Learn English
This page contains a large amount of growing resources for learning English. We have information about resources for learning English by listening to podcasts in English, learning English by listening to audiobooks, watching films to learn English, taking part in MOOCs to learn English, apps to learn English, English grammar, and more.
Research by the linguist Stephen Krashen has shown that learning something in English that you enjoy, allows you to acquire the language naturally. So why not dive in to some of these resources and start practicing in a natural way. Follow your interests and discover new things while at the same time improving your English.
Audiobooks, audiobooks are a great way to practice listening in English. According to the research done into the Input Hypothesis, by Stephen Krashen, if we spend a lot of time listening and reading, that is inputting first then speech will emerge. So, first input, and then output. Here are some Audiobooks,
The Night Driver by Italo Calvino, Read by Jeanette Winterson. A story of two lovers falling out in the distant era before mobile phones. You can listen to the audio book here for Night Driver by Italo Calvino Audio Book
Love Far from Home by Italo Calvino the Italian Novelist, read by Salman Rushdie, in the New Yorker.
“Love Far From Home” is a meditation on the enduring yet fragile nature of love, the ways it can be tested by circumstances, and the resilience required to keep it alive despite the odds. Calvino’s lyrical prose and keen insights into human emotions make this story a touching and thought-provoking exploration of love’s trials and triumphs.
You can listen to the audiobook here for free
Love Far from Home by Italo Calvino
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning roads, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”
Italo Calvino
Another book by Italo Calvino that you can listen to parts of for free to help you learn English is Invisible Cities, parts of the book are read by Italo Calvino himself, and the free audio can be listened to here on the music streaming site Soundcloud, in this recording Italo Calvino also reads from some of his other famous works such as Mr. Palomar
Italo Calvino, Daughters of the moon, read by Robert Coover, from a monthly reading and conversation in the New Yorker. You can listen to it here on New York public radio, WNYC. Italo Calvino, Daughters of the moon, read by Robert Coover
Philip K. Dick is another great author, and visionary thinker, many modern films in contemporary culture were based on Philip K. Dick’s visionary novels, such as Blade Runner (Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep), Total Recall (We can Remember it for you Wholesale), The Man in the Castle.
The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, is a short story that you can listen to here for free: The Eyes Have it by Philip K. Dick
Another audio book that you might like to listen to is Ulysses by James Joyce. James Joyce was an Irish Novelist, his most famous Novel Ulysses, takes place in a single day, on June 16, 1904. You can listen to the Audio book for free: Ulysses audio book by James Joyce
For more free audio books to help you learn English, in all kinds of different Genre’s please visit this blog post Learn English by listening to audio books
If you would like to watch some films for free an interesting website is The National Film Board of Canada, on here you can watch all kinds of interesting films that have been made available for free on their website.
You can check it out here https://www.nfb.ca/explore-all-films/
There are thousands of films available on this website.
Some ideas on learning English and other languages from watching films
It may help you to learn English by watching some films and tv shows. Some research has been done into watching films and tv shows to learn English and other languages from using captions.
A method that has been researched that can help you to learn a language and improve your vocabulary, what you do for example if you an English person and are trying to learn Japanese you would listen to the audio in English (your native language) and set the subtitles to Japanese (your target language). So if you are a Japanese person trying to learn English you would set the audio to Japanese (your native language) and the subtitles to English (your target language) and then try to read along in English as you listen to the audio and watch the images on the screen, because you are also seeing the images on the screen this provides a context for what you are reading and it helps you to learn the new vocabulary fairly quickly and build up more subtle and nuanced vocabulary because you are seeing how the new language is being used in context.
So the way to remember it is, no matter which language you are learning, and no matter what your native language is, the formula goes like this
Watch the film with the audio set to your native language, and set the subtitles to your target language.