50 Amazing ESL Resources for Students (Free & Paid)

• Apr 19, 2024
• 10 min read

• Tags: Academic Writing, English as a Second Language / ESL, Language

Are you looking to improve your English language skills? Discover the best ESL resources to master grammar, expand your vocabulary, and enhance your communication skills. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, these resources will help.

We’ve also added free ESL resources for you. The resources listed include a huge variety of exercises, interactive videos, quizzes, games, and guides to help you. So without further delay, let’s jump into the details! 

Here are the top 50 ESL Resources: 

1. BBC Learning English 

Along with detailed guides to learn grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, it also has an option to learn business English. Every lesson contains a video, an explanation, and a quiz. BBC English also has a user-friendly interface where you can search for any English concept (e.g. adverbs/adjectives) and get lessons related to that concept. For those who prefer audio learning, it also offers podcasts like Office English, 6 Minute English, 6 Minute Grammar, 6 Minute Vocabulary, English in a Minute, etc. 

2. EnglishClub 

This website provides several exciting, free resources for ESL students such as games, quizzes, songs, and jokes. It also offers lessons to improve vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The games include crossword, hangman, matching homophones, pairing rhyming words, etc. For those who wish to learn B2B writing or prepare for English exams like TOEFL and IELTS, it provides detailed resources. 

3. English Central 

English Central provides 20,000+ video lessons to learn English. Videos are categorized 

into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Depending on your learning level, you can watch a video, learn new words, speak the words considering the context, and converse with a private teacher about a video (Go Live!). The videos are based on various topics like technology, animals, manners, science, health, school, etc. 

4. Dave’s ESL Cafe 

This online resource for ESL students includes grammar lessons, idioms, slang, lesson plans, information about phrasal verbs, and quizzes. There are detailed guides on various grammar topics such as adjective clauses, adverbs, tenses, question tags, articles, nouns, etc. There are various quizzes on idioms, slang, parts of speech, word forms, reading comprehension quizzes, etc. 

5. Wyzant 

This website offers vast academic resources for ESL students to enhance grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and reading. It provides detailed explanations of nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and other parts of speech, reading strategies, and quizzes to test your understanding. From how to combine sentences, and use gerunds and infinitives to understanding passive voice, it covers everything! 

6. ESL Lounge 

This website provides grammar guides explaining nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. With this, it offers reading exercises (where you’ve to read and answer true/false questions, multiple choice questions) and vocabulary exercises (where you’ve to list the nationalities, match the noun phrase with the possessive adjective, etc). It also includes quizzes to test grammar and vocabulary, listening exercises, pronunciation exercises, and games like crosswords, hangman, word search, etc.

7. Oxford Online English 

Oxford Online English is one of the best sites for studying spoken English, business English, grammar, pronunciation, writing, and IELTS preparation. This site provides a range of videos to help students learn formal and informal English, understand spelling rules, make complex sentences, and improve punctuation. This includes YouTube videos to help students learn and understand how to talk in real-life situations in English. For example, how to talk about your emotions, health, family, everyday problems, daily routine, etc. 

8. Purdue Online Writing Lab 

This website consists of an APA guide, an MLA guide, a Chicago guide, a resume guide, and rules for avoiding plagiarism. The style guide also includes an option to fill in the details of your citation and generate a citation as per the preferred style guide. It also consists of exercises to test your knowledge of sentence style, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, numbers, and multilingual exercises. 

9. British Council 

British Council not only offers structured lessons on grammar, vocabulary, business English, and general English but also provides online learning courses. It offers various learning formats such as audio, video, story, and magazines to help students learn general English. For professionals who wish to learn business English, it provides corporate training courses and podcasts such as change management, line management, public relations, relationship-building, etc. 

10. Activities for ESL Students 

Grammar quizzes, vocabulary quizzes, and crossword puzzles are included on this website. These quizzes have levels such as easy, medium, and difficult. There are also bilingual quizzes where the questions are asked in another language and you need to answer in English. For example, Arabic-English, French-English, German-English. 

11. Voa Learning English 

This website offers 3 options: beginning, intermediate, and advanced level. Every article topic includes a video and a quiz to ensure that you’ve understood the topic. From teaching pronunciation and correct word choice to helping students learn new words, this website covers everything! 

