Free Teaching Resources

It goes without saying that ESL teachers need as much help as they can get!

We hope this list of free resources for ESL teachers goes some way to keeping your students satisfied and entertained!
Grammar and Vocabulary

English Language Centre Study Zone – This site, from the University of Victoria, has clear, concise grammar lessons. Readings come with interactive comprehension questions and tasks.
 
English Grammar in Use – If you ask me, Raymond Murphy’s grammar texts for ESL learners are damn near perfect; they have clear explanations, lots of practice exercises, and are thorough. I’ve been hoarding his books for years, and I was thrilled to find one online, accessible for free.

John Fleming’s ESL Grammar Help – I wouldn’t send my ESL students to this page, but it’s a great refresher for native English speakers who are a bit rusty on their grammar rules and terminology. It includes the simple stuff (subjects, prepositions) all the way to the toughies (modal auxiliaries, adjective clauses).

ESL Blues – A thorough resource with interactive Q&As on tons of grammar-based topics. The flash animations are simple but pretty cute.

Label Me! – This resource of printable worksheets is great for teaching new vocabulary. It has images for students to label and, if they’re feeling creative, to expand on (“now draw a mirror on the bedroom wall… now draw a cat under the table.”) These handouts would suit a range of levels, and the site has a hefty selection of holiday-themed worksheets.

Reading and Writing

Tall Tales – This bank of “did they really happen?” stories has a good selection of offbeat reads about topics like animal heroism and dumb burglars. The content reminds me of Reader’s Digest; it’s nothing groundbreaking, but the mass appeal is great for structuring classroom activities. Some stories have a good deal of supplementary exercises for students.

Academic English Cafe – This is a good source for creative writing prompts. As the name suggests, this material is better for high-school or older, as the topics get abstract. It’s high-level but good stuff.

Online Writing Lab (OWL) – Purdue’s writing lab has great resources for writing resumes and professional documents. This site is a very handy tool for university students and adults seeking work in an English-speaking country.


Lesson Plans

The Internet TESL Journal – The journal offers a hefty collection of lesson plans categorized by target skill (reading, culture, icebreakers). Plans are submitted by site users, so they vary a fair bit in terms of content and structure. Still, there are great materials here. The site hosts many abstract lesson topics (modern art, manners) that would suit secondary students and adults learners.

Waygook.org – Here, you’ll find lengthy message boards with lesson plans, PowerPoints, and dialogues about language and teaching. The site has a lively forum, focused on working in Korea; public school textbooks are heavily referenced. Still, there are good teaching resources for anyone. Free registration is required to gain access to links and files.

Using English – This site has a long list of pdf lesson plans for different levels. This is one of the few sites with test prep materials which are crucial for English language learners looking to study abroad. You’ll find IELTS prep lessons and reading exercises based on the Cambridge ESOL. Using English also has printable online quizzes on a mix of grammar-based and general topics.

ESL Galaxy – Here is a bank of (wait for it…) over two thousand printable worksheets, mostly for beginner and intermediate students. The materials include games and puzzles, holiday exercises and readings with comprehension activities. There are also free PowerPoint presentations that are mostly suited for young learners.

TEFL.net – My favorite tool here is the simple “worksheet generator” for ESL teachers who need to prep an exercise in a hurry. The site is also one of the biggest resources for lesson plans, ready-made worksheets, reading exercises and games. The site’s “English Planner” section has a fun selection of daily class warm-ups too, such as slang of the day and cartoon of the day. In addition, you’ll find a good library of articles on teaching tips and ESL methodology.

Adult Learning Materials

BBC Learning English – This is one mega-resource. It hosts grammar, quizzes, lesson plans based on current events and a deliciously British animated series called “The Flatmates” for English learners. It’s a great site if you teach adult ESL classes, as it has sections for teahcing business English and lessons framed around practical life skills like renting an apartment and riding the subway.

Breaking News English – Here, you’ll find whole lesson plans with vocabulary, discussion questions and more on current event news articles. It’s all for intermediate/high-intermediate learners, but text can be edited and simplified for lower levels. Great material for adults/teens.
 
Business English Materials – These are quite literally English lessons about businesses. A partner site of Breaking News English, it has lesson plans about dozens of different successful companies from Apple to Zara. Lessons include readings, games, comprehension activities and quizzes.
 
