Study Resources
The Internet offers many resources for those who are studying English, are preparing exams like the TOEFL or GRE or applying to American universities. The Internet resources on this page are divided by area of interest. In many areas, there are two different types of websites:
- You will find websites with activities and information written for students.
- You will also find authentic resources where you can practice reading or listening to texts intended for native speakers.
Grammar | Oral Communication | Listening | Reading | Writing | Vocabulary | Pronunciation | Test Preparation | Dictionaries | | Current Events (News) | Other Collections | Academic Study Resources
Grammar Resources
- Grammar Safari: Explore English Grammar and Vocabulary on the Web
- Internet TESOL Journal's Self-Study Quizzes for Grammar: Extensive collection of self-study quizzes on many grammar topics!
- About's Grammar Links: A comprehensive list of links with general information as well as links for help with understanding specific grammar points.
- Guide to Grammar and Writing: This website has information and interactive quizzes on a variety of topics at different levels such as "Word and Sentence level", Paragraph Level" and "Essay and Research Paper Level".
- Concordance sites: A concordance program is a computer program that can help you analyze the language that is used in real situations (example). This webpage has links to several places you can use these programs for free.
- Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips : This website covers many common grammar questions.
Oral Communication Resources
- Grand Canyon Travel Simulation : A trip planning simulation designed to do in class.
- About's Vocabulary Links: While most of these links are to references to vocabulary word groups, there are several pages with appropriate conversation strategies such as "saying no nicely" or making suggestions.
Listening Resources
Student Resource: Websites designed for ESL students
- Model Presentation: Interactive activity in which you can listen to and analyze a model presentation given on California.
- Randall's Cyber Listening Lab: Lots of interactive lessons with Real Audio. Lessons are divided by level - easy, medium, difficult.
- About's Listening Links: A collection of links to listening sites that are organized by level and type of skill such as comprehension, pronunciation, recognition of accents, etc.
- The English Learner Movie Guide: This website helps you prepare to watch well known movies by giving you a plot summary and important background and vocabulary. It does not have actual listening links, however.
Authentic Listening Sites: News Websites
- Welcome to NPR: National Public Radio home page for its programs. This is a list of all the NPR radio programs available.
- WILL-am: U of I's radio station Focus 580 has archived radio segments that students can listen to online.
- PBS Newshour: Most recent programs have both RealAudio and Video versions of their segments. There is also a search engine for video segments, and the link for the Newshour Transcripts.
- CNN Video: This website has a variety of video articles on many different topics.
- ABC News - 20/20: This website has video clips from a new magazine show on ABC.
- BBC Radio 4: If you would like to try listening to a non-American accent, try this British BBC Radio website.
- Forbes News Network: This website has video related to business topics.
- CBS News video: This website is associated with CBS and has video clips on a variety of topics.
- Audio and Video Podcasts from CNN: On this website you watch video or subscribe to popular CNN news podcasts.
Authentic Listening Websites: Other Audio-Video websites
- Hulu.com: Watch TV episodes and other video content online.
- Pulse of the Planet: From National Geographic: These are short audio segments on cultural and scientific topics from around the world.
- American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States: On this site, you can read and hear famous speeches both from American history and movies. It has an online speech bank, a section for the top 100 speeches, a section of movie speeches and one called "figures in sound" which has short audio clips from well-known speeches, movies, sermons, popular songs, and sensational media events.
- The History Channel: Links to video and audio clips on a variety of historical events. There is also a great speech archive.
- StoryCorps: Listen to real people tell stories about their lives and experiences.
- Wired for books: This is a great site where you can listen to interviews with famous authors and readings of famous books, poems and more.
- Learn Out Loud: This website has a wide variety of free audio and video learning resources. Free audio books, lectures, speeches and much more.
- Big Think: This website has normal people and well-known thinkers give their opinions on a variety of topics.
- This American Life: A weekly program with stories from Americans on a specific weekly theme. An IEI favorite.
- Charlie Rose: A very popular and well-respected interview program.
- Intelligence Squared: A debate site where well-known experts engage in formal debate on many different topics.
Authentic Listening Websites: Presentations and Lectures
- Ted Talks: This website has short talks on a variety of topics. Great site!
- Free Science Videos and Lectures Online: As the name suggests, this site has free lectures and videos on a wide variety of science-related topics.
- Free Online Lectures from the University of California at Berkeley : This website has links to mp3 versions of lectures given at Berkeley on a wide variety of topics.
- Free Online University Lectures : This website has links to several US universities that have online lectures you can listen to for free.
- Free Online lectures from around the World (in English): The website has lectures from universities and events around the world.
- Free Online lectures from Princeton University: This website has links to lectures given at Princeton on many different topics.
- Free Online lectures from MIT: This website has links to lectures given at MIT on many different topics.
- Free Online lectures from MIT courses: This website offers video lectures from specific courses offered at MIT. This site is different from the one above.
- Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning : This excellent course website is from Harvard. You can watch the classes online or download them through iTunes U.
- Harvard @ Home: This website has a series of lectures and debates given at Harvard University.
Reading Resources
Student Resources
- About's Reading Links: About has links to many types of reading exercises.
