Languages
English and ESL Resources
PETERSON'S TESTING & EDUCATION REFERENCE CENTER offers free practice tests, study tips, test prep eBooks and related resources for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). You'll need your library card barcode to get started.
Acronyma - Need to know what acronyms like GPS or VDT stand for? Acronyma is searchable database of nearly half a million acronyms in English, Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese. The Acronym Finder also offers links to additional information about your search term. (Commercial sites)
Ask Oxford - An authoritative source of guidance for those wishing to write or speak English correctly. The site includes English FAQs, dictionaries, quizzes, crosswords, quotes, language links, and more. For American English, choose 'US view' near the upper right-hand corner of the page. (Oxford University Press)
Boggle's World ESL Teaching Resources - Worksheets, lesson plans, puzzles, flashcards, and other aids for teaching English as a Second Language. (Commercial site; maintained by a group of ESL teachers in Asia and North America)
Business English for Adults - Free lessons, tips and games. Scroll down to get to the list of exercises and other materials. (By teacher Pearson Brown, personal / commercial site)
Confusing Words - Searchable collection of thousands of words that are troublesome to readers and writers (by Richard & Anne Wanderman et al.; personal site). See also Commonly Confused Words (Oxford University Press).
Connect With English 
- This series of video lessons tells the story of Rebecca, an aspiring singer on a journey across America, touching on issues such as leaving home, parenting, education, work, love, success, and loss. Each episode features dialogue that is slightly slowed down and simplified. NOTE: Free registration is required to view the videos. (Annenberg/CPB)
Dictionaries: Farlex Free Dictionary 
- 'English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms Encyclopedia, a Literature Reference Library, and a Search Engine all in one.' The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary & Thesaurus also includes pronunciation audio. Or use the
OneLook® Dictionary Search (described below) to search dozens of web-based dictionaries from one site. (Commercial sites)
Do You Speak American? - An exploration of modern American English, including slang, regional dialects, and the influence of different ethnic groups. (PBS)
Elements of Style - William Strunk's classic reference book on 'the principal requirements of plain English style... the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. (Bartleby.com; commercial site)
English as a Second Language - Use the menu on the left-hand side of the screen to find links to resources for listening, reading, writing, and speaking English, as well as newspapers, magazines, quizzes, games, dictionaries, and more. (By Ron Chang Lee [Rong-Chang Li], personal / commercial site)
English online: Materials for Teaching & Learning - A large set of links to useful ESL materials covering grammar, quizzes, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, speaking, and much more (by Eva L. Easton, personal site). You can find smaller selections of good links at Language Links: ESL / EFL Resources (By Lauren Rosen, Univ. of Wisconsin Collaborative Language Program) and
ESL Resources
(Purdue University).
ESL Beginners & Primary Resources - Links to hundreds of ESL websites which have been reviewed and selected by K-12 educators. (Shelby County [TN] Schools)
ESL Gold - Another site with lots of resources for ESL learners and teachers. The site's front page may be viewed in English or any of 16 other languages, including Chinese (simplified or traditional), Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Thai, Russian, Polish, Italian, French, German, Turkish, or Indonesian. (Commercial site)
ESL Links - Links to lots of English quizzes, games & puzzles, plus vocabulary, reading, grammar, and more. Separate sections for students and teachers. (Internet TESL Journal)
ESL Teachers' Toolkit - 'This toolkit provides a variety of materials to help language and literacy instructors who are new to serving adults and families learning English... includes a first-day orientation guide, lesson plans, and research-to-practice papers on English language and literacy learning.' PDF format. (Center for Adult English Language Acquisition, Center for Applied Linguistics)
Frequently Mispronounced Words - A list of one hundred commonly mispronounced English words, along with advice on the correct pronunciation. If you click on a linked word you will get the definition and pronunciation audio, but the audio is not very clear. See also Frequently Misspelled Words. (YourDictionary.com)
Glossarist - Need to know the meaning of a term in some specialized subject area, like music, astronomy, or computer science? The Glossarist provides links to thousands of glossaries, or topical dictionaries, on a wide range of topics; you can search by keyword or browse by category. See also specialized dictionaries at YourDictionary.com. (Commercial sites)
Interesting Things for ESL Students - Word games, puzzles, quizzes, slang, proverbs and more, for students of English as a second language. (By Charles Kelly, personal site)
The Key - News stories written for adults with limited reading skills, including those who have not completed their high school educations, those learning English, and those with learning disabilities. (Journal Communications et al.)
