Dave's ESL Cafe has the feel of an international cafe with teachers and students of English dropping in to exchange advice, respond to queries or post new resources on the open forums. It also has activities for learners to practice phrasal verbs, grammar or verb tenses. Dave's ESL Cafe also offers creative lesson plan ideas for teachers.
Handouts Online offers worksheets that can printed and photocopied. Some of the handouts are free, while others require that you pay a low annual membership fee. The worksheets are fill-in-the-blank format and facilitate group work. They are written by qualified teachers and also include instructions on how best to use the handouts and incorporate them into other activities.
The ESL Partyland site is unusual in that it features lists of conversation questions broken down into various categories, such as houses and architecture or the environment and you. Each list contains at least 15 questions with links to related teachable material.
Conversation classes are best if they are structured. It is tedious, if not impossible, for beginning ESL students to talk about art for one hour. This Web site gives teachers ways to expand on the conversation questions. Additionally, there are quizzes for students and tips for teachers on how to best use their resources.
BBC World English is the English language arm of the news organization. BBC editors have reformatted articles for students of English. They present the most relevant stories of the day in an easier-to-understand article than those that are in the regular newspaper. Also included are quizzes and vocabulary exercises related to the articles as well as audio and video activities.
For students, after you feel as though you have crammed every idiom and verb into your head, you may be ready for a standarized English test. In Europe, the leading English certificates are administered by the University of Cambridge. Once the certificate is earned, it is valid for life. Those who apply to an American school or job, usually must present their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores. Educational Testing Service (ETS) administers the TOEFL, which covers academic English, and the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), which is more business-related.