errors, and sometimes have huge errors.
English Language ProjectOver 600 short videos designed to help those learning English, organized into sets that you might be able to use right away in order to learn or teach about a particular topic - job terms, days of the week, names for tools, those kinds of things. This could be a nice resource to push learning something new or to augment something you are already doing! Take a look at EL Project page for the full collection.
Colingo is a site for learning English. This is done in a fun environment through the use of video. Also, these videos are hosted on YouTube and online classes are are offered all day by native English speakers.
A library of very short (under one-minute) videos to help those learning English as another language. Each video is built around a word that is part of the vocabulary of a specific high-frequency topic. The video has a subtitled version and a non-subtitled version; the idea is that someone getting used to the words could get help seeing the words, and then get used to hearing them without help.
Learn English through stories with subtitles & audio. Make sure you click on Video to see all the options. Click on Save to make a playlist of your selected stories. You can keep adding to the Playlist When you are ready to share your Playlist., go to the three bars/lines in the upper right, click Playlists, select you desired Playlist, and finally click on Share to copy the link. If you click on Transcript, you can jump to different parts of the story. Also you can copy text and put it in Google Translate.
Learn English Through Story Hear text and read along with the audio. Numerous stories available. Consider going to settings and slow the video down. Make sure you click on Videos under the movie to see all the options.
The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them). There are many ways to use them that promote speaking, listening, writing and reading (including having students describe – in writing and verbally – a chronological description of what they saw).
Special features for language learners on TED talks siteMany of you will know the TED talks website. However maybe you did't know about all the features that are on the site. There is masses of content in loads of languages. You can control the speed of the videos, you can set the subtitles, you can search in special ways and you can access all the transcripts and use them in your language learning.
ESL VideoCreate quizzes to go with videos. ESL Video is great for ELLs though, like TED-Ed, its “interactivity” comes after the video is watched instead of during it, as is the case with the iSL Collective and EDPuzzle, the next one on this list. See “ESL Video” Improvements Turn Good Site Into Great One.
FluentKey - helps language teachers make listening fun and meaningful by turning real-life videos into an interactive game. We have hundreds of authentic videos in the world’s most popular languages. It “gamifies” watching a video and turns it into a Quizizz/Kahoot-like activity where students answer questions with a leaderboard. Plus, you can also create your own virtual class and assign videos for students to watch.
New feature on Fluent Key: Peaksay Pronunciation Game has users repeat phrases and uses AI to “grade” its accuracy.
TeachVid - Multiple languages and activity types available. Create language learning content with interactive text reconstruction activities and quizzes based on short videos.
English For All is a series of excellent captioned videos and follow-up activities related to life skills. It’s most appropriate to high school-age and above English Language Learners. This is available at no cost.
English Central video clips from news shows and movies and shows text as the words are shown, and scores how well the students has pronounced the text. sponsored by Google
The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them) In short, there are many ways to use them that promote speaking, listening, writing and reading (including having students describe – in writing and verbally – a chronological description of what they saw).
ESL Video A website with free ESL video quizzes and resources for ESL / EFL students and teachers. It is simple to use and has a growing library of content that will likely help teachers make learning English easier and more enjoyable.
Lingo Hutan impressive site for beginning learners of many different languages, including English. Using a drop-down menu, you can easily select your native language and the language you want to learn, and then progress through a well-designed series of exercises including reading, listening and speaking.
Storybooks Canada and World Stories are two sites with many bilingual and multilingual stories. I particularly liked World Stories because it has bilingual books in English/Pashto, and those are hard to find.
Footsteps 2 Brilliance offers a number of bilingual (English/Spanish) “talking books” for early readers (and ELLs). Students just have to go to the site and click on one of the book covers.
Optilingois a new site for learning multiple languages.
Clozemaster lets you learn multiple languages through an intriguing system. And it’s free.
DotSUb is a website that allows you to upload videos and put subtitles on them. Perfect to share foreign language resources or to set translation projects to your students.
engVid more than 500 video lessons to help viewers learn to speak and write English. Eight instructors are featured on engVid. The instructors use a whiteboard to explain things like when to use "everyday" or "every day" and when to use "good" or "well." Students learning to speak English can benefit from lessons on pronunciation, English slang, and common English expressions.
