Duolingo

duolingo-owl    Duolingo is one of the best ways to teach yourself English – for free.  It’s a good place to begin.  You can use it on your computer, smartphone, or tablet.
To use Duolingo:

  1. Go to the Duolingo website on your computer – or – download the app to your smartphone/tablet
    (Apple app store); (Google Play store)
  2. Follow the instructions to start a course
  3. Create a profile (username / password ) so that you can save your work
  4. If you find it helpful, try to use Duolingo for at least 10 minutes every day

Kanopy – Thousands of Free Movies

  This is a new service from the Framingham Library.  You can watch up to 5 free movies each month – at home, or on your phone with the Kanopy App.

Classic movies, international movies, educational movies (including learning English), and lots of movies for kids too.  All you need is a Framingham library card.  If you don’t live in Framingham, you can check here if your library also has this service.  Or – you can check to see at your own library if they have Kanopy, or other services with movies, such as Hoopla or Overdrive.

 

Libby

Reading books and listening to audiobooks is an excellent and enjoyable way to improve your English.  Did you know that you can borrow eBooks and audiobooks (with thousands of choices)  – for free – right on your phone or tablet?  All you need is a library card from your local library, and the new Libby app from OverDrive.

If you live in Massachusetts, you don’t even need to visit the library to get a card.  You can get a free eCard from the Boston Public Library.

After you enter your library card number in the app, you can borrow ebooks or audiobooks.  There are also some “Read Along” books (mostly kids’ books) that you can listen to while you read.

Let’s Play a Kahoot

  Kahoot is a free app where you try to answer questions about many topics, including English, in a game-style way.  You get points for answering a question correctly – and quickly.  Let’s try a 5-minute Kahoot especially for beginners on this blog:

  • Install the free Kahoot app on your iPhone or iPad, or on your Android phone or tablet
  • From your phone/tablet, press on the picture below, or this link       
  • When you press, it should open the Kahoot app and start the game

 

You can also open the Kahoot app, press “Enter PIN” and enter this number: 0764667
Good Luck!

Soon there will be more articles about how to use the Kahoot app to test, and improve your English.

Tiny Little Crosswords

    Tiny Little Crosswords is a free app for iPhones and iPads.  Each puzzle is small – only a few words – so you can finish a puzzle quickly.  Some are easy, and some are more difficult. They now give you one free puzzle every day – another good way to improve your vocabulary!  Here are a few examples:

       

(BLUE, RED); (TWO, SIXTY, ZERO); (MAY, APRIL, JULY)

Newsela

Newsela is a website and app that helps you improve your reading, with interesting articles in many subjects – science, politics, famous people, sports, etc.

There are five different versions of article, with different levels of reading difficulty.  Newsela is not just for people learning English, so you should start at the easiest levels of a story and go higher if you are able. You can also take a short quiz about the story.  There are hundreds of good articles – all freebut you must create an account and Sign in.  Here’s one about emojis.

For Spanish speakers, there are many articles written in Spanish, also with 5 different levels of reading difficulty, so you can read the same story in Spanish and English.