Listen and Read: Free Audiobooks

Audiobooks, audiofiles and podcasts are good listening practice. They are also ideal for "multi-tasking." You can listen to them when you are doing something else and your hands aren't free to to hold a book. But you can also use them to improve your reading skills. Find or print out a copy of the book or article to read along while you listen.

Free Audio Books

LibriVox is the king of free audio books. You can use the catalog to search through their library of nearly 1000 works, all part of the public domain. If you’re feeling generous, you can even contribute wiki-style by recording audio of your own.

AudioBooksForFree also has a big catalog to sort through, with an emphasis on classic works, but a decent amount of mystery, sci-fi, and thriller as well. The only catch here is that you’ll have to pay for quality: the lowest quality downloads are free but anything better than 8 Kbps costs $5-8.

Daily English Activities

Daily English Activities is a site is for EFL | ESL students. Each day you can find a new simple online activity to help you improve your English.

For example, you can "Exercise Your Ears With Authentic Film Clips" (Saturday September 6). Watching and understanding films in English can be very difficult, but Yolango is a website that makes it much easier. The site has a huge collection of clips from films and has subtitles or the script to help you understand them.

Movies are a great way to practice understanding, especially if you are a movie buff (fan). If you watch on video or CD, you can pause when you don't understand a passage. Here's another, older site on using movies to study English: The English Learner Movie Guide.

27 Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners

Ranked list of the 27 Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners -- 2008

There's a reader's poll that goes along with it for people to vote how they would rank them, too.

Also, you'll find over one hundred other "The Best..." lists at Larry Ferlazzo's - one busy ESL teacher and blogger

Word Games

These online word games look like fun (not all learning has to be serious). And of, don't forget Grammar Gorillas...

I've always enjoyed Wacky Web Tales - good practice for writing and grammar. Who can come up with and post the wackiest tale? MadLibs are more grown up - just as hilarious. Try mad-libbing your own version of "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles or The Princess and the Pea

Grammar games - and more English language games & BBC skillwise games

Three games to test your longer sentence skills. Spot the sentences, make sentences and put a text into sentences.

Have fun - and please share your wackiest web tale/madlibs.

Learning English Howlers from around the world

something just for fun....

Do you know why they are wrong? Do you know what they should have said? Do you know of any more howlers? http://www.learnenglish.de/Level1/Extras/MoreMistakes.htm

Here are some silly English mistakes from people in advertising who really should know better:

Medical howlers http://www.learnenglish.de/Level1/Extras/HorrorMistakes.htm

and more formally useful if less entertaining...

Common mistakes and their explanations http://www.learnenglish.de/mistakes/CommonMistakes.htm

The Best Online Learning Games

Try these "best online learning games" - then tell us which you like best and why. Are they the best? Can you add any learning games to the list?

More from same source:

• Pointing & Clicking For ESL: Using Video Games To Promote English Language Development
• Home Computers & English Language Learning
• Online ESL Computer Lab

Gender - words

Hello everyone!

I have a question about gender word, Human or Lizardman 

I have been playing some chatting game which player can pretend to be some creature.

The situation is ....

There is a character "Female" which her race is "Lizardman"

I asked them, does it correct to use "Lizardman" for female character ? or it should be just "Lizard" ?

Then there was some player agued that ... If that so, race Human should be called just "Hu" ?

If I remember correctly, Human is some kind of exception word but I am not sure about word "Lizardman" 

Are there any keyword to google about gender issues ?  I am really curious at the moment ^^!

Thank you in advance for any answers :=)

-Tai