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Learn a Language with free online language lessons, interactive games, and fun lessons. Learn up to 8 foreign languages with Visual Link Languages. Pick a language and start learning.

This website is neat as it has a updating blog and a culture section for language learning.

Claire Siskin's site gives a rather comprehensive list of mobile apps for language learning. The apps categorized according social networking apps, instructional apps, repurposed apps, make your own exercises and general references. For anyone interested in Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), this is a great place to begin experimenting with different applications.

The BBC put this website together to help individuals learn languages on their own time. The site offers 12 week on-line language courses for free as well as links to other useful resources for learning a second language. It is an easy website to use and very useful for students who want to do some extensive listening in the language they are trying to learn because it provides links to movies, children's show, news feeds, etc. that the student can listen to.

iTunes has a plethora of podcasts available for free, many of which are for language purposes. Podcasts are audio shows, so to speak, which are uploaded in an episodic fashion. I browsed through some of the language podcasts, including ElementalEnglish.com's "English Pronunciation and Language Lessons," the VOA's "American Stories--Voice of America," and BBC World Service's "English at Work." In the podcast descriptions, the authors usually list language level, and the speakers tend to modify their input so listeners can understand. These types of podcasts are useful for listening practice and for supplementary material in the classroom. There are other podcasts available as well, ranging from Mugglenet's MuggleCast (a Harry Potter themed podcast) to podcasts dedicated to comedians. These podcasts can be useful in the language classroom, as they present more authentic listening material, especially for more advanced learners. Podcasts are a great way for students to engage in their interests while practicing listening, with just one potential set-back: the set up. To access the podcasts, students must download iTunes (if they do not already have it) or it needs to be downloaded onto school computers. From there, one can access the Apple Store (though podcasts are mostly free), and then they can browse the selection. It can be tricky at times to find a good one, but once you do, the podcast can be downloaded onto mp3 players, so students can listen to them on the go, if they want. Note: Because the iTunes store is accessed through iTunes, I could not put a URL. The one above does, however, provide more information on what goes into making a podcast.

Language Cloud makes it easy for language schools to manage classes and engage teachers and students online, with language-learning tools built right in.

A language learning website that has various languages, and different native language ESLs (e.g. Korean ESL or French ESL). Because it doesn't have Mandarin ESL, I tried Cantonese ESL. It worked very well. It integrated listening, speaking, and grammar in a beginner level class, and used dialogues to introduce the key content for a particular class. It is worth to try.

While browsing the language learning resources from various universities, I came across these links for international broadcasts on Indiana University's website. There is also a link to SCOLA, a non-profit that provides authentic foreign language learning resources. You can get a SCOLA app or web subscription. In terms of evaluating foreign language news sites, I'd say to use similar criteria as you would in evaluating other classroom activities. Does the content relate to class material and/or student interests? Is the level appropriate (vocabulary, pace, etc)? Is the length appropriate, and can you justify using class time to watch or read this material?

Wordle isn't necessarily ESL focused, but it does do fun things with language. Teachers can use this application to create vocabulary word splashes that are visually appealing to students, or teachers can let students play with their own words. For example, students can input an essay and world will pick out the most frequent words and put them into a cool design. It's a simple and easy way to manipulate language.

Jena, I'm glad you posted this. I think that this has some great potential for introducing vocabulary in the pre- or -post phases of a lesson for different skills or content classes. I like that you can choose different fonts, # of words that can be displayed and the direction of displayed words. You can also embed this into blogs and wikis. For a good blog post on using word clouds in the classroom, you might want to check out Nic Peachey's post on this subject: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-word-clouds-in-efl-esl.html As an aside, in my opinion this guy is perhaps one of the most active technology/CALL ESL people on the web. I get a lot of great ideas from reading his blog posts and other resources.

This is very interesting.. It can be used by teachers of vocabulary and writing.. I like the fact that it can be used ina number of ways. Thanks Jena

Live Mocha is an online multi-language community that can be used in a number of ways: Members can write and/or video chat to speakers of their target language, complete practice exercises in all skill areas, and record themselves speaking so other members can review submissions and offer suggestions (if they do not want to do a live video chat). As a teacher, I believe this website is a great resource, especially to supplement in-class materials. Students can sign up (membership is free) and communicate regularly with native speakers of their target language. For a reading and writing class, this website would be a fairly easy one to use in order to set up pen pals. For a listening and speaking class, the role plays and video dialogues could be useful.

Livemocha is a site I personally use to improve my L2. You can learn for free through an exchange program of helping others and in return they help you. On the other hand you can sign up for a personal tutor for a fee.