22 Frames is a new service that provides a central location for locating captioned videos for learning English and for Internet users who have hearing impairments. 22 Frames provides more than just captioned videos. For each video 22 Frames provides a list of idioms, slang words, and commonly mispronounced words in each video.
JenniferESL: With over 153,000 subscribers, JenniferESL is one of the most popular ESL channel on YouTube. Jennifer’s best videos are her lessons on idioms (kitchen idioms, driving idioms, color idioms) and slang/phrases based on everyday environments and tasks. Most of the content in her curriculum is based on expressions and conversations from authentic experiences. Great for beginners.
MisterDuncan: Considered one of the original English teachers on YouTube, MisterDuncan covers lessons on fluency and speaking English naturally rather than prescriptive grammar. A Bill Nye the English Guy, if you will.
Voice of America Learning English: Join over 98,000 other subscribers and learn English with captioned news reports read at a slower speed.
Taboo.AI.The game “Taboo” – or a variation of it – is often used in ELL classrooms (see here for lots of ways it’s used). The latest very creative version of it is called Taboo.AI. In it, you pick a category, and are then shown words in that category. You are challenged to write a question/prompt that will get the AI to come up with that word.Even better, you can submit your own category and word list that they will consider uploading to the site.
Free Online Video Games for ESL Students Here are some ways to use online video games with students as a language development activity as you explore new ways to engage students in English language learning activities that are easy to maneuver, engaging to do, and promote face-to-face conversation.
Games To Learn English is a site with many English-learning games. There are a zillion online sites with English-learning games. This one, though, lets you very easily assign specific ones
Backyard has a collection of online games that can be played in video conferences
Pictionary Games
Drawpoly is a neat Pictionary-like online game where you can play with your friends and classmates. It would be great for ELLs.
DrawGuess looks like a great online game for ELLs.
There are several Pictionary-like games on this list and they are all good. Skribbl, though, might be the easiest to play and quickest to understand. It would be nice regular addition to any ELL class and a fun occasional game for any other class to lighten things up.
Cackleberries - A virtual 3D world for ESL kids 3-7 yrs old learning English through interactive games.
Digital Dialects has a large selection of educational games and activities for learning sixty different languages. Most of the games are designed to learn and practice the basics of each of the sixty languages listed on the Digital Dialects homepage. The more commonly spoken languages have more activities than the less commonly spoken languages. Audio files have recently been added to some of the languages too.
Decorate This site is a fun way for ELL students to practice their understanding of household objects by shap and color as they must locate "Roger's" requests for items to be placed in his home.
Apps
Spokenlayer is a free iOS app which turns any text/article into audio. This is ideal for those that like to multi-task and listen to one thing while doing another. I can also see this being used in Spec Ed classes or ELL/ESL classes for those that have trouble reading/seeing.
Duolingo. This is a great web tool and mobile app for learning a new language. Google selected it as the most popular educational app of 2014. Duolingo provides a plethora of translation activities through which learners get to practice their new language. Duolingo gamifies language learning by using a system of rewards for good achievements. It also gives learners the opportunity to translate real-world texts in the language they are learning and thus help other learners.
Duolingo for Schools. This tool provides teachers and educators with a dashboard to track students progress on the popular Duolingo app. It will also identify patterns in the way individuals learn and react accordingly to reinforce areas of difficulty. Duolingo's technological companion for the classroom will help teachers understand each student’s learning needs. Within Duolingo for Schools teachers can create online classrooms in which they monitor their students' progression through the learning activities available in Duolingo. Assignment distribution option for teachers. Now teachers can set learning targets for students, give assignments, and track their students' progress through Duolingo for Schools. Students will receive notifications of new assignments when their teachers assign them.
Babbel Babbel is a language learning app that helps learners speak a new language through the use of interactive lessons and courses. Lessons cover 14 languages including Italian, German, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Spanish, Dutch, English, Norwegian, among others. There are over 5000 language courses that target various topics and skills such as listening, speaking, writing, grammar, and vocabulary. Babbel also offers an offline mode allowing users to access language lessons anywhere.
