Online Tools for Language Skills Development


Online Tools for Language Skills Development

Learn English Audio
Free English language with audio downloads. This website mirrors a Learning Spanish page where farm employers and supervisors can download Spanish lessons. Each word is introduced in Spanish and repeated twice in English. They try to provide a neutral English that can be generally understood by everyone in the USA and Canada.
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/english/

Special English by From Voice of America, VOA News.com
Special English has become a very popular tool for teaching English. The short sentences, limited vocabulary and slow pace of speaking make it easy to understand.  It succeeds in helping people learn English in a non-traditional way.  People around the world practice their listening and speaking skills by recording the programs and playing them repeatedly. Internet users can also listen to programs on the Special English Web site while reading the text.
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue (OWL)

Visit the Online Writing Lab at Purdue where you will find over 200 free resources for writing including:
    •    Writing and Teaching Writing
    •    Research
    •    Grammar and Mechanics
    •    Style Guides
    •    ESL (English as a Second Language)
    •    Job Search and Professional Writing
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/


Learn English Today
Visit www.learn-english-today.com and get free lessons, vocabulary, idioms, proverbs, and business English. You will also find exercises and word games for English learners. http://www.learn-english-today.com/

Spreeder
Spreeder is an online speed reading utility to help train you to read faster. It does this by flashing words at a rapid rate, which helps in three ways:
1. Reduce subvocalization
2. Increase chunk comprehension
3. Eliminate backreading
http://www.spreeder.com/

Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com received over 35 million unique visitors every month.  Its properties include a dictionary, thesaurus, and an encyclopedia. They can all be used in language reference and translations. Their visitors are affluent and educated people who want to become even smarter.  http://dictionary.reference.com/

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based and collaborative multilingual encyclopedia. It's 13 million articles (2.9 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone who can access the Wikipedia website. It is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Translate by Google
Cut & paste your text into the field provided and Google will translate the text into your native language. You can also enter a search phrase in your own language to find information in other languages. Get translations with a single click to make your English grammar courses easier to understand and complete.
http://translate.google.com/#

Languages available for translation:
Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Success Story:...I grew up in a part of Los Angeles where children get teased if when do well in school.  That caused me to be less motivated to study and get good grades. For that reason, I never told my friends that I wanted to become a writer. Also, I had very little confidence in my ability to learn to write because of my poor grammar…. Now after taking your courses, I feel that I can write and speak as well as anyone else in LA. Now I don’t hesitate to show others my poems, short stories, and articles. Thanks for everything…
(Linda, CA)