Websites for Learning English

There are hundreds of websites that help (or claim to help) people learn English as a Foreign Language. Recently I reviewed some of them. I sought the ones with the most free resources, the fewest ads, and the easiest navigation.

1. World English/ ***** very few ads; a menu of hundreds of activities, exercises, and tests. This one offers hundreds of free quizzes.

2. Rong-Chang.com **** includes many free lessons and is easy to navigate. Dr. Ron Lee limits ads to one band across the page. Despite the .com, his site is generous with free tutorials, most of which he wrote himself.

3. ESL Mania * So heavy with ads that I couldn't navigate to free material.

4. a4esl.org ** This nonprofit site has little new to offer except a large variety of two-language quizzes (Czech-English, French-English, etc.) created by volunteers.

5. 1-language.com ** Offers, for example, 40 units of free audio English instruction if you have Adobe Macromedia Flash Player. My Mac has it, but I still could not coax sound from my computer.

6. English for Internet ** http://www.study.com/ voluntary $20 contrib, or voluntary $1/month subscription. Calls itself "a free place to study world languages: real teachers, real classmates, real time." Requires you download an .exe file. Good luck.

Special Categories

7. VOA News/Special English *****  Listen to a news story while you see the text. News stories are written in a basic-English vocabulary, easy to understand and imitate. Excellent practice!

8. Cambridge Dictionary for nonnative speakers of English: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ I don't know how many free lookups this site offers. But it tells you whether a noun is count or uncount, and it distinguishes among British, Australian, and US English.

9. Macmillan Dictionary lets you toggle between British and U.S. English: http://macmillandictionary.com