Postscript – Linguarama’s Postscript magazine offers mini-lesssons and worksheets. Look under “Themes” for lessons categorized under very precise headings like management, banking, and marketing. It’s straightforward stuff, best for ESL classes that are intermediate and higher.

Adult Education ESL Teachers Guide – The lesson plans on this university-based site don’t have many bells and whistles; they’re straightforward lessons that would be perfect for newcomers to an English-speaking country. The best resource on the site is the section for teaching non-literate adults, a rare and invaluable resource.
Speaking and Listening

Ello – This site is a great resource for audio clips, categorized by topic, level, and speakers’ accents. I dig this site for providing a great mix of accents. It’s not just native speakers chatting; you won’t find any cheesy dialogues like “Angus and Jeremy compare Scottish and American holidays!” Instead, the dialogues have accented English from a mix of native and non-native speakers. This is a smart practice in my books, as in many situations English functions as the lingua franca of the world.

TEFL Tunes – This is a bank of song-based lessons, with an easy browser where teachers can search by level, theme, artist or grammatical point. Using “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” to teach the first conditional? Cool. These activities are a great way to frame song-listening activities around lessons, as opposed to just playing music in class for the sake of it.

Musical English Lessons – This site is a bit jumbled format-wise, but it offers scores of free worksheets with ready-made lyric gapfills. There’s a long list of artists, and each lyric sheet has tips on how to use the song in class. I’m keen to try, “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” for reported speech or maybe even “Whenever, Wherever” to practice gerunds and infinitives.

English Club – English Club’s talking point worksheets are mini lessons with a huge range of subjects. There are topics like biofuel and kidnapping for your more serious lessons, and topics such as shopping for lighter discussions. Each lesson includes a bit of vocabulary and a dense list of discussion questions related to the topic.

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab – This is the biggest bank of ESL listening activities that I’ve found so far; Randall’s is a great resource. The sound clips have pre and post-listening exercises, and comprehension questions too. Most of the content would suit low-to-high intermediate students, but there are some resources for beginners and advanced learners too.

Takako’s Great Adventure – This site hosts one of my favorite listening-based lessons: a 10-part story of a Japanese girl’s adventure in Canada when a man claiming to be her pen pal’s uncle meets her at the airport. Mysterious! Each installment has vocabulary and comprehension questions. You could plan a semester’s worth of tasks based on Takako’s story. The narrations are lengthy and best-suited for high-level learners.

Games

A Game a Day – If you have a computer in your classroom, this site has a calendar’s worth of small games for those last five minutes of class. Most of the upper level games are vocabulary-related. The general review section is a big big hit with my higher level students.

Super Simple Songs – I absolutely love these songs and their simple, bouncy videos. The lyrics seem basic, but they’re always a huge hit with younger learners. Play a video in class and your students will be mesmerized, gold for classes that tend to get unruly. “Uh-huh” is a student favourite that will get stuck in your head for weeks.

Comic Creator – If your students enjoy creative activites, the comic creator is a great way to structure and illustrate the stories they write. They can design each panel with backgrounds, characters, and speech bubbles. It’s very fun; you can try it with adult students too.

Armored Penguin – This site makes word searches, crossword puzzles, and word jumbles. It’s very easy to use and has ready-made puzzles that change daily. It’s also a source of classroom conversation starters, like optical illusions and funny quotes.

Lanternfish/Bogglesworld – Here you’ll find a collection of ready-to-print flashcards, worksheets and puzzles: a great resource for kids. A lot of material is centered around Western holidays, so come to this site first if you’re planning a Halloween lesson.

Puzzlemaker – The mother of all puzzle-makers, Puzzlemaker has the standard crosswords and word searches, plus cryptograms, letter phrases, and all sorts of puzzles I haven’t seen since leafing through my Nana’s Large-Print Super Stumpers. My students in South Korea can’t get enough of the puzzles.

Other Resources

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) - is a great educational resource for adults and students. It provides creative writing prompts that encourage learners to use English to express their thoughts and opinions. This resource also provides quizzes, games, and tutorials to help people learn how to write longer essays in English.

Teaching English at British Council - Here you can find a variety of articles about English lesson plans. A creative teaching idea for classes can be spotted throughout the blog posts. You can find a range of stories in the world of second language teaching. That said, not only you are able to add value into your lesson plan, you can also develop your skills in language teaching.

