One of the common misconceptions about ESL teaching is that as long as you can speak

the language, you can teach it. The reality is that teaching English to foreigners can be
challenging even for native speakers. After all, it is more than simply teaching them new
words or playing Pictionary. ESL students learn the language to achieve significant goals, so
they take English language learning seriously. To be an effective English teacher, you
should too!

As you teach English online, you will meet different students with different traits and
needs. Some may be smart and quick to learn while some may have learning difficulties.
Some may be participative in the activities while some may need a little more
encouragement.

To be ready for any situation, it’s a smart idea to collate a tried-and-tested collection of
ESL teaching resources. Doing so helps make your job easier and saves you the time and
trouble of making lesson plans from scratch every day.

TEFL Handbook (teflhandbook.com)

Year launched: 2016

Created by: Allan Sweeney

Resources offered: ESL activity and game ideas for the classroom, grammar presentation
notes, as well as native iOS and Android applications that provide offline access to all
resources.

Pricing: 1 Year of Access for €19.00; Lifetime Access for €49.00

How are your learning materials different from other resource sites?

“We have a strong focus on low-resource classrooms. Therefore, our activity ideas require
very little planning time or printing and can be used right away. Our main goals are to
reduce the complexity and time needed to plan English courses and lessons and allow newer
teachers to present complex grammar points with confidence.”
English Club (englishclub.com)
Year launched: 1997

Created by: Josef Essberger

Resources offered: Lesson plans, worksheets, worksheet maker, handouts, activities, top
teaching tips, teaching students with learning disabilities, TEFL articles, ELT management

Pricing: Access to all resource pages is free.

How are your learning materials different from other resource sites?

“English Club does not require teachers to register or pay a fee to access the resource pages.
Moreover, the materials are not user-generated. Lastly, all materials and worksheets may be
printed out on paper or as PDFs stripped of extraneous matter.”

Aside from providing resources for ESL teachers, what other features and services
does English Club offer?

“The platform offers massive resources for English learners—but also of great value to
English teachers—like the following: lessons on all language skills, games, quizzes, videos,
songs, jokes and puns, ESL articles, forums.”
Fluentize (fluentize.com)
Year launched: 2018

Created by: Jake Young

Resources offered: “Fluentize creates modern and engaging ESL lesson plans based on
real-world videos for English language teachers with teenage or adult students. The main
aim is to provide students with engaging content to help develop their fluency in a natural
way. To achieve this, we create modern, comprehensive, and downloadable lesson plans
based on real-world videos, including news reports, cinematic stories, interviews,
documentaries, performances, TV series, and other informational, instructional, and
educational videos. Fluentize offers both printable and digital lessons. Each lesson comes
equipped with useful activities for speaking, vocabulary, listening, grammar, writing,
pronunciation, and more, all based on the video topic and content.”

Pricing: 1 lesson credit for $2.99; 5 lesson credits for $12.74 (15% off); 10 lesson credits
for $23.49 (22% off). No more subscriptions starting August 2020.

How are your learning materials different from other resource sites?

“While there are multiple online resources available with lesson material based on video
content, we'd like to consider Fluentize as different, unique, or innovative in 5 main areas:

1. The comprehensiveness of the lesson plans

In terms of comprehensiveness, we've gotten great feedback about having the most in-depth
lessons out there. Some lessons offer up to 7 or 8 pages of activity content, although the
average length of a lesson plan is 5 pages plus the teacher guide. This comprehensiveness
gives teachers and students flexibility for picking and choosing what to focus on in the
lesson.

2. Lesson structure & fluidity

The flow of content in Fluentize's lessons is streamlined in an easy-to-follow and logical

format, in a way that many online resources don't provide. The standard format comes in the
order of Preview – Viewing – Post-Viewing – Quiz & Review. The systematic approach
allows learners to practice important core skills and then reinforcement activities. The
vocabulary sections are designed in a way that learners are first introduced to the featured
vocabulary terms in a clear context, hear them in the video, and then must recall the usage
correctly. Multiple instances of exposure and usage help learners develop the ability to use
them in real-life situations.

3. The uniqueness of the activities

One of our favorite things about the lessons is the creativity of the activities. For example,
in the lesson plan based on the Friends TV series, “Joey Doesn't Share Food,” students are
instructed to try to pronounce the lines from Joey in the same intonation and tone that Joey
does in the video. This gives students the chance to practice pronunciation as if they were a
native speaker. Implementing this type of simplicity and creativity makes the lessons not
only fun and engaging but also educational and practical.

4. Selected videos and topics

We’re very selective about the videos not only in terms of content, but in terms of long-term
relevance of the video, the video length, how engaging it is, the time of year, etc. More
importantly, with the videos selected, students get the opportunity to learn about things
beyond just the English language. For example, one of the topics is about a startup company
making bamboo bicycles in Ghana. Another is about how to do salsa dancing moves –
niched topics you often won't find in other resources. We also like to focus on unique topics
related to English-speaking cultures – for example, the 2020 American elections or the sport
of Irish Hurling. This gives students quality interaction with different corners of English in a
variety of real-life, relevant, and cultural contexts.

5. Digital format designed for online lessons

With the rise of online ESL lessons across the globe, we wanted to find a way to adapt our
lessons to be more suitable for online learners. So in 2019, we launched digital interactive
lesson plans. The digital format allows students to write answers/notes in the lesson while
the teacher guides them along. Students can save the lessons for later reference.”

Aside from providing resources for ESL teachers, what other features and services does
Fluentize offer?

“Other than resources for ESL teachers, we write online content and blog posts on tips,
ideas, and advice on a range of topics in the field of teaching English. We also partner with
BridgeTEFL, a premier TEFL course and certification provider. We offer their courses
directly from Fluentize.”
Real English (real-english.com)
Year launched: 1996 on https://www.real-english.com/ and 1995 on YouTube

Created by: Michael Marzio

Resources offered: Videos of spontaneous dialogues of people interviewed on the streets of

English-speaking countries, along with a large collection of multimedia exercises about
them

Pricing: All 95 videos and their accompanying 820 exercises are completely free.

Teach-This.com
Year launched: 2012

Created by: TeachThis Ltd.

Resources offered: Interactive and printable ESL activities, games, worksheets and lessons

Pricing: Some materials are available for free; 3-month Membership Plan for $19.99; 6-
month Membership Plan for $29.99; 1-year Membership Plan for $39.99, and; 2-year
Membership Plan for $69.99.

How are your learning materials different from other resource sites?

“Our resources are created by a dedicated team of highly qualified English teachers and ESL
professionals who bring a wealth of teaching experience to help create fun and engaging
resources in a high-quality format. Also, all PDFs for members are completely unrestricted
and editable. This gives our users the ability to personalize and customize the resources to
suit their needs with any PDF editor. We offer both printable PDF resources for classroom
teachers as well as interactive resources for online English teachers.”

Aside from providing resources for ESL teachers, what other features and services does
Teach-This.com offer?

“Teachers can use hundreds of our teaching resources free, without the need to sign up. If a
teacher wants complete access to all the PDF teaching materials in an unrestricted and
editable format, we also offer exclusive online membership packages and downloads.”