Literacy Programs of New Jersey - Programs and services to help adult, native speakers of English, and those whose native language is not English, to acquire the basic skills in reading, speaking, and writing English necessary to participate more fully in the daily tasks of family, school, job and community. (Formerly Literacy Volunteers of Middlesex)
Literacy Services in Middlesex County - A PDF directory of service providers in Middlesex County who offer training in English as a Second Language (ESL), Citizenship/Civics, Adult Reading & Math, GED Preparation, and more.
Literacy Volunteers of Middlesex is now: Literacy Programs of New Jersey.
Literacy Volunteers of New Jersey - A nonprofit educational organization which provides training, technical assistance, communications, and program support to adult literacy organizations in New Jersey. Website includes contact information for local/county literacy groups, and links to groups with their own websites.
Literacy Volunteers of Plainfield - A local organization where you can get a tutor, or volunteer to be a tutor.
OneLook® Dictionary Search - Enter a word or phrase in the search box and OneLook quickly searches dozens of web-based dictionaries for definitions or translations. 'If you don't know how to spell the word, we'll help you do that too.' Indexes more than 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries (commercial site).
Perfect Pronunciation - Listen-and-repeat exercises to help you learn proper pronunciation of English, plus a Learners Dictionary of American English for ESL, EFL, and TOEFL Students. (Merriam-Webster)
Phrase Finder - Meanings and origins of over a thousand phrases, sayings, quotes and cliches in English. Also includes a discussion board. Site is based in the UK. (By Gary Martin et al., personal / commercial site)
Picture Dictionary - Look up a noun by first letter or category to see a simple picture of that object. You can look up words in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Merriam-Webster offers a more extensive Visual Dictionary Online , which includes detailed, labelled images and audio pronunciation. A similar site is Visual Dictionary, which offers images labelled in English or French in the categories of Biology, vegetable; Biology, animal; Human body; Music; Transport; and Clothing. (Commercial sites)
Reading Matrix - Selected links to interactive online reading activities from around the Web, including reading comprehension (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) and vocabulary. (From The Reading Matrix, an online peer-reviewed professional journal)
Reverse Dictionary - OneLook's Reverse Dictionary indexes hundreds of online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference sites. Enter a word or phrase to describe the concept you're looking up, and you'll get a list of related terms with the best matches shown first. (By Doug Beeferman, personal / commercial site)
TOPICS Online Magazine for Learners of English - On this site, 'learners of English as a second language express their ideas and opinions on topics of interest to them. Readers can explore an international world.' (By Sandy & Thomas Peters)
Vocabulary Web Games 
- Games to test you on SAT/GRE words, build your vocabulary, and learn medical or computer terms. (Sheppard Software; commercial site)
Wordsmyth - An easy-to-use English-language thesaurus and dictionary. Free registration is required to use extra tools & features. (Commercial site)
Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to New Words - Definitions of newly-coined words and phrases such as phantom fat, weisure, and flotsamatrics, with links to sources where the new words have been used. (By Paul McFedries, an author of numerous computer books; personal site)
YourDictionary.com - Online English dictionary, thesaurus, grammar, and more. Also offers specialized dictionaries for dozens of technical, occupational, and hobby-related topics such as accounting, medicine, photography, and sports. (Commercial site)
Other Language Resources
ASL University - Extensive resources for learning American Sign Language, including a
photographic sign language dictionary; by ASL educator Dr. William G. Vicars (personal / commercial site). See also videos for Classifiers in American Sign Language ; classifiers are used in American Sign Language to show movement, location, and appearance (John A. Logan College).