HelloTalk is a service designed to help students learn a new language. The service operates through free Android and iOS apps. On the HelloTalk apps you can find flashcards, text to speech tools to help you understand how words should be pronounced, speech to text tools to practice your pronunciations, and translation tools are included in the app. HelloTalk currently supports seventeen languages. HelloTalk provides a social network component that allows users to connect with native speakers of the languages that they are trying to learn. The connection with native speakers is intended to help learners develop an understanding of a new language in a conversational setting. The developer said:, "...anyone above 18 can't search anyone below 18 (you can verify this by looking at HelloTalk account Settings/Who Can Find Me or Custom Search. Users under 18 can only search for users up to age 22. We deliberately set these rule to protect teenagers."
Google TranslateAs a translator app, Google Translate is definitely a must have app for language learners. I have been recommending it for my EFL students for several years. Google Translate supports various types of translations including: text translation, camera translation (point your camera at text in an image to get it translated into 94 languages), and photo translation ( take or import photos for translation into 90 languages). The app also supports handwriting enabling users to draw text character instead of typing. Users can translate whole conversations (71 languages) and can save their translated words and phrases into their phrasebook for future reference. Offline translation is supported for over 50 languages. Video Google Translate tricks with Youtube and Quizzlet
Read&Write for Google: Chrome extension link - Upgrade form for educators: Website link, Text to speech, Word prediction, Dictionary, Picture dictionary, Screenshot reader, Speech maker, Translate, Highlighters, Collect highlights, Vocabulary, Voice note, Simplify page, Settings, Optional PDF Reader - Chrome extension link Android version - Google Play Store linkiOS version - App Store link
The Fun With Directions app $ measures receptive language learning by providing a fun and engaging way for English learners to practice listening, following directions, working memory and auditory processing of language. Students respond to simple oral directions and prompts, such as “Touch the cat,” which become increasingly more complex—for example, “Give the girl something that she can throw” or “Give the boy without a hat or glasses something round that grows on trees and can be red or green.” As an added bonus, the app includes optional “Superstar Directions,” which allow additional practice for remembering (“What did you have to do?”) but also expressivelanguage. The student’s response is recorded and played back. Superstar Directions can be set to a variety of intervals or turned off completel y. The prompts can be differentiated based on English language development levels, so the app can be used as a formative assessment as well as apractice activity.
ESL Reading Comprehension-Help your ESL/ELL students sharpen their reading comprehension with quick and interactive lessons. Identify key concept words and develop familiarity with common phrasings.
Learn English (Hello-Hello)-Help your ESL/ELL students learn more effectively with top selling English courses in US, UK, Spain, Italy, France and many more
Memrise: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But in the case of Memrise, it’s worth one (foreign) word. This app displays pictures (called mems) with the words you are trying to learn. It also features a handy audio pronunciation guide for each word.
BeelinguappBeelinguapp is a language learning app that lets you learn new languages through bilingual audiobooks and stories. The way it works is simple: select the target language you want to learn, access stories and novels and start your reading journey. To better understand words and phrases in the story, you can switch to your native language at any time during your reading. You can also use the karaoke-style scrolling text to keep up with the story in both languages. Using audiobooks, you get to immerse yourself fully in the target language. Beelinguapp offers various types of stories from 'classics like Snow White and Sherlock Holmes, cultural guides to global cities, daily news articles and kids books with simplified sentences and illustrations'.
PhrasalsteiniPad app and Android app designed to help students learn the meanings of phrasal verbs. The app has a practice mode and a quiz mode. In the practice mode students select a verb and a preposition combination then see a short animation demonstration of the meaning of the chosen phrase. In the quiz mode students see an animation then have to select the matching phrase. Translations of the meanings are available in Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and French.
Busuu is an iPad app that combines vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension tests to boost language learning. Busuu allows you to learn key words and phrases and practice what you learned with native speakers. Other features Bussu offers include :
Over 150 everyday topics containing over 3,000 words and phrases.
Quality courses based on the CEFR, a recognised framework for language learning.
Language feedback from native speakers.
11 languages in one app! English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese.
Listening, reading, writing and speaking practice
LingQLingQ helps users learn a new language through a wide variety of reading and listening materials. Users can either import their own content or browse the app's library which contains numerous language resources including books, audiobooks, interviews, blog posts, podcasts, videos, and more. Users use the app's SRS review system to review unknown words (highlighted in blue) and through exercises and quizzes they test and consolidate their newly learned vocabulary. LingQ offers 1000s of lessons with audio and matching text. Its integrated dictionaries allow users to search for and access definitions in the dictionary of their choice.