12. ESL Gold 

Learners can go through ESL Gold’s various resources such as conversational phrases, topics, and situations for conversations, videos, and reading exercises to improve their English skills. To enhance your vocabulary, ESL Gold gives a list of words, and phrases on topics such as animals, food, health, months, nationalities, numbers, etc. With this, to improve your speaking skills, it gives topics for roleplay conversations where you’ve to talk with another person about a specific subject (e.g. leaving, arriving, good news, etc). 

13. Language Guide 

This is one of the best ESL resources to learn vocabulary for beginners. It has various categories such as food, clothing, animals, nature, the house, the body, etc. By selecting a category, you can view images and words related to that category. It also provides you with the pronunciation of every word in the category. This app also includes speaking and listening challenges to enhance English skills. 

14. Breaking News English 

Breaking News English contains 5000+ English lessons on various topics like business English, environment, education, lifestyle, people, technology, world news, etc. Various options are given such as Level 0, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, etc. Once you select the level, you have the option to listen, read, match words, spell words, etc. 

15. Learn that word 

This is one of the best websites for improving your vocabulary and spelling. It has a database of 150,000+ words to enhance your vocabulary. Whether you want to learn SAT words or gain vocabulary for TOEFL/IELTS exams, this site is beneficial. The site also includes spelling games, and options to create your word lists for study. This site offers a free trial after which you’ll need to pay $2.49-$9.50 per month for an individual plan. 

16. English Media Lab 

English Media Lab is an interactive website that provides games, puzzles, and exercises to enhance listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. It helps you understand adverbs, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammar concepts through fun games. To understand spoken English topics such as agreeing and disagreeing, apologizing, getting to know someone, apologizing, asking permission, and greeting, it also gives several examples. 

17. English, Baby! 

English, Baby! is a fun website that has several interesting features like chatrooms, forums, quizzes, and the option to download English audio lessons. It offers free English lessons and also gives you the option to learn new vocabulary. Using this site, you can also find friends and practice English with them. To use this platform, you need to create an account. 

18. Funbrain 

Funbrain is one of the best resources for ESL students that helps to improve reading skills. It provides you options to select the grade from pre-kindergarten to 8th standard. Once you choose the grade, it will give you a list of reading resources and games like Word Derby that you can play while understanding grammar. 

19. EngVid 

This website provides English videos on various topics like business English, comprehension, culture and tips, expressions, grammar, speaking, vocabulary, and writing. With this, it also offers videos for students who wish to take TOEFL, IELTS, and TOEIC exams. Once you select the topic, it gives you a list of lessons where every lesson is categorized as per its difficulty level (beginner, learning, or intermediate). 

20. Perfect English Grammar 

Using this website, you can get explanations on various grammar topics, online courses on grammar topics, and exercises to test your grammar knowledge. Whether you want to learn about tenses, verb forms, question tags, relative clauses, adjectives, or adverbs, this website explains everything. The explanation for every concept also includes practical examples. With this, it also offers spoken English courses. 

21. ESL Lab 

This is one of the best ESL resources for improving listening skills. It includes videos on culture, interview videos, and audio clips about people’s life stories. By listening to these audio and videos and solving quizzes, learners can enhance their listening skills. With this, ESL labs also consist of additional activities such as language games, vocabulary lessons, and idioms to make English skills better. 

22. The English Learner Movie Guides

This website provides summaries of famous movies to help students learn vocabulary and enhance reading skills. It allows you to download summaries of the movies as a PDF. In the PDF, complex words and phrases are highlighted and their meanings are explained.  

23. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries 

This online resource for ESL students contains dictionaries for American English, Academic English, Collocations, and German-English dictionaries. With this, it also contains word lists on various topics like animals, appearance, communication, culture, food, drink, etc. It also explains various grammar concepts with examples and provides tests to practice the concepts learned. 

24. Forvo 

Forvo is one of the best sites for improving pronunciation skills. It gives you the option to search for any word and understand how it is pronounced. Forvo also has categories such as food, verbs, nouns, names, medicine, and adverbs. By selecting a category, you can listen to the pronunciation and learn to pronounce words for that category. 

25. Howsjay 

Howsjay is a free online English pronunciation dictionary. Using Howsjay, you can search for any word, know its definition, and hear its pronunciation. Howsjay also has various categories such as adverbs, chemistry, clothing, etc. You can select a category and pronounce words related to that category. It also is beneficial to learn how to pronounce commonly used phrases. 

