ESL Resources

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ESL & Basic Skills Handouts

Help with Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Grammar

ESL Study Hall
 ESL Study Hall is a basic storehouse of resources for ESL students and teachers alike. By providing a variety of information on reading, writing, listening, vocabulary, grammar, and culture, it gives useful all-around resources that would be beneficial for anyone who wish to improve their English.

ESL Gold
 ESL Gold provides study materials for learning English for both students and teachers of ESL. The main categories of study include speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, along with language used in formal business events and online standardized tests. This website offers these study materials at all levels of mastery and provides links to books considered helpful in the given study approach.

Practice Listening, Comprehension, Pronunciation and more

Learn English
 Learn English is a useful site for basic learners and is especially helpful for those who want to practice their English pronunciation by offering a set of videos that teach correct pronunciation of common everyday words. Some topics include: sports, animals, computers, shopping etc. A unique feature of this site is a multi-language option, a vocabulary learning tool that compares common English words to words in other languages such as Spanish, French, as well as non-romance languages. It also offers printable study sheets with a variety of topics to help with vocabulary building and spelling.

ESL Cyber Listening Lab
 Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab offers a variety of listening quizzes, ranging from easy to difficult. These quizzes cover a range of "everyday" subjects, promoting understanding through the repetition and practice.

English Jet
 English Jet is a website based in Spain that is geared towards Spanish-speaking students who wish to improve their English. The site offers both paid and free courses; the paid courses may include telephone classes or face-to-face courses in addition to the online component of the course. The site offers numerous resources designed to help the students become familiar with everyday English as well as the type of English that would be encountered in more formal settings.

Interactive Tools

Live Mocha
 Live Mocha, an interactive site, is very helpful if you want to practice English and play games while you do so! It is fairly simple to use and offers a variety of other languages as well. It is free to all users. You can go through a lesson plan, play games to practice what you learned, and earn points for all the activities you complete. The points are like money and you can spend them on a variety of things such as having native English speaker read over a written paragraph to recording yourself and having someone check your pronunciation. This site works like a social network and even suggests other users that would be helpful conversation partners. If you are looking for a fun way to learn and practice your English, this is a site for you.

Using English:
 Using English's free resources include lists of English idioms, phrasal and irregular verbs, and definitions of grammatical terms. There are also hundreds of useful quizzes over a wide range of English language topics, and a forum to ask questions. Additionally, there are articles which give tips on subjects like personal graduate/law/medical school statement essays, test-taking, studying, speech improvement, and general usage of English grammar.

Other

ESL Partyland:
 ESL Partyland contains a variety of useful materials both for students and teachers of ESL. For students, the site offers lessons in a variety of practical learning environments such as Internet, Media, Music, Travel, Food, and even Dating & Relationships. It also provides helpful quizzes and other related links that deal with learning/teaching the English language. The site is also linked to Facebook and Twitter to allow users to post important questions and information about the site.

Learning Express (SIU Morris Library Resource):
 Learning Express through Morris Library contains practice tests for items such as the TOEFL and TOEIC other admissions tests.  (*The link has the proxy in it, so it should work from any location (on or off campus) for users with a current SIU Network ID and password.)