PreplyPreply is a language learning app that helps users learn new languages through private 1 on 1 lessons with online tutors from all around the world. Here is how it works: First search a language tutor (use search filters to narrow down your search), schedule a time and book your lessons, connect with your tutor via chat.
Android Apps to Help Speak English
English Conversation Practiceprovides your students with the practice needed to improve their English conversational skills. It offers over 200 English conversation lessons, including listening exercises, comprehension quizzes, conversation recording and many more.
English Speaking Practice"These English conversation lessons will help you with your English speaking and English listening while giving you the confidence to speak with native English speakers. We have basic English conversation lessons for beginners and also beginner level business English conversation. These are perfect for beginners wanting to improve their English conversation skills."
Speak English Fluently"If you are looking for an app to improve your English Conversation and Listening skills and help you speak more fluently, this app is suitable for you. Whole audios of this app are in American accent. This app also includes the list of most common words and phrases used in daily conversations. It will help you speak English fluently."
ELSA Speak: English Accent CoachFor those of you interested in learning how to speak American English, this app is a good option to consider. It offers the following:
"Get a curriculum tailored to your speaking level, so you can focus on the right words.
Learn to speak over 2000 of the most popular English words with perfect pronunciation
Find out exactly which sounds you spoke are incorrect
Receive feedback on how to move your tongue and lips to correct your words
Practice common phrases used in everyday life, like at work, during interviews, and while traveling
Track your progress and come back to practice any words you’re still stuck on
English Pronunciationhelps you hone in your English speaking skills. It offers the following features:
"Learn to pronounce standard vowels and consonants in English
Signs to recognize the vowel, consonant
Stress in English, the accent
The sign of the location of the accent
Pronunciation of English as native speakers, analysis of the wrong place, recording and self-listening
Choose the standard pronunciation of English words
Write phonetically
Search for accent"
Vocabla is a service for learning English, Spanish, and Polish vocabulary. The service can be used online or with the free iPhone and Android apps. The concept behind Vocabla is similar to a lot of other language learning applications. In Vocabla you can create lists of words and phrases that you want to learn. Alternatively, you can select a list that was made by someone else and shared to the Vocabla library. You can study each list in a flashcard style until you feel like you're ready to take a practice quiz.
English Monstruo is a free app (iPad and Android versions available) containing eight games designed to help students learn verb conjugation. English Monstruo was developed by researchers at Cambridge University who examined the results of 200,000 exams to determine the words that give Spanish speakers the most difficulty when taking an English exam.
Picle Unlike other apps, this one records ambient audio as you take a picture. This could be a great way to practice pronunciation and vocabulary as students bring in the world around them. Published Picles are posted to an account at http://picleapp.com/ Tip - there are two options in the app. It is possible to take the picture and record later as well as in real time. Students could take their pictures and then record from a script. Tip - students can publish single pictures as Picles or create a Picle story by linking together images.
VerbBusters is a straight-forward iPad app for learning and practicing recognizing English irregular verbs. VerbBusters supports learners whose native languages are French, Spanish, German, Portugese, and Italian. The app can also be used by native English speakers to practice recognizing past and present tenses of verbs.VerbBusters has two modes; a practice mode and a quiz mode.
The Phrasal Verbs Machine, developed by Cambridge University, is a free iPad app that aims to help ELL students learn the meanings of phrasal verbs. The Phrasal Verbs Machine provides students with short animations that illustrate the meanings of many common phrasal verbs.
Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction is a free gallery of images hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library. The gallery contains nearly 500 drawings of people conversing, scenes in houses and buildings, and objects commonly found in houses. You'll also find drawings scenes in cities, in stores, and in nature. The visuals are all drawn cartoon style without any text or speech bubbles. If you're looking for some visual prompts to use in your language lessons, take a look at the gallery at Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction. You can search the gallery by keyword or simple browse through the collection.
Dim Sum Warriors comic book app about a bunch of crazy kung fu-fighting Chinese snacks! It's got action, comedy, and you can tap all the word balloons to hear audio and read it in English and Chinese!