26. ReadTheory 

This is one of the best websites to improve your reading skills. It consists of reading exercises, and worksheets to help students read better. From 1st grade to 12th grade, ESL and SPED worksheets, ReadTheory offers vast online resources for ESL students. The reading exercises include reading comprehension where a learner has to read paragraphs and answer questions about that paragraph. 

27. Rong Chang

This website provides resources for beginners and intermediate learners. It includes 200+ conversation topics, reading passages with 50 words, exercises to learn verbs, essays, and short story topics. With this, it also contains 100 dictation exercises and 27 sets of grammar exercises to test your knowledge. 

28. ELLO

ELLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online. It has more than 3,000 free listening lessons for learners. Elllo also includes 100+ grammar lessons where you can learn by watching short English conversations. It has various categories such as beginner A1 conversations, beginner A2 conversations, intermediate B1 conversations, etc. 

29. English Page 

English Page offers free ESL resources to learn grammar and vocabulary. It has detailed guides for verb tenses, prepositions, gerunds, vocabulary, articles, conditional forms, subjunctive nouns, etc. For learning irregular verbs, it provides free flashcards. With this, it also offers exercises to test your knowledge about verbs, prepositions, etc. To listen to all podcasts, you need to join by becoming a member. The cost for membership starts from 19 Euros for 3 months. 

30. Podcasts in English 

This website has 680 podcasts to help students improve their English skills. Depending on the difficulty level, the podcasts are categorized into 3 types: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. Once you select the level, it gives you a list of podcasts to choose from. 

31. WriteAndImprove 

This website has various workbooks and tasks to practice writing and enhance your writing skills. These tasks are categorized based on their difficulty level into beginner, intermediate, advanced, and business. It gives you various writing prompts to encourage you to write. These include prompts for writing emails, paragraphs, letters, essays, descriptions, and stories. It also has options such as IELTS Academic and IELTS Training to help students improve their writing skills for the IELTS exam. 

32. ESL Pod 

ESL Pod provides thousands of podcasts to help students learn English. Every audio lesson is 15- 30 minutes and includes a text learning guide of 8-10 pages. While you can have one free, sample lesson, to continue using it, you need to pay $29 per month. You can learn about speaking in daily life in English (everyday conversations) easily by downloading lessons from their Android or iOS app. 

33. Business English Pod 

From making presentations in English to preparing for job interviews, negotiating, socializing, and talking to customers, this site offers detailed resources. It also has various vocabulary categories like business idioms, business news, human resources, purchasing, and supply chain to enhance business English. While it offers a free trial, the membership cost starts from $75. 

34. English Grammar Online 

English Grammar Online is a simple and user-friendly website. It has various sections to learn grammar, and vocabulary, and improve reading skills. From guides about tenses, prepositions, and adjectives to how to create a CV, it covers a vast range of English topics. To make English learning fun, it also has games, quizzes, and riddles. This website also provides exercises to test the learner’s knowledge of grammar concepts like verbs. 

35. Talk English 

This website provides lessons to learn English speaking basics, business English, listening, idioms, phrases, and how to prepare for interviews. It also includes video lessons and audio files to listen to the entire lesson. With this, it also offers additional lessons to enhance pronunciation and vocabulary. To improve vocabulary, it has lists of commonly used words (e.g., top 1500 nouns, top 1000 verbs, top 500 adjectives. 

36. Ted Talks 

This is a great site to improve speaking skills, listening skills, and vocabulary. You can select an option from various categories such as psychology, leadership, health, AI, sleep, business, motivation, personal growth, etc. The site will display the most recent talks about that topic. You can then select the speaker of your choice.

37. BusinessEnglish.com

This website provides vocabulary exercises, grammar exercises, spelling tests, and verb conjugation practice to learn business English. It also offers valuable ESL resources for students to learn idioms about people, weather, sports, food, etc. With this, BusinessEnglish also includes dictation exercises for general English. 

38. Learn English Today 

Learn English Today includes thousands of free resources for ESL students. From grammar guides and exercises to idioms, proverbs, and vocabulary, it explains various English concepts. To learn English better, it also provides word games like crosswords, jumbled sentences, quizzes, missing words, etc. With this, it also provides resources to learn business English including vocabulary, conversation topics, and word games. 

39. ESL Galaxy 

ESL Galaxy is one of the best websites that provides vast online resources for ESL students (for beginner and intermediate learners). These include communicative board games, grammar and vocabulary worksheets, crossword puzzles, pronunciation exercises, etc. This site also provides English writing exercises on topics such as daily routine, weather, eating out, shopping, etc. 