Breaking News English - Their website may not be flashy, but it provides breaking news articles that can be viewed in a variety of different learning levels. Breaking News English helps to provide real information and give students a chance to discover useful terminology instead of just reading endless paragraphs crammed with vocabulary words. Adult students will appreciate ESL lessons that do not make them feel like schoolchildren.

ESL at About - The main goal of ESL at About is to promote communicative ESL skills. They provide excellent techniques for both educators and learners. This site is a good place to read articles about education trends and ESL Issues. There are also many worksheets with talking points and discussion questions that can lead a class to discuss interesting and stimulating topics.

TEFL.net - The main benefit of TEFL.net is that it is extraordinarily customizable. Teachers can generate their own worksheets and quizzes quickly and easily. Though the website does provide many ready-made worksheets and lesson plans, it is nice to be able to create your own unique teaching resources.

More Free Resources for Teachers

ESL Job Exchange - We publish new articles twice a week to help ESL teachers get started and keep up to date with ESL industry trends.

BusyTeacher.org - If you are reading this, you already know that busyteacher.org is an essential resource for the ESL teacher. Why not take some time to explore other tools that we have to offer including free worksheets, flashcards, ideas for vocabulary, and teaching ideas, just to name a few. You will never know there was so much available to you so close to home.

Maths Chase -  Maths Chase is a completely free site where you can quickly test your times tables. The site is a very simple game but I think kids will find it a really fun way to learn their times tables.

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab - This website is useful for students who are trying to better their listening and speaking skills. Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab provides listening quizzes for several different learning levels, from beginning to advanced. The listening quizzes are extremely valuable for ESL classes with less literate people, and they also provide useful information about common conversations that ESL students will encounter.

BBC Learning English - This website provides a vast amount of resources for adult ESL teachers. The lessons are based on life skills, such as finding an apartment or using a subway, and BBC Learning English also provides lessons on business English. They even have humorous online television series centered around various grammatical concepts.

ESL Games World - If all of the students in your class have access to computers, this is a fun website for everyone to visit. ESL Games World has interactive computer games, such as Snakes and Ladders or Wheel of Fortune, which also teach English. The site’s wide variety of games includes ones for children and ones for adults. In addition to the online games, teachers can also print games for classroom usage.

ITESLJ -  This one is especially useful for discussion topics. It has an enormous list of every topic you could possible imagine and a huge list of questions to get the discussion flowing between students.

Grammar.net - Lots of useful tips and fun info-graphics for learners.

Guardian TEFL - TEFL section of the Guardian newspaper with articles, resources and news.

English Page - A fantastic site for both English teachers and learners; has excellent explanations of many grammar points.

Tim’s Free English Lesson Plans - High quality, communicative lesson plans lovingly crafted by Tim.

ESLvideo.com - Make up your own quizzes from your favorite videos on YouTube. With ESLvideo.com you can create your own quizzes and even have your students search by teacher to find them. If you are looking for comprehension activities that are ready to go, this site also has videos and quizzes from other teachers sorted by fluency level that your students can access anywhere and anytime.

PinkMonkey - If you teach literature in any of your ESL classes, PinkMonkey.com has seemingly limitless resources for you. Here you can find book notes and activities for you and your students for free. With over 460 books listed, you will never need another set of Cliff’s Notes again!

BrightHub - This site offers a bounty of information to the ESL teacher. Here you can read articles about teaching ESL as well as find lesson plans for different times of the year. Are you out of ideas for games, vocabulary or activities for your students? Get some inspiration here.

Dictionary.com - Neither you nor your students wants to carry around a ten-pound English reference dictionary, but you likely already carry something that gives you internet access. If so, bookmark dictionary.com for easy reference. This site will give you definitions of English words as well as thesaurus entries and a word of the day. There are also many other helpful resources this site offers.

UsingEnglish.com - Looking for something a little more intangible than simple definitions? Check out the dictionary of idioms available from usingenglish.com. There are hundreds of idioms listed on this site as well as phrasal verbs and other grammatical irregularities your students may need help with.

http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/download.htm
This is useful tool! Translate Thai into English or English into Thai

http://www.englishbanana.com/
This site offers more than 3,200 free printable resources for teaching and learning English and ESL. All the resources are covered by their free licences, which let you download, print, copy, and share them

http://www.teachbymagic.com/
Amazing Site. Teach with magic tricks on video's

https://eslauthority.com/resources/free-esl-lesson-plans/
Free lesson Plans. They have something for every teacher no matter what you teach (kids, adults, grammar, etc)

https://eslauthority.com/resources/free-esl-worksheets/
Free ESL worksheets. We tried to make sure there was something for every teacher no matter what you teach (kids, adults, grammar, etc).

