Resources: Teaching English, ESL and ELL’s - Listening and Reading Instruction
Online resources for English language teaching and learning specifically with a focus on reading and listening fluency. Here are five tried and true recommendations designed for children to adult ELL learners.
Leveled English With Current World Events: Breaking News English Lessons: Easy English World News Materials - ESL:
A classic in the ELL industry, Breaking News English offers language learners and educators relevant news articles on current events with over 3,500 free news articles with seven different levels from from “easy” to “hard” leveled text’s on a wide range topics from all over the world. Personally I have used it with upper-elementary and middle school learners, but the leveled content and the variety of articles could be suitable for high school and adult English Language Learners as well (Banville, n.d.).
Promote a Love for Reading for Kids: Raz-Kids or Instantly Access 40K+ Kids' Books & More | Epic
Raz Kids and Get Epic are two online library's that offer access to learners and educators to a variety of children’s books. There are a variety of plans educators can sign up for including free options to grant learners access to assignments and the online library where they can take quizzes based on their reading. Learners join with a class code and can read books of their choice or assigned books and complete quizzes . Raz-Kids takes it further allowing learners to record themselves while reading and alanyze their fluency level. Educators can use this data to enhance or adjust instruction based on learner results (Epic, n.d.; LAZEL, Inc., 2025).
Listening Resource Adults: English Listening Lesson Library Online
The English Listening Lesson Library Online (ELLO) is a free English resource for teenagers to adults seeking to advance their English comprehension fluency. The program has over 3,000 free listening recordings categorized by the Common European Framework of References (CEFR) from with levels from beginner lA1 to advanced C1. It’s benefit comes in the fact that it provides authentic, unscripted conversations in a variety of English accents making it ideal for older learners who need to understand context, accents and the intricacies of conversational English. Aside from audio lessons ELLO also offers free video lessons usually less than 60’seconds and comes with a transcript and a quiz (ello, 2022).
Inspire Children to Read with Story’s Read by Actors: Storyline Online
Actors and other famous individuals read aloud children books, such celebrities include but are not limited to Ray Romano, Betty White, Sarah SIlverman and Al Gore to name a few. Educators or learners can listen to books read to them by celebrities, while a fun way to integrate listening into lessons it provides elementary school learnesf from grade 2 to grade 5 and entertaining way to listen to stories. It could be used for comprehension activities or even as a reward for learners to promote a love for reading. Books can be sorted by grade level making it easy to determine what stories would be appropriate for your listening audience (SAG-AFTRA Foundation 2025).
References
Banville, S. (n.d.). Nