Useful links

Below you'll find some useful links, both for English language teachers and English learners.  Please note: these links are here because I’ve personally found them very useful.  I’m not being paid, or even encouraged by, these organisations to mention them.

Getting qualified as an English teacher:

CELTA Course to become an English teacher | IH Madrid (Note: There are International Houses all over the world, and they have a great reputation for CELTA.  I've chosen this one because I did my course in Spain.)

TEFL.org  - a wealth of information about teaching English as a foreign language, with various good, accredited online TEFL courses. As well as the initial TEFL qualification, they also have several more advanced courses for qualified teachers.

My top four websites for lesson planning or learning:

Linguahouse.com - a wide range of lessons plans for teachers.    

Test English - an excellent source of useful and engaging explanations followed by tests, as well as listening and reading comprehensions that you can use or adapt for different students. 

Perfect-english-grammar.com  - I love this website because it explains grammar points in an astonishingly clear way, and follows up with clear and useful exercises.

Brays ESLmooc Fun and varied resources and games.

Help with Pronunciation

Improve Your Pronunciation with BBC Learning English - Introduction - YouTube - A series of videos showing and explaining all of the vowel sounds in English. Videos are clear and the symbols/examples are really well explained.

toPhonetics - A website where you can type in words and have them translated to phonetic symbols. Great fun and very useful once you know the phonetic alphabet.

Using phonetics to help improve your pronunciation  - This is the first of a series of blogs on my website, running from end January to end February 2023. You can also check out my other blogs here.

 

Other useful websites:

Socratica – videos explaining grammar for beginners in a very clear and accessible way.

Thoughtco.com - A huge range of interesting articles on English as a second language.

UsingEnglish.com - articles on learning English.     

Newsinlevels.com - English news and articles written for different levels. 

Two excellent websites with their own online courses: 

BBC Learning English and Englishgrammar.org.

 

Additional book resources:

English Grammar in Use and English Vocabulary in Use - Cambridge University Press: This is an excellent range of  best-selling textbooks from elementary to advanced levels.

Business Vocabulary in Use – Cambridge University Press.

English for Everyone – English Grammar Guide.  (There are other ‘English for Everyone’ books, but I can’t recommend them).

Easy Learning English Verbs – HarperCollins Publishers.

Work on Your Accent – Collins publishers.