- Reading Better and Faster
- Interlink's Interactive Reading Quizzes
- News for You
Authentic Reading Resources
Newspapers
- The New York Times -
- USA Today
- The Los Angeles Times
- The Washington Post
- The Christian Science Monitor
- News Central - Links to newspapers from all over the United States
Magazines, Online Books and other Reading Resources
- Time
- Newsweek
- CNN.com
- Discover
- The Smithsonian
- US News and World Report
- Reader's Digest
- Books Online
Writing Resources
Writing for Beginners
- About's Writing Links and About's Writing Resource Links
- Writing an Essay Question: Information on how to write a good essay question from the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
Academic Writing Resources
- Paradigm Online Writing Assistant: An interactive on-line writing tutorial.
- Purdue University: Purdue's website has extensive resources for academic writing, including a special section for ESL.
- Dartmouth University: This page from Dartmouth explains the cultural thinking behind American academic writing. Dartmouth also offers a page with other writing resources for students.
- St. Cloud State's LEO: LEO provides handouts about a variety of writing topics.
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: This page from Illinois contains many tips for academic writing.
- The University of Wisconsin: Wisconsin's site provides materials for common issues in academic writing.
Writing in Different Academic Areas
- Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students: This website provides guidelines for engineering writing and scientific writing that are designed to help students communicate their technical work.
- Harvard University: This website has information on how to write different styles of papers in the humanities, such as history, psychology and philosophy.
- MLA/APA/CMS/CSE Research and Documentation: This website discusses how to find and document sources in the Humanities, the Social Sciences, History and the Sciences.
- Monash University: This website has both general information on how to write essays, reports, etc. It has tutorials on how to write for a wide variety of disciplines such as Art&Design, Business and Economics, Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine and Science.
Writing Resumes and Cover Letters
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign Career Center: Check this website for examples of writing needed for job searches
Statements of Purpose
For Undergraduate Students
For Graduate Students
Vocabulary Resources
- Internet TESOL Journal's Self-Study Quizzes for Vocabulary: Extensive collection of self-study quizzes on vocabulary!
- Dave Sperling and Dennis Oliver's Phrasal Verb Page: Nice collection of multi-word verbs with meanings and examples
- About's Vocabulary Links: Most of these links are to references for vocabulary word groups. As mentioned above, also included are pages with appropriate conversation strategies.
- COCA: The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest freely-available corpus of English, and the only large and balanced corpus of American English.
Pronunciation Resources
- Phonetics Flash Animation Project: This website has visual images of how sounds are produced as well as examples of how letters sound at the beginning, middle and end of a word. Requires Flash and QuickTime to see the animation and video. From University of Iowa
- About's Pronunciation Links: A comprehensive list of links to references related to pronunciation
- English Club: You'll find a few exercises for word stress, sentence stress, and how to pronounce "-ed" in past tense.
- Pronouncing Sounds of English: Pairs of sounds are presented. There are descriptions, drawings, audio recordings and some video of mouth positions for different sounds. By Sharon Widmayer and Holly Gray
- American English Pronunciation Practice: Listening exercises to practice distinguishing between commonly mixed up vowel sounds and consonant sounds. You'll need Flash Player. By Charles I. Kelly
- Randall's Listening Lab: Listening exercises to practice distinguishing r/l, b/v, f/v, s/sh in the medium skill section. Plus lots more listening practice.
- ESL: Pronunciation: An excellent collection of pronuciation links from the Internet TESL journal.
- Jennifer's ESL: This teacher has done a series of short videos on a wide variety of pronunciation topics.
Test Preparation
- TOEFL Homepage: Check here for the best official information about the TOEFL from the organization that gives it, including practice questions.
- IELTS Homepage
- TOEIC Homepage: Check here for the best official information about the TOEIC from the organization that gives it.
- MBA.com: This site helps students who are interested in attending MBA school in the US and need to take the GMAT.
- GRE Homepage
- SAT Homepage9
- GMAT Homepage
Online Dictionaries
- The Newbury House Dictionary of American English: This dictionary allows you to search their database of over 40,000 entries. Also features a "Word of the Day."
- Cambridge Dictionaries: Search for idioms and phrasal verbs in addition to any other English words.
- Online Thesaurus: Find synonyms and definitions.
- Merriam-Webster: Online version of the well-known American Dictionary.
- Dictionary.com : This dictionary has several sections: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Flash Cards, Quotes and more.
Other Collections of ESL Resources
Several of these collections were used as a starting point for selecting some of the resources included above.
- About's English as a Second Language site: One of the best resource sites out there with several pages of resource links for many different topics.
- Dave's ESL Cafe on the Web: A favorite ESL website with lots of resources for students.
- The Ohio University CALL Lab English Resources Page: An extensive and impressive well-organized collection of links to all kinds of English resources.
- Rong-Chang Li's ESL Page: A collection of links to many resources of various types.
- Englishtown: This online English school also has a lot of free resources for students to use.
Resources for Academic Study in the US
- International Admission at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign:
- Petersen’s Colleges and Universities Information
- eduPASS The SmartStudent Guide to Studying in the USA5
- Graduate Fields of Study
- U.S. News and World Report rankings of colleges/universities and
graduate schools7
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