About.com ESL

How could I describe About.com ESL? In a nutshell, it is one greatly comprehensive website for ESL learners and teachers. Learners can subscribe to the beginning level, vocabulary, grammar lessons through emails once a week or to Word of the Day. Teachers can subscribe to newsletters dealing with teaching ideas, tips, and job opportunities. It also provides learning resources according to levels and language skills, teaching resources such as lesson plans, teaching techniques, printables, and quiz and exam samples, and a list of ESL/FL sites. It also provides materials for preparing TOEFL, IELTS, Cambridge exminations and lists of other online websites for them. I think this site would be a good starting point for learners or teachers who just began searching for online resources.

Online Language Courses

busuu.com offers free online courses in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, and French. The classes and resources are not totally free, but the free version is quite comprehensive. One of the best appeals of this website is that it has the feature of video-chat between members through which learners can practice speaking with nativer speakers or get help from others as well as help others. This site is great for both self-learners of English and teachers who can get useful teaching ideas from it. Before joining the site, you can make a video tour of its online classes which incorporate great features of computer-mediated learning/teaching.