These days, there are lots of online resources to help you learn English at home for free. Although the best resource is always a good teacher, you might only see your teacher a few hours a week. That leaves a lot of time for you to practice at home. Check out some of the tools below and let me know if there are any others I should add to the list.
Vocabulary
Quizlet– This app allows you to make flashcards and quizzes. Perfect for reviewing vocabulary. There are also flashcards and quizzes made by other people for the IELTS test.
Anki- Another great site for vocabulary. It is a spaced repetition flashcard program that will make remembering vocabulary easy.
Memrise– Memrise helps you learn words and phrases by using a spaced repetition program similar to Anki. All the materials are contributed by other users, so there are lots of materials ready to go.
Wordreference.com is a powerful translation tool.
Reading
Learning with texts allows you to paste in a section of text, note which words within that text you do and don’t know, quickly look up the words you don’t, and create flashcards from them.
The English Learner Movie Guides provide movie and character summaries, as well as words and phrases learners might not know from well-known movies.
Pronunciation
Forvo allows you to simply type in a word and hear how a native speaker would say it.
Sounds of Speech is an invaluable app for anyone learning phonemes. It animates the different mouth movements required to make each sound.
British Council Phonemic Chart allows you to see and listen to all of the sounds of English.
Listening
TuneIn Radio– With over 100,000 stations, TuneIn has the largest selection of free sports, music, talk & news radio from around the world.
RhinoSpike is an online language learning community that allows users around the world connect and exchange foreign language audio files. Get any foreign language text read aloud for you by a native speaker!
VOA Learning English allows you to listen to the news in English and improve your listening and vocabulary at the same time.
Lyrics Training provides gap-fills for well-known English songs. Great for listening, grammar, and vocabulary.
Speaking
Google+ Hangouts– Simply set up an account and connect with lots of people who want to practice speaking English.
iTalki is a language learning social network that connects students and language teachers.
Verbling lets language learners connect with native speakers around the world through live chat and video.
Bussuu.com is one of the biggest language exchange communities on the web.
Internations is a huge network of English speakers living abroad. Use it to connect with English speakers in your country.
VoiceThread is a tool that allows you to upload pictures and videos and then record yourself talking about them.
Writing
Lang 8 is a language learning platform where native speakers correct what you write.
Common Errors in English Usage explains common errors and how to avoid making them.
Grammarcheck.net allows you to input your writing and identify common grammar errors.
Purdue Online Writing Lab helps students by providing literacy materials, such as handouts and slide presentations. Students may also submit questions for feedback.