Top Resources For Teaching English Online

Teaching English online but not sure where to find resources? Don ‘t worry, we’ve got you covered with our top resources for teaching English online.

When you teach English face-to-face, finding resources is quite easy. Your school will probably have a staff room with shelves of photocopiable books, coursebooks and books full of activity ideas. You’ll spend a lot of time in the staff room chatting to other teachers and exchanging ideas and worksheets. Your last resort could be to look online to try and find what you need for your lesson.

When teaching English online, all your resources are going to be online. This can be a bit daunting if you’re not used to working totally in a digital space, so we thought we’d help you out with a few online resources to make your life a little bit easier.

Because we’re nice like that.

So here are top resources for teaching English online.

Tech resources

If the platform you’re using doesn’t have an interactive whiteboard feature, then you need to have a look at Miro.

Miro is a programme which can be used for free. You can have three interactive whiteboards which you can use to write and draw on. You can share your screen and show video too. 

One way to make sure you’re super organised is to use Diigo.

Diigo is a platform which allows you to bookmark websites, annotate on webpages and organize your online resources. There are paid plans but there is still quite a lot you can do with the free version.

Continuous Professional Development

The Digital Teacher is a wonderful platform for online teachers.

It offers a self-analysis tool of your technological capabilities so you can know where you need to improve yourself. Plus it has really good articles on every aspect of teaching English online to help you in your teaching, as well as reviews of useful products.

The British Council Teaching English site has articles and resources to help you with not only your lesson plans but also your continuous professional development.

Future Learn offers free online courses. They often have courses which can help you further develop your teaching skills. Courses which may interest you are Understanding Language: Learning and Teaching, Teaching English Online: China and Beyond and Teaching English Online. All of these courses will give you a better understanding of the topics. And did we mention they’re free?!

Lesson materials and activities

Quizlet is a great website for revision activities.

It’s basically a storage area for flashcards on every topic imaginable! You can search for flashcard sets that have already been made or you can make up your own set. With Quizlet your students can use the flashcard sets to review language and there is a testing function too.

You’re probably familiar with Ted Talks but have you heard of TedEd?

TedEd is similar to Ted in that it has video resources, but they are aimed at being educational rather than just informative. They also have a lesson plan which accompanies each video.

Learning English is a site for students but there’s no reason you can’t use the resources yourself in your lessons. There is also a section dedicated to teens and to Young Learners, with interactive games and flashcards. 

Though not aimed at EFL learners, Scholastic has a great site filled with resources for teachers.

This site has articles based on news and current events, aimed at Primary Learners. If you’re looking for a reading text to give to your students to prepare for a discussion in your next lesson, you can find it here.

There are so many resources available to you online to help you with your teaching and lesson preparation, but the internet can be a rabbit hole. Try to find websites and resources which suit you and which you enjoy using and bookmark them so they are easy to find when you need them. This will save you loads of time – time which could be spent teaching! 

Which resources do you love using? Let us know in the comments!