A resource for free online English lessons and exercises. A place for learning English in class or at home! Grade school (K-12), General Educational Development (GED), English as a Second Language (ESL), and all interested in advancing their knowledge of the English language should be able to benefit from this website. We offer a large variety of accurate and concise skill building resources geared towards a range of ability levels. We hope you find our resources visually appealing, straightforward, easy to locate, and able to capture the essence of the English language. No registration is required to access these resources.

Who doesn't love a game? We're creating language games that make some of the trickier aspects of learning English fun. They're equally addictive fun for fluent English speakers.

This website includes already created flashcards for a variety of subjects, including languages. The languages section has flashcard sets for many different languages, the largest flashcard set being English. You can access pre-made flashcard sets, or create your own.

Free site that matches you with a penpal from one of 133 countries. Could be used to help students find someone to practice their language skills with.

"Quizzes, tests, exercises and puzzles to help you learn English as a Second Language (ESL). This project of The Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org) has thousands of contributions by many teachers." This site offers quizzes and crosswords for students learning English as well as bilinbual quizzes that take the students first language into account. It has a pretty large bilingual quiz base that uses many of the worlds languages from Zulu to Spanish to Arabic. It seems to be a little childish looking and there aren't a ton of quizzes to choose from but it could definitely be a good resource for extra practice for students.

This site provides lessons for differing level of English speakers (as well as some other languages) They are free and happen at the same times every week. The downside is that there are not very many different lessons and they work through Second Life which is a free virtual world. You have to make an avatar and then go to the virtual site of the lesson in order to participate. This could be very fun for some learners because it is kind of like playing a video game that also has language lessons.

Checklists for evaluating language learning software by the National Foreign Language Resource Center in Hawaii. The focus is on courseware, but the information is still valuable.

These are really interesting videos that you could assign. Students have the option to read subtitles (sometimes up to 30 or so languages in subtitles). They could listen and read in their language and then in the target language. Comprehension could improve because students already know the content. Good listening exercise, too. This video is called "What adults can learn from kids." One of my favorites is about dance - of course, it's called "Dance vs. powerpoint…." That title makes me smile! http://www.ted.com/talks/john_bohannon_dance_vs_powerpoint_a_modest_proposal.html Another one on teaching: http://www.ted.com/playlists/11/the_creative_spark.html

Eslpod is a site replete with listening passages for English language students on a variety of subjects. Where eslpod differs from sites such as Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab is that following the listening passage portion of the podcast is an explanation of the vocabulary included in the passage and what the speakers meant in certain portions. This site has the potential to be incorporated into a listening and speaking class in that the explanation portion of the podcast serves as a lecture of sorts. Students might benefit most if required to complete a listening guide while listening to the passage. Eslpod may in fact offer such resources, yet they are unavailable without a membership. Regardless, the podcasts are free to listen to, are clearly articulated, and delivered at a rate to benefit English language students.

Some of us discussed pecha kuchu last semester in Dr. Stoller's foundations course. It's a method of presentation that literally translates to "death by power point." The idea came about because people were getting so bored at large conferences when presenters were going on and on about there research. This style of presentation allows each slide to be up for 20 seconds and the total time is 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Presenters were not allowed to go over this allotted time. Students in Dr. Stoller's class last semester were given 5 minutes to present on the research we did all semester. Personally, I found it difficult to present all the information I wanted to, but I also was surprised by how much I could actually fit into five minutes. So how does this relate to language learning/teaching? Pecha Flickr is a program that allows you to type in a tag word, like fish or dog. Then, it will pull up different pictures on Flickr that are tagged with those words for 20 seconds at a time. Students could give a mock presentation or even be writing sentences for the 20 seconds each picture is shown. This is a creative and fun way to get students to think on the spot using random pictures. Although I feel this would be a fun and creative way to get students thinking, I would be cautious using this because some of the pictures are tagged inaccurately. For example, I typed in fish as the tag and the second picture was a couple kissing. However, this might be a unique way to bring in slang and informal language. Kissing with a fish face?

Eyercize has significant potential in high-intermediate and high level language learning classrooms. The premise is fairly simple. The site allows users to paste text into a text box. From there, the users can learn to read faster in that the site will sequentially highlight groups of words at a time. The site allows the user to adjust how many words are highlighted and at what speed the highlighting occurs. Teaching language learners and readers of all types to read in such a matter is important in that advanced readers do not read one letter or word at a time, for the most part. Advanced readers take in groups of words and quickly progress through a passage. Eyercize can help learners learn this ability.