SayText: App scans documents and then reads the text contained in the document to you. Simply place your device center of a document and double-tap the “Take picture” -button. Then slowly elevate the device over the document. When it detects your document, it will beep and start scanning. While the OCR is running, tap the screen to hear the progress status. When the camera is done scanning, swipe the screen to initiate a read back of the text. Cost: Free
StudyBlue allows you to create flashcards in three ways. You can enter text, take a picture, or speak into the app.
ShowMeAs a student looking to learn about a particular topic you can search Show Me by topic and subject. As a teacher, you can create your own videos or assign one from the community for students to view. If you would rather share your knowledge with your class, you will need to download the free iOS app. Video
Audio Memos is an iOS app for creating and sharing audio messages. The app is available in three versions. The free version is limited to 3MB recordings, the $0.99 version is limited to 15MB recordings, and the "pro" $9.99 version has a nice selection of audio editing tools built-in.
Duolingois a free service that aims to help you learn Spanish, French, German, or Portuguese. Duolingo offers mobile apps that allow you to practice a new language anywhere you go. The Duolingo mobile apps and website provide a variety of translation activities to help learn to you read, listen to, and translate words and phrases. The activities include looking at pictures that are representative of words and phrases. After reviewing a couple of pictures students are asked to type translations. The app gives immediate feedback to students.
Phrasalstein Doctor Phrasalstein who, with the help of his friends, will teach us 100 phrasal verbs using animations inspired by the classic “horror movie” genre, with a touch of humour and irony.
Talk n Photosadd text and voice recording to album covers as well as each entry (picture) within an album
TinyTap is a free iPad app that allows kids to make educational games. This is done by uploading photos and then recording your audio and placing them into existing games. Also, a user can create their own Q/A, add a soundtrack, and track their child's score.
Educreations is a new iPad app that turns your iPad into a whiteboard. You can use the app to illustrate concepts and narrate what you're doing on the screen. You can draw images from scratch on the Educreations iPad app or you can upload images and draw on them. Your completed lesson can be shared directly to others or made public on the Educreations website. Similar to Show Me and Screen Chomp iPad apps. All three of these free iPad apps could be used to deliver short lessons to students. You could also use these free iPad apps to have students develop and share short lessons with each other and you.
Tinycards - Learn with Fun, Free Flashcards Memorize anything while playing a game! Tinycards is a brand new app from the team behind Duolingo, the most downloaded education app in the world.
Bluster! Rhyming, prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, homophones, adjectives and more. 800 words included Two students can play together collaboratively (team mode) or competitively (head to head.)
iTalk Recorder a full-featured recording app with a streamlined and intuitive user interface.
Tilly's Petting Farm $1.99 - This app offers an interactive approach for students from ages four to seven years who need to learn basic vocabulary and sentences to increase memorization and understandings. In one part you can hear all sorts of fun phrases and sounds when you touch a picture. It also moves the image or something pops out. The other part consists of questions that can be answered by touching the appropriate picture. If the child answered a question incorrectly three times, a hint is shown. After five wrong answers a new question will automatically be asked.
Flashsticks- An innovative site/app for learning a foreign language through interactive post-it notes.
Simplex Phonics $4.99 - Teaches a full year of spelling curriculum with over 450 high-frequency words divided into 42 lists that are organized by spelling patterns and difficulty levels. Each of the 42 lists comes with a lesson that teaches one of the basic building blocks of spelling in the English language. These basic building blocks include the different phonograms, sounds, and spelling rules. The app names the letter, states the sound and uses a sentence. If a student is struggling with a sound, press the hint button where the sounds will be made.
Kidioms $1.99 - How many times have we heard the idiom “I am as hungry as a horse” or other similar phrases? Here is an app that shares the idioms in an interactive notebook. The app gives the meaning and an example with a graphic. In elementary school idioms are part of the Common Core Standards for 3rd-5th grade. In addition this app is perfect for ESL students, students on the spectrum and students with developmental disabilities. The app incorporates three games to make the idiom experience fun and reinforce the meaning. The games include Word Drop, which challenges the learner to complete the idiom by choosing the correct missing word. Missing Word asks the user to spell the missing word. In Match-Up, the player selects the correct idiom to fill in the blank in a larger block of text. Match-up tracks student data out of 10 and percentage. This app is so popular that Ventura Educational Systems added Kidioms 2 ($1.99) - more idioms- more fun, more learning and understanding the nuances of life.
