Free Language Resources

Jan 6, 2011
S. M. Ongan

This article aims to provide a short list of places where quality and free language resources can be found.

Even though the internet is teeming with them, it can be a challenge to find legal, and quality free resources for learning language. This article aims to provide a short list of places where quality language resources can be found.

Language learning websites

Language learning websites offer language courses with varying quality and features. Most have premium features for their paying members while still providing enough free material for the average language learner. In addition to the standard vocabulary tests and reviews, lessons may include writing and speaking exercises which are later reviewed by the community.

You can find a short list of language learning websites below:

Some alternatives with mostly premium content:

Language exchange websites

Language exchange websites offer a medium where language learners from all over the world meet and help each other. These websites usually have strong search features filtering the results by age, country, gender and the like.

With their chat and internal mailing systems, a good language exchange website could be an important tool to improve your target language and to keep it alive while not actively studying whether you're looking for a long term penpal or a short chat.

Here’s a short list of popular language exchange websites:

Podcasts

Podcasts could be useful tools for busy people planning to learn on the go. They could be ranging from a few minutes to half an hour depending on their concept. iTunes is of course a good place to search for podcasts, but Open Culture also has an extensive list of language podcasts.

FSI language courses

The Foreign Services Institute is a federal government institution giving language training to their diplomats among others. Some of their language courses can be found in public domain. Although they are a bit outdated, their courses are solid, extensive and provide more than enough material for a language learner. Links to courses on around 40 languages can be found in this website.

Open university courses

The increasing popularity of open courses also resulted in more free language courses. You can find free language courses provided by universities like MIT or Standford. Here is short list of some of the courses.