Babelfish - Type a word, phrase, or sentence in the space provided, choose from among dozens of language pairs to translate from and to, and Babelfish, will translate for you. Highly useful, but not always accurate. Babelfish will even (imperfectly) translate entire websites. There is now also a similar Google translation page. Scroll down the page to set your Google search interface to display in any of about a hundred languages - including some tongue-in-cheek options like Elmer Fudd and Klingon! Systranet is another free tool for translating words, blocks of text, or entire web pages. Covers 15 different languages; by a language translation software company. (Commercial sites)
BBC Languages - Interactive online courses in French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Chinese, with audio and video. Also offers resources for learning Japanese, Polish, Urdu, and several other languages, plus common phrases in 36 languages, and news from BBC World Service in 32 languages.
Chinese: ZON - 'A multiplayer, online learning environment designed to teach Chinese language and culture through gameplay.' Registration required. (Michigan State University)
Dictionary Search - 'Use this global dictionary to search in 275 dictionaries on the Internet. Translate from 69 source languages into 73 target languages - 400 language combinations.' Also offers additional language and translation tools. (By ForeignWord.com, a language technology company)
ECTACO Online Dictionaries - Translates English words into dozens of languages, or translates words from those languages into English. (By a language software company)
Eurocosm Multilingual Phrase Dictionary - Search for phrases in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English. (By an internet language instruction company)
Fodor's Foreign Languages for Travellers - Basic travel-related words and expressions in French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Includes audio and written pronunciation. (Commercial site)
Foreign Language Resource Centers - A large collection of online materials for learning or teaching foreign languages. Searchable by language, age group, level, skill, medium, and more (Michigan State University and US Department of Education). The Language Materials Project is a searchble directory of teaching resources for less commonly taught languages (UCLA).
Farlex Free Dictionary - Online dictionaries in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, and Russian. (Commercial site, Farlex, Inc.)
French in Action - A free online video instructional series in French, using active participation to increase fluency in French, while introducing French culture (Annenberg Media).
Visual Dictionary offers images labelled in English or French, in the categories of Biology, vegetable; Biology, animal; Human body; Music; Transport; and Clothing. Click on the 'Language' button to switch from English to French (commercial site).
German Focus (Fokus Deutsch) - A free online video instructional series in German, weaving together minidramas set in Germany, interviews with native speakers, and documentary footage on history and culture, to help increase fluency in and comprehension of German. (Annenberg Media)
IATE (Inter-Active Terminology for Europe) - A multilingual dictionary of technical and specialized terminology in European languages, including Dutch, French, Greek, German, Italian, Danish, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Latin, and others. (European Commission et al.)
Language Links - Selected links to free educational resources for language learners, along with related cultural, linguistic, media and historic information. Covers about three dozen languages including English, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Swahili, Zulu, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Indonesian, Greek, Latin, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Russian, Polish, and many others. (By Lauren Rosen, Univ. of Wisconsin Collaborative Language Program)
Languages on the Web - Scroll down the page for parallel translations of stories in 55 different languages, plus language-related links. (By language two teachers, Crystal Jones and Robert Behar Casiraghi)
Study Spanish - Free online lessons, audio exercises, and other resources (Study Languages, LLC, commercial site). See also Colorín Colorado, offering information, activities, and advice for educators and Spanish-speaking families of English language learners (WETA public television / radio); and Destinos video lessons in speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in Spanish (Annenberg Media).
Useful Expressions and Greetings in 26 Languages - Basic words and phrases such as hello, thank you, I'm sorry, etc. (New York Public Library)
Word Reference Dictionaries - Searchable, easy-to-use dictionaries in Spanish/English, French/English, Italian/English, German/English, Russian/English, and other languages. Also offers verb conjugators, and language discussion forums where you can post a question. When you look up a word, the search results will include links to discussions of phrases, usage, etc., related to that word. (By Michael Kellogg, personal / commercial site)
Worldwide Learn Language Courses - Links to online classes in English as well as other languages. Select your language from the left hand menu, then scroll past the for-fee list ('Our Featured Education Partners') to get to the (mostly) free courses — you can't be sure any site is free unless you look at it. (Commercial site)
YourDictionary.com: Foreign Language Dictionaries - Links to online dictionaries for more than a hundred languages. (Commercial site)
