5 of the best free tools for teaching English online

online elt teaching tools

These online class tools are excellent for changing the pace of the class, adding variety and engaging students to maximise their online learning. 

Padlet 

This simple note taking tool has so many uses within the ELT classroom. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Create a class information padlet so students know where to find all relevant information for them.
  2. Use the calendar background for important class dates, timetables etc.
  3. Thought-sharing: all students can get involved adding their ideas and they have a record to keep for future reference.
  4. Giving feedback: as well as teachers using it as a tool to give feedback, students can also practise peer-to-peer reviews. This has been a really useful tool for my IELTS classes and gets students to put themselves in the shoes of the examiner and consider what they are looking for.
  5. Learn about students: students can add information about themselves including what they enjoy/find difficult.
  6. Share useful resources: all students can add which learning resources they find most useful. For example you could get students to add their favourite podcasts and students can review them.  

Quizlet 

These interactive flashcards are a great way of learning vocabulary or even grammar rules. You can use the pre-made flashcards or create your own. Make these for your students to practise in their own time.

Kahoot 

A quiz tool with a running leadership board for extra competitiveness! This has been a really fun tool to use in the classroom and change the pace of the lesson when students are in a bit of a lull. It works really well with teenage classes but also fun for everyone. Students access the quiz via their phones and submit a multiple choice answer and at the end of each question you can see who is in the lead. 

Baamboozle 

Another quiz tool for engaging all learners. You can instantly use some of the pre-made quizzes with a search tool to go through the huge number of resources. The option to have different teams makes this another great tool for the competitive class and has worked really well at injecting some energy into our online lessons! 

Quizizz 

This quiz tool embraces many gaming elements to motivate learning including power-ups, memes and the option to challenge friends! Whereas with Kahoot, you need the whole class to take part in real-time, Quizizz can be used much more as a self-study tool and keeps a record of your activity. There are pre-loaded quizzes or you can create your own. This tool has been designed with the American high-school in mind rather than ELT and so levels are based on high-school grades.

3 thoughts on “5 of the best free tools for teaching English online”

  1. My brother suggested I might like this blog.
    He was entirely right. This post actually made my day.
    You cann’t imagine simply how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!

  2. Wow! Finally I got a website from where I
    know how to in fact obtain useful facts concerning my
    study and knowledge.

Comments are closed.