40. ESL Fast 

This website offers 1,500 ESL conversations on 25 topics. Food, college life, at the library, daily life, dating, shopping, travel, and health, are some examples of English topics. Once you select a topic, you can choose to read a conversation depending on your requirements. From making an appointment, complaining, and reporting a problem to requesting a favor, it includes conversations on various topics. ESL Fast also provides an audio file of how the conversation will sound. 

41. ESL Conversation Questions 

This website helps to improve conversation skills by providing questions on various topics like animals, aging, computers, family, etc. It also includes questions focused on enhancing grammar and vocabulary, encouraging better spoken English at the same time. For example, the question ‘How fast do you eat?’ is included in the adverbs of manner category. 

42. FluentU

This resource includes more than 10,000 videos on various topics to enhance English. All videos are categorized into 6 levels (Beginner-1, 2, Intermediate- 1, 2, Advanced- 1, 2). To use FluentU, you can download its app from Apple’s app store or Google Play store.  It also consists of audio dialogues that you can easily download and listen to offline. 

43. Easy World of English 

Easy World of English contains various free courses to learn grammar, reading, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It consists of picture dictionaries on various topics such as professions, sports, tools and gadgets, etc. For testing reading skills, it gives a paragraph and asks questions related to that paragraph. The courses for reading and grammar are categorized based on their difficulty into levels 1, 2, and 3. To enhance pronunciation, this site offers lessons to understand alphabets, numbers, ‘t’ and ‘d’ sounds, numbers, minimal pairs, and special endings. 

44. Speakspeak

This website offers grammar and vocabulary exercises for beginners, intermediate-level, and business English. The exercises are on various topics like tenses, nouns, adjectives, etc. It also includes general knowledge quizzes on history, pop music, capital cities, countries, etc. 

45. Culips ESL podcast 

Culips contains 800+ episodes to enhance English speaking, listening, reading, and writing. You can listen to these episodes on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and Spotify. The podcasts help learners grasp idioms, know more words, and improve listening by hearing more interviews. Culips also assists learners in perfecting their pronunciation and has an option called real talk. This option helps learners how to converse in English in daily life. How to ask for a recommendation, compliment someone, apply for a part-time job, call 911, order flowers, etc are covered for learners. 

46. English-Zone 

English-Zone has detailed guides explaining adjectives, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammar concepts. With this, English-Zone includes dictionaries for idioms, phrasal verbs, and prepositional combinations. The website also gives information about spelling rules and reading tips. Along with this, fun games, and activities like “The Evil Lady Conversation Maze” make English language learning fun. 

47. Lyrics training 

Lyrics training helps learners improve their listening skills by encouraging them to hear songs and fill the gaps in song lyrics. This also helps to enhance grammar, and vocabulary and elevate their pronunciation. Once you select a song, it gives you various options like beginner, game mode, advanced, and expert. You can also create a free account to add lyrics for your favorite songs and compete with other users. 

48. Common Errors in English Usage 

This website highlights common word choice and grammatical errors in the English language. It has a list of alphabets. By selecting an alphabet, you can understand how people wrongly use that word and learn about the correct usage. This site also explains the meaning of words, gives examples, and provides any exceptions to the rules. 

49. Cram 

Cram provides thousands of flashcards to study and understand various English topics. It has a user-friendly interface where you can search the topic for which you require flashcards. You can also select from options such as careers, computers, language, military, law enforcement, etc, and view flashcards related to that subject. If you prefer learning from an app, you can download the Cram app from the Google Play store. 

50. Using English 

Using English has various ESL resources for students on English grammar, business communication, gestures, writing advice and tips, formal letter writing, bibliographies, citations, etc. This website also includes 296 exercises and grammar quizzes for learners. You can test your knowledge about parts of speech, spelling, or punctuation through various exercises. For more exercises, you can become a member by signing up for free. 

Now that you know the best ESL resources, you can use them to enhance your English. To improve your written English, you’ll also need to edit and proofread your documents. If you face any difficulty doing so, you can take advantage of our editing and proofreading services. Whether you require editing for your essay, assignment, dissertation, research paper, thesis, or business paper, we can help! 

Here are some other useful resources for you: 

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Priya

Priya has a talent for academic research and enjoys simplifying complex topics. When she's not helping students improve their writing, she can be seen reading poetry, playing the harmonium, or learning classical dance.