Learn English With These Free Online Courses and Podcasts

Many of these free online English lessons and podcasts let you sift through them to start learning at any skill level or over any topic, such as grammar or pronunciation. Others will take you step-by-step through the process of learning English if it's a completely new language to you.

Levels range from beginners to advanced, which means they are useful for speakers who are relatively new to the language, teachers who are educating their students, and native speakers who just need to brush up on the different speaking and writing rules.


I have more free English learning resources for you including free English worksheets and free English games.

In addition to what you find below, there are plenty of free language learning apps and free language learning websites that you can download to your mobile device for an easy way to learn English while out and about. Participating in a language exchange is also an excellent way to learn English.

Learn English With Free Online Courses

Use several of these online English courses to get the most out of them. You can learn everything from common phrases and words to verbs, pronouns, and grammar.

Learn English Online - Sectioned off into a dozen units, over 50 very detailed, free English lessons and videos can be found here. You start off learning the very basics with the alphabet and numbers, but can move through to any lesson you want at any time you like, such as to learn adjectives and grammar.

busuu - This is a very intuitive site that's easy to use, and I find it pretty effective.

It walks you through various lessons in beginner, elementary, and intermediate skill levels to teach you English with pictures, text, and sounds.

U.S.A. Learns - There are 20 different English lessons at U.S.A. Learns, and you can start with any one of them that you like. Some of them include numbers, places to go, family, the body, clothes, and recreation. They each have an intro and vocab section, practice lesson, and then a quiz.

Learn American English Online - These lessons are organized by skill level and designed to have you learn something new every day, and tests are available at the end of lessons. An entire section of the website is dedicated to videos, and another for vocabulary, which puts common words into sentences to help you learn their meaning with context and images.

EnglishClass101.com - This is a very easy and crisp website to use. Choose a skill level to start off with, and then have access to audio files and full transcripts, videos, and lots of other free resources for learning key phrases, pronunciation, the alphabet, common words, verbs, grammar, and more. When you create your account, you can also sign up for Word of the Day emails for a quick way to learn new words every single day.

TalkEnglish.com - English lessons at TalkEnglish.com are categorized in different sections to focus you on certain concepts, such as speaking, listening, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The speaking lessons have you listen and repeat sentences, whereas the listening section has you listen to a short story and then answer questions about it.

Livemocha - Livemocha is interesting because you can leverage the existing knowledge of native English speakers from the website to help you learn the language for yourself. It works by having you spend coins on lessons, and you earn coins by teaching other people about a language you understand fluently.

Ego4u.com - Use this website for a reference, where you can quickly find examples on how to work with verbs, pronouns, brackets, tenses, dates, commas, and more. Several tests are also available.

English Daily - Get daily lessons to test your grammar and vocabulary, play games, read riddles and proverbs, and learn English slang words.

ESOL Courses - Lots of games, lessons, and quizzes to learn various English concepts. You can browse them by skill level and alphabetically.

Duolingo - Choose a non-English language to learn English at Duolingo. Step-by-step teaching walks you through various subjects, and you can sign up for daily goals to ensure you're learning at the speed you specify.

Connect With English - Watch over 40 episodes of a soap opera and then answer questions about it to understand the English concepts. Questions are regarding grammar, dictation, and expressions that were used in the video. There's also a quiz for each episode that has you recall the spoken words to answer the multiple choice questions.

American English Speak - There aren't tons of lessons here, but they are useful in learning English because they're a bit different than some of the other ones you'll find in this list. You'll get an overview of what you'll learn, and then have to work through interactive lessons to learn.

Film English - Film English is best used from a teacher's perspective. It uses short films to help you teach English instead of showing just words and phrases like most of the lessons on this page. The purpose of these videos are to encourage the understanding of the concepts portrayed in each film. A PDF file is available for each video that has questions in a step-by-step format.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day - Visit this page to learn a new word every day of the week. You can listen to the word to understand the pronunciation, see its definition, read it in a sentence, and see its origin. You can also subscribe to daily email alerts and see the words from past days.

Free English Podcasts

Learning English through a podcast can be beneficial over text-only material because you don't need to sit in front of a computer to learn. You can subscribe to the episodes via iTunes and then listen while away from your computer.

Some of these podcasts are good for beginners while others are helpful even for the fluent English speakers who simply need to improve their pronunciation or word flow.

Grammar Girl Podcast - This podcast is updated regularly to deliver you with grammar, punctuation, style, and other writing tips to help you improve your English writing. Visit the Grammar Girl website for an RSS feed and more information.

American English Pronunciation Podcast - Hundreds of episodes teach you everything you need to know about pronouncing common and difficult English words, and more episodes are added each month. Some of the podcasts can be followed along in a transcript, found on Pronuncian.com.

English as a Second Language Podcast - Subscribe to this podcast to improve your listening and speaking skills. Though the reader speaks slowly and uses common words, it shouldn't be used for novice English speakers. There are well over 100 episodes in this podcast, and several are added every month. They can also be streamed from their website ESLPOD.com if you'd rather not use iTunes.

Basic Conversations Podcast - This podcast simply has 10 short episodes that give examples of simple conversations in English. You can follow along with text and download the audio files at ELTPodcast.com.

Effortless English Podcast - This podcast is spoken by a very clear and clean voice, and he gives tips on how to improve your spoken English.

Business English Podcast - To help you with your English when it comes to a business setting, this podcast will immerse you in conversations about travel, interviews, presentations, and more to help you get a feel for how you should speak. The makers of this podcast have another one called English Vocabulary for Business, which teaches you advanced English for business use.

Better at English Podcast - This is another conversational podcast that is built so you can hear two English speakers having real conversations to help you better understand the language. There's informal vocabulary, slang, and other common words you'll hear in every day conversation. This podcast ended in 2014, but they still have full transcripts on their website at BetterAt English.com so you can follow along.

Finally Learn English Podcast - This podcast is read by Spanish speakers but also includes English translations. The idea is to hear them side by side to help you learn English. There are only 16 episodes in this podcast and it's no longer being updated.

Tu Ingles! Podcast - This podcast is used for teaching Spanish speakers how to improve their English. There are over 80 episodes that can cover things from idioms and verb conjugation to interviews and speeches to show how the English words are spoken.

Speaking English Podcast - Though this podcast hasn't been updated since 2013, it still provides 100 quick, free lessons on English pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as memory techniques to help you remember what you learn.