http://www.lessonplans.com/
Great resource for lesson plans

http://english-4kids.com
Lessons, Worksheets, Fun Games, Tutorials, Powerpoint, Flashcards

http://www.sitesforteachers.com/index.html
Top educator sites ranked by popularity

http://www.characterization.ca/
Characterization Lesson Plans

http://www.resources-teachers.com/
Free Printables For Teachers, Math Worksheets, Coloring Pages, Clipart, Lessons, Stories, Games and more.

http://ajarn.com
The top teaching website in Thailand. Here you will find a ton of resources and tools to help you as a teacher, at all different levels, here in Thailand

http://www.ezschool.com/
Free educational materials for K-12, including worksheets, games, study tools and tutorials.

http://www.priceless-teaching-strategies.com/
Priceless Teaching Strategies provides hundreds of teaching strategies for elementary school teachers on topics such as classroom management, student motivation, classroom games and much more.

http://www.firstgradeplus.com/
An educational website where primary teachers will find FREE materials to supplement their drug prevention curriculum.

http://www.teacherwebsite.com
Just point and click, fill in the blanks, choose a picture and you will have a professional, colorful teacher website.

http://www.allteacherwebsites.com/
Google for Teachers!

http://teacherfaves.gotop100.com/index.php
Lots of teachers sites to browse through here!

Lots of amazing stuff here!
http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/School_Time/English/

Learning Games
http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/School_Time/Learning_Games/

ABC Teach: Includes dozens of free printable activities, research and report help, project and writing ideas, and diorama themes to print
http://www.abcteach.com/

Apples4theteacher.com: Features games and fun activities in art, music, foreign languages, English, math, science, and social studies. For students from kindergarten to the 6th grade
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/

BBC - Learning Schools: Learning resources for kids at home and at school. Find activities and games
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

Classroom Clipart: Provides educational clipart to be used on projects and reports. Clipart categories include countries, dinosaurs, animals, space, and weather
http://classroomclipart.com/

EZSchool: Interactive tutorials, printable worksheets, and games
http://www.ezschool.com/

Education Place: Free games, activities, and resources for students studying math, reading, social studies and science
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/

Enchanted Learning: Site for K-3rd grade students includes both online and printable activities for all subject areas
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html

Time for Time: Features interactive games, quizzes, animated time zones, class clock and the history of telling time. Includes lesson plans and create-your own worksheets for teachers
http://www.time-for-time.com/

Artificial Intelligence Tools in the ESL Classroom

Credit to Christoph C. Cemper - 23rd August 2023 - Links suggested by Eliza from Harrison Park Community Center located in Minnesota.

Between native speakers and those learning it as a second language, English is the most studied language in the world. Learning English can be particularly challenging for people who have not grown up in English-speaking countries, but today’s technology offers many tools to help people learn a new language. Some of these, like language learning apps, have become commonplace, while others are new and rapidly evolving, such as those built around or powered by artificial intelligence.

AI has the potential to revolutionize how people learn English as a second language in a variety of ways. One of the biggest strengths of AI-powered software in education is its ability to adapt to the needs of each learner. AI can tailor the difficulty of language exercises to the user and focus the material on areas that the user needs the most practice on. For instance, if the AI sees that a user is consistently having trouble forming the past tense of verbs, it might start gearing more of the exercises toward forming the past tense of regular verbs and common irregular verbs.

AI can also power instructional chatbots that act as virtual teachers. A human instructor cannot be available 24/7 to help their students, but an AI chatbot never needs to sleep: It can answer questions for English learners and offer instructional resources at any time of day. Any AI tool that can hold a conversation can also be a valuable learning aid for students learning English as a second language, as students can practice their English by interacting with these tools as if they are humans. The pace of text-based speech is slower, giving students more time to decode and comprehend the AI’s words, and reading these responses also helps to reinforce the rules of written English.

One other way that AI can help language learners is through real-time translations. Watching movies or TV shows with AI-generated captions turned on can help English learners to improve their pronunciation, since they can read the words as they hear them spoken. And AI-powered apps can also translate speech and written text from English to a person’s native language and vice versa, which can be a great help to learners trying to navigate an English-speaking environment.

Reading # Writing # Speaking # Listening # Other ESL Games and Teacher Tools #