Skip to main content

5 Free Online Resources for Young English Language Learners

Learning a new language can be a fun and exciting experience, especially for younger children. The key is to keep them interested in what they are learning. Fortunately, the Internet provides many free games, flashcards, songs, books, and other resources that can entertain, engage, and educate young English language learners. Here are 15 resources worth exploring:

  • ESL-Kids.com provides worksheets, flashcards, games, and songs that children can use to learn English. The site also features an In Class section that demonstrates how to use these resources. 
  • Starfall  With this fun interactive English game site, beginning students can practice their ABCs and reading. Starfall is primarily for first grade children but works well for pre-K to second graders. 
  • BarryFunEnglish is an elementary student English learning site. Through this site, you will find worksheets, games, vocabulary builders, flashcards, listening and PowerPoint presentations. The PowerPoint presentations offer a fun, interactive way to practice vocabulary. Students should get registered to have access to the activities.
  • Wacky Web Tales website offers younger learners silly fill-in-the-blank stories that are designed to teach young learners about sentence structure and grammar. 
  • The International Children’s Digital Library features a huge online collection of books for children. and teenagers learning ESL. The library allows you to read books in English that pertain to different cultures. The books are easily searched through illustrated buttons or text. The website may be also used to understand how an online library is organized. Use your creativity to explote this site!
Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

Comments

Susana Canelo said…
Thanks for sharing Nelba !!!
Great sites indeed. I love Starfall, my students enjoy it,too. Simple stories with AUDIO, so they can practice a lot.
Really like Wacky stories, a funny idea to practice writing.And the last one is just amazing, full of books written in languages as "strange" as Danish, Mongolian or Persian. This children's library sounds like an amusement park!!!!
Anonymous said…
As a teacher, I tell students to learn difficult lessonsby going over them many times. Now, I also suggested to them, these flashcards to try out. Its quite simple to create these flashcards even for a technology newbie like me!

Popular posts from this blog

Science Fiction Topic

Why have I chosen Science Fiction? Well, there are some reasons. The first one may be closely related to human kind wondering to know about the future. Science fiction gives us an idea of what life may be like . Its hypotheses are based on recent technological achievements or reasearch plus the imagination of the writer. Evasion may be the second reason. I cannot complain about this present, but I would like a better future. A world with heroes and heroins with ideals fighting against... alliens, robots or very ambitious villains who want to dominate the wordls ( Oops, aren't I describing the present??? Finally, I like sci-fi because it suprises me either in written as well as visual form. I remembered that I was shocked by the cruelty of allienated children in Ray Bradbury's short story " The Prairie" when I was a teenager and had to read it for high school. And nowadays , the cinema does not stop surprising me with special effect. Do you like sci-fi?

My first Meme (pingback and trackback)

When did I start using Internet? I think it coincides with the economic change in Argentina ( 1 peso = 1 dollar) in the late 90's. I started using e-mailing. I have friedns and family living abroad or in other cities, and they usually complain about the fact that I am pretty lazy for writing letters and going to the post office. So, e-mailing was a solution for me. A really turning point took place in 2001 when I was invited to an on line course on " How to evalute websites" carried out by another Argentinean - Prof. Norma Scagnoli- working at the University of Illinois. She introduced me into the virtual world and there I met one of my dearest cyberfriends: Prof. Dafne Gonzalez. From that moment my virtual life started. I bagan exploring the net and that same year I opened my firs e-group: English Virtual Community. My first steps on the Internet were really awful. I used to have dial up connection, so my experience was a bit poor. I could not spend much time on line and...

My experience as an ICT coordinator PART ONE

At present I am working as ICT coordinator. I am supposed to help teachers using Web 2.0 tools in their ESL (English as a Second Language) classes and it is not an easy task! I have to deal with two problems: 1- Students are already motivated to use digital technologies because they belong to the "thumb" or "digital" generation , but they think they are only going to play intereactive games at the computing lab. In Argentina, Digital natives associate Internet with having fun: chatting with friends and playing interactive games since the school has not incorporated computers and the Internet as a learning tool, so I have to make them realise that we are going to work and practise the Second Language (SL) - English in this case- using computers. 2-On the other hand, teachers are still "digital immigrants" and they are , in a way, reluctant to include computing and Internet in their classes. :-( Some of them are completely technophobes and others are a bit ...