Talk'n Photos $2.99 - Here is an app that is perfect for ESL, those with spectrum disorders, developmentally disabled, and young learners. Take photos or use photos from the Internet. Next, make album covers such as family. Insert family photos and record who they are. This app will enhance communication, social stories, vocabulary, comprehension and more.
Phonics Genius Designed to help recognize and distinguish words by sounds. 6,000 unique words grouped by phonics. Multiple unique game modes. Ability to add your own cards with continuous looping feature.
Reading Fun Lite Through amusing situations improve reading fluency, consider emphasis, understand the meaning and create incentive to read.
Sentence Reading Magic To help read words, read sentences and build sentences. Uses short sentences to help build confidence.
Phonetics Focus HD 2.99 19 activities, interactive phonemic charts, native-speaker audio, listen and record, scored quizzes, practice tools and flashcard sets
i Tell a Story Choose a picture from your photo album, tell a short story about it, add music from your library and sound effects from the small library in the app. Save the story to be played on your iPad, or email it as an .m4a audio file that can be opened with apps like iTunes or Windows Media Player.
Little Story Maker Add pictures, text and audio to create a story. Three playback modes - read to me, read by myself, and auto-play which automatically turns from page to page.
Spelling Cat Spelling Cat is a feline and jazz-themed app to help students improve their spelling. There are three games within this app. In the first one, students will listen to a word pronounced within the app, and then they'll spell it. They can also unscramble words or fill in a missing letter. Teachers can create their own word lists for students to study.
Voice Control for ChatGPT Chrome extension that allows you to talk with ChaatGPT and have it audibly respond. Option for different languages. Talk with historical, science, literary and famous characters. Also use form foreign language practice. You will hear them respond to you and also see the response in text. Video tutorial start at 9:24
TalkPal is a AI language tutor that is here to help you learn and improve your language skills. With TalkPal you can listen, speak, read and write in over 55+ different languages. They have loads of different modes to play around with and to help you improve.
Elleven LabsTerrific text to audio program. Also good for creating audiobooks with lifelike AI characters, emotional storytelling, and a seamless audio creation process
LingoTeachis an AI-powered teacher tool especially for language teachers.
Eigo.AI AI-powered lessons for English language learners!
Linguai is an AI-powered English tool, with free options.
Prompt: Language Learning Simulation: “Design a simulation where students can ‘travel’ to a foreign country and have conversations with locals in the language they’re learning, with ChatGPT playing the role of the local.”
Teach Planet is yet another AI-driven educator planning tool. This one is only for English teachers
Kippy - practice language conversation with an AI tutor
Kensei "Immerse yourself in real conversations and connect with life-like personas in Spanish, English, Italian, French and Japanese. Elevate your language skills through roleplaying, and personalized practice." Learning languages fun with engaging stories, roleplaying, and personalized feedback. Interacting with the app’s AI personas allows users to get a feel for cultural contexts, nuances, and colloquialisms in a way that most standard language-learning apps don’t.
Speak app A fabulous tool for converting your video into other languages and it even changes your lip movement to reflect the language
Leveled Reading Passages with Comprehension QuestionsEnter any topic and language, and Curipod creates a text with comprehension questions & activities based on your input. Perfect for 3rd-5th grade reading levels,
TalkPal- Learn a language through personalized conversations.
Speech Meter is an AI-powered tool that aims to help users improve their English pronunciation by analyzing their accents and providing insights on their pronunciation accuracy.
Listening The "Transform Your Favorite Videos into English Listening Practice" This tool enables users to convert preferred YouTube videos into English listening exercises tailored to their individual interests. Key features of this tool include the ability to select any YouTube video and convert it into English listening exercises.
Drops:Visual Vocabulary Drops is an engaging language learning app that is part of the Kahoot! family. The app is colorful and lively and focuses mainly on teaching vocabulary. Like its inspiration, Kahoot!, Drops is game-based and has a minimalistic design.
✅ InVideo Outstanding text-to video tool. You can also edit video by changing the script or media.
Riffusion is an Artificial Intelligence-powered site (free for now) that lets you create a musical lyric, a musical genre to accompany it, then lets you choose from three images it develops, and then it all culminates into a short musical video (that also shows the lyrics),