Monolingual dictionaries in English

These monolingual learner’s dictionaries are designed to help you understand words and phrases in English through English. It’s important to learn vocabulary in context, and these dictionaries will give you examples of how an English speaker will use the word – plus related vocabulary.

MACMILLAN ONLINE DICTIONARY

OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER’S DICTIONARY

VISUWORDS

DICTIONARY.COM

Dictionnaires multilingues

INTERACTIVE TERMINOLOGY FOR EUROPE (IATE)

IATE is the terminological database of the European Union.

LE GRAND DICTIONNAIRE TERMINOLOGIQUE
Multilingual dictionary of technical vocabulary.

Translation

Good basic translation tool, but always reverse the language order to make sure your translation makes sense in both directions!

GOOGLE TRANSLATOR

Online sites with a variety of exercises and activities

These sites have literally hundreds of activities that will help you improve your English. Take advantage of all the different features to keep your learning experience varied and fun.

BBC LEARNING ENGLISH

Website with hundreds of activities, games, videos and audio files. Regular updates to “Six minute English” and “Words in the News”, and a possibility of getting regular updates to your email from this renowned British institution.

VOICE OF AMERICA LEARNING ENGLISH

Website with hundreds of activities, games video, audio files, and blogs. Regular updates to news stories and blogs from around the world and in the USA, and available in audio and video formats.

USING ENGLISH

You can find a variety of grammar, vocabulary, quizzes and articles on this easy-to-use site!

AUSTRALIAN NETWORK

Australian Plus is a quality producer of English learning video material, giving access to additional material and to social media communities for practising conversational English and gleaning « tips and tricks ».

Video talks and activities

TED TALKS

A site with speeches on everything from technology to entertainment to world peace! These speeches are always inspired and fascinating. A great way to practice your English and learn something new! Look up the talks by subject and complete the quizzes that follow.

ELLLO

The English Listening Lesson Library Online offers over 2,500 free listening lessons as well as some video lessons. The lessons are available for all levels and often come with transcripts, vocabulary explainers and quizzes.

Writing practice and improvement

PURDUE UNIVERSITY ONLINE WRITING LAB

Plenty of advice and exercises to practice your writing. Use the “English as a Second Language” and ESL Students links to find the exercises best suited to you!

GRAMMARLY

Grammarly is a writing tool that helps you check for several types of errors (grammar, punctuation, spelling). It also provides real-time suggestions and guidelines on how to correct these mistakes. It can also help you self-edit your work through feedback on readability, sentence-length and so on. This is helpful for adapting your tone for a particular audience.

TV news sites

Catch up on the latest international news while practicing your English. These sites have a large selection of video reports including world news, regional updates, business news, world sport, entertainment news etc.

BBC

CNN    

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

VOXEUROP

Radio

A wide selection of different radio stations : news programs, documentaries, podcasts and « audio highlights ».

BBC SOUNDS

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (USA)

ALL INDIA RADIO

CANADIAN RADIO

Games, quizzes & crosswords

Enjoy these interactive games and keep improving your grammar and vocabulary in English!

BBC LEARNING ENGLISH

A variety of quizzes, crosswords, and other word games to help you improve your vocabulary.

VOICE OF AMERICA WORD GAMES

With hangman, crosswords, vocabulary quizzes, multiple choice quizzes.

Smartphone apps

Practicing your English skills on a daily basis will boost your progress.

Vary your learning experience by uploading one of these apps today.

MEMRISE

The first lesson on this engaging app, which uses videos of real locals to teach relevant language, is free.

LEARN ENGLISH GRAMMAR

An app from the British Council that helps you learn and review core grammar – choose from the US or UK edition.

DUOLINGO

Great for beginners and lots of fun. Lose lives when you answer incorrectly, advance as you successfully complete lessons, and earn points to move up to the next level.

BUSUU

A great language-learning app that has several free activities. Once a quick test has determined your level, you can choose your goals to access vocabulary flashcard activities on useful topics.

GRAMMAR GIRL

The Grammar Girl podcast provides short friendly tips to improve your writing.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR IN USE

Fun grammar activities with imagery and sound, written specially for intermediate learners of English.

QUIZLET

An app that allows you to create flashcard sets, and to study the words through flashcards or by filling in the blanks.

DICTIONARY.COM

Top-rated app with trusted reference content from Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com. WORKS OFFLINE.

SOUNDS by Macmillan

The ultimate mobile English pronunciation aide, for students and teachers. Sounds helps you study, practise and play with pronunciation wherever you are.

Podcasts to learn English

These educational podcasts are a great place to start!

• Learn English Podcasts app from the British Council
• The English We Speak micro-learning podcast from BBC Sounds : 2-3 minute episodes on an idiom or new English word
• 6 minute English from the BBC World Service – practice useful language for contemporary issues

News Podcasts

To improve your ability to understand spoken English, why not subscribe to a podcast from an internationally reputed news outlet?

• The New York Times
• The Financial Times
• The Economist
• The Guardian
• CNN
• NPR

Pick your favourite podcast

For intermediate and advanced learners, whatever you are interested in, there is a podcast for you! From technology to comedy, and history to management, check out these selections of top-rated and award-nominated podcasts.

• Podcast Awards
• British Podcast Awards
• The Guardian’s top 20 podcasts
• iHeart Podcast Awards

Here are some of our team’s favourites!

• Letters Live – video recordings of star actors reading letters that changed lives and shaped world events
• Poetry Foundation podcasts – take inspiration and glean vocabulary from literary greats
• This American Life – one of America’s most loved podcast producers

BTL is a proud signatory of the United Nations Global Compact and its ten principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. We gladly encourage English learners to read about these topics in a bid to expand vocabulary and knowledge of the language, while spreading awareness of these issues that affect us all.

What are human rights? Revise the basics with Amnesty’s simplified English copy of the Declaration of Human Rights, and find out more from the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has more on how this connects to the world of work.

• British Council learning materials
• Amnesty International learning materials
• The School of Life’s political theory playlist – for those interested in political ideas that may have contributed to human rights work (watch at 0.75 speed if it is too fast!)
• Search « human rights » on the news media sites above – for example, on BBC Sounds

• Physicians for Human Rights
• Anti-Slavery
• European Centre for Minority Issues
• Human Rights Foundation
• International Women’s Day
• Open Society
• Oxfam