Below are some links which should be of interest to anyone thinking of doing an English course - or just interested in improving their English. Most of them offer free resources, and many of them have links to yet further useful sites. Most, of course, offer American rather than British English.
| FACTS AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE | |
| The BBC's learning English pages | The index takes you into excellent materials - including audio - on news (huge archive) sport, work and music |
| The English-Speaking Union | A useful FAQ about the English language |
| The English Company | This may or may not develop into something useful. The home page was last updated 1999. Some contents were last updated 1997 |
| LEARNING ENGLISH: General resources and further links | |
| Aardvark's English Forum | British site with plenty of learning resources and links (but no listening) |
| British National Corpus | Like the Collins Cobuild resource (below) but not as expensive and more is on offer free. |
| Collins Cobuild Bank of English | Demonstration only of how you can use this amazing resource - for example type in 'get+away+with' and it will search 10 million words of spoken English for real uses of this phrase. |
| Comenius | One or two resources, but the best feature is further links |
| Dave's ESL Café | Probably the most famous of all English learning sites (over 1 million hits a month!) including lots of resources and forums |
| EnglishCLUB | A huge site, full of resources - especially a large number of very valuable links, including language schools, pages on exams and more. It is also an excellently clear site for finding your way! |
| ESL.ABOUT.COM | A huge amount of material of all kinds here |
| eflweb - Magazine for Teachers and Students of English | Has some useful exercises for learners, including listening to other learners from many English features, and links to chat-rooms |
| English as a Second Language (Rong-Chang Li) | A huge and excellent site of links to free learning sites and teacher resources |
| The English Grammar Clinic | It's free, but you have to register. This link takes you to the registration page |
| The English Learning Funsite | It has a membership fee of $5 a month, but at present it allows you to register as a member for free to try it out |
| The ESL Loop | A very useful link, because it takes you to the beginning of the list of over 120 members of the ESLoop - a webring of sites concerned with teaching/learning English. You have a very good chance of finding something useful in the list. |
| Frankfurt International School | Only just beginning, but the learning material is very promising |
| Karin's ESL Partyland | Another huge site with excellent links - many of them used on this page |
| The Learning Centre (DEN) | Tests, grammar, link to 'The Grammar Clinic', and more |
| NetsurfLearning | Learning materials accessed through links to other sites. Well-organised |
| Rinkworks | Just lots of general fun with the English language - jokes, trivia, oddities. For native speakers, really, but still fun. |
| schMOOze University | Don't take the 'University' too seriously. This is basically a well-known site of ESL chat-rooms for learners of English |
| TOEFL | The home page of TOEFL itself. |
| Useless Knowledge | Like Rinkworks, for native speakers, but more fact based than language play. But lots of material - quizzes, trivia, wordplay ... |
| Yourdictionary.com | Every kind of dictionary - mono- and bi-lingual - you could think of, plus grammars. Basically for people whoc want to buy books, but it has a useful free look-up too. |
| BUSINESS ENGLISH | |
| BBC World Service Business | Usable by learners and native speakers alike, because as well as excellent programmes to listen to, there are transcripts! |
| BBC learning English: Work English | More directed at the learner - includes a short interactive course with audio and video. |
| Better-English | Varied materials. They want you to pay eventually (well, it is Business English!) but there's quite a lot for free first. |
| Business Help | Business links - perhaps more useful for more advanced learners |
| Business Meetings | A 'Decision Maze' It deals interactively and specifically with the language of meetings - requires Netscape (ideally 2.0 or above) |
| On-line Business English Dictionary | In fact it isn't a general dictionary, but a glossary of some informal (slang?) phrases much used in American business at present |
| GRAMMAR | |
| The English Grammar Clinic | Registration page for the English Grammar Clinic - you need to register, but it's free, and no problem |
| Mary Nell's Home Page | Quite a useful site for grammar explanations - clear, but over-simple |
| LISTENING | |
| BBC learning English pages | Such a good link for listening materials that we've put it in again |
| ESL.ABOUT.COM's Listening section | Good listening materials from Beginner to Advanced levels. Beginner texts are mostly British English, the Advanced are more American |
| Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab | A lot of valuable listening exercises - American English |
| QUIZZES | |
| English Quizzes | A few quite useful quizzes and some very good links |
| Self-study Quizzes for ESL Students | Plenty of quizzes on all topics, from grammar to slang. |
| WRITING | |
| English-L | An American-hosted mailing list for people learning English |
| SHREWSBURY AND SHROPSHIRE | |
| Historic Shrewsbury | For a very short history of Shrewsbury |
| Shrewsbury Net | For links and information pages connected with Shrewsbury |
| Shrewsbury Castle | A short history of Shrewsbury Castle, linking to pieces on the other border castles |
| Shropshire Leisure and Tourism | Some useful information about our town and area |
| Virtual Shropshire | A very well got together site, covering most of the major attractions, features and facilities of Shropshire and Shrewsbury |
| SITES OFFERING SPECIALISMS | |
| www.lexacomlegal.com | Legal English courses for foreign lawyers. |
This page was last updated on 07 January 2002 - webmaster