British Council’s Learn English: Sports
This is part of the mini-series on the British Council’s collection of websites for English learners: if you love sports then you’ll love Learn English Sport.
Here’s some of what they offer:
- Read articles on the favorite sports of the British - football is one of them, and here is an article on Football slang;
- Choose among several articles with audio that you can listen to online or offline (save the mp3 files to your computer.) Each text comes with a number of pre-reading activities - check out this one about two football fans chatting;
- Fun & Games offers several fun things such as animations showing how players celebrate when they score, tests, hangman games and more;
- See the blog for a discussion on English championships, with activities.
And there’s more: double-click any word in any texts to get a pop-up box with Cambridge’s English-English dictionary.
Recommended for intermediate students and above.
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English audio lessons: practice your listening skills with ESL-Lab
There are other listening websites on the Internet, but this is one of the best I’ve seen. The most popular section of ESL-Lab is General Listening Quizzes, where you can listen to conversations in English, read the transcript and do comprehension exercises.
Besides covering a wide variety of topics in the lessons, Randall, the American teacher who creates and produces the programs, always includes a great deal of slang, idioms and phrasal verbs. Since all the audio is done with native speakers, it’s an excellent resource to practice listening comprehension and get used to American English. Further down on the home page there are other sections such as Vocabulary Lessons, which are a little longer.
Highly recommended resource for high-beginner level students and above.
English proverbs explained (with mp3)
It’s a Japanese site, but you should take a look if you’re interested in learning more about English proverbs: the Japan Times website offers a huge list organized alphabetically, with mp3 files explaining each proverb in detail. Listen to them while you read the explanations or save the mp3 to your computer. Here’s one of the proverbs:
A picture is worth a thousand words
A photo can give you a lot of information with a single look. It can give you as much information as a description of something that is one thousand words long.
English idioms, phrasal verbs and slang at the ESL Cafe
Teacher Dave Sperling has organized English idiom, phrasal verb e slang collections, all in alphabetical order and including explanation and examples. It’s a nice reference for students, and a good source of class content for teachers. Also worth visiting are the Student Forums, where students can get answers for their grammar problems.
Online English dictionary: British slang
A Dictionary of Slang refers to itself as a monster online slang dictionary and it is right. You’ll find a ton of slang and colloquial language (focus on British English), all alphabetically organized and frequently updated. A great place to start is the introductory page where you can learn a bit more about the nature of slang and how to use the dictionary.
EZ Slang: English slang and idioms in listening lessons (with mp3)
EZ Slang offers complete English listening lessons with text, glossary and comprehension exercises with strong focus on slang and idioms. The site has only a few lessons available, but each one is 
guaranteed to keep you busy for a while in case you really want to improve listening comprehension and get closer to the natural speech of American English.
A suggestion: pick a lesson and stay with it for a week, listening over and over a few times a day. If you do this, you’ll have the chance to really absorb at least a few of the many idiomatic expressions presented in each lesson.
Teacher Randall also recommends that teachers make use of the material and talks about the importance of teaching practical English that goes beyond traditional textbooks.
Recommended for intermediate and advanced English learners.
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