English Virtual Community

Practicing English with a native speaker or another ESL student is a great way for international students to improve reading, writing, and speaking skills. There are many different sites that make it easy for students and other ESL learners to connect online. Here are a few sites to try: MyHappyPlanet - This online language learning community allows members to message native speakers from around the world. The site can also be used to learn about the English language and culture through videos and member-created lessons. italki - italki is a great place to find ESL partners. Members hail from more than 200 countries and are always eager to discuss and practice English reading, writing, speaking/listening, grammar, pronunciation, and more. MyLanguageExchange - More than one million people practice their language skills on MyLanguageExchange. The site employs the Cormier method of language exchange which groups native speakers of two languages so that they can spend half their tim...

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...

This is the second part of the post written by Karen Schweitzer who kindly offered herself to contribute to this blog. Thank you, Karen for this contribution!!! MIT Open CourseWare - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers dozens of free foreign language and literature courses through their OpenCourseWare site. All of the courses are self-paced. Many include audio, video, lecture notes, assignments, reading lists, exams, and other downloadable study materials. Cramberry - Cramberry offers many hi-tech web-based flashcards for English language learners. Users can also create their own flashcards and track online progress. Popling - Popling is a way for language learners to learn without actively studying. This desktop app pops flashcards onto a computer screen at regular intervals so that users can learn new English vocabulary words while completing other computer tasks. Visual ESL - VisualESL.com provides a wide range of interactive video activities for English langu...

This post was written by Karen Schweitzer who kindly offered herself to contribute to this blog. Karen Schweitzer, Business School Guide for About.com, writes about online colleges for OnlineColleges.net. Thank you, Karen for this contribution!!! "Incorporating hi-tech learning aids and applications into a study regimen can sometimes make it easier for language learners to learn and retain new information. You can order many of these products for a cost from catalogs or from companies who provide such services. You can also find free options online . Most of the free options work just as well as the paid options and can be used indefinitely without incurring any costs. This list provides information about 5 free online tools that can be used for language learning. ( I will be including more online tools suggested by Karen in future posts, don´t miss them ) : 1- FreeRice - Language learners can give free rice to hungry people by playing this English vocabulary game from the UN F...