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Student Study Resources

These online resources will help you practice what you've learned in class. Please have a look at these resources compiled by your instructors.

Grammar

Integrated/Video

  • Breaking News English
    Current events presented as reading and listening passages at a variety of levels. Students can listen to British or North American versions. There are a variety of activities and exercises online (including speed reading) and printable 2-page mini-lessons or longer 26-page lesson plans.

  • English Central
    A large collection of videos on a variety of topics at various levels. Activities include listening, reading, vocabulary, and speaking. All of the content and activities are free. With a paid version, students can track their progress.

Keyboarding

  • Dance Mat Typing
    Improve your keyboarding skills ⁠— made for children (cartoon characters, games, etc.)

  • Typing.com
    Improve your keyboarding skills--made for adults (more “serious” interface than Dance Mat)

Listening

  • Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab
    A great variety of listening passages for all levels. There are lots of activities and the option of viewing the script for the passage.

  • Natural Reader
    Type or paste text into a box and hear it spoken.

  • English Page
    Grammar tutorials with many practice exercises; vocabulary, reading, and listening exercises

Reading

  • Newsela
    Current news articles, each written at 5 levels. (Go to Browse Content/News for free resources.)

  • Spreeder
    Speed reading website. Customizable to “play” any digitized text at the learner’s target reading speed (words per minute). Chunking possible.

  • Eyercise
    Speed reading website.  Assists rapid eye movement by sliding a highlighter across a band of words. Chunk size and speed determined by user.  *speed (words per minute) not 100% accurate

  • English Page
    Grammar tutorials with many practice exercises; vocabulary, reading, and listening exercises

Speaking/Pronunciation

  • Phonetics: The Sounds of English
    A very useful site from the University of Iowa that allows students to click on a phoneme and see an animated physiological demonstration of how it is pronounced and a video of a native speaker pronouncing words containing the phoneme in different positions.

  • Rachel’s English
    Pronunciation website with video-tutorials.  Excellent for IPA and suprasegmentals (pronunciation across sounds; sentence-level pronunciation)

  • Read Speeder
    Speed reading website. Use included books or upload your own. Register to chart your progress.

  • Talktyper
    Have students speak and compare with the computer-generated transcription.

  • Train Your Accent
    A site by Randall Davis that assists students with reduced speech.

  • Vocaroo
    A very handy tool for collecting audio from students. No downloads or registration required. Students can email you directly from the site or send or paste a URL. Try it!

TOEFL

Vocabulary

  • COCA Concordancer
    Concordancer that shows words in expanded context, also great for collocations and examining language in use

  • Language Guide
    Advanced picture dictionary with options for text, listening, and speaking practice

  • Lextutor
    Test and learn words in the frequency lists

  • Longman Dictionary Online
    English to English online dictionary made for adult English language learners

  • Word and Phrase.info
    Concordancer that is great for word families, synonyms, register, frequency and seeing words in context

  • Wordly Wise
    Leveled vocabulary lists with extensive instruction and practice.

  • English Page
    Grammar tutorials with many practice exercises; vocabulary, reading, and listening exercises

    Crosswordsolver.com
    Free online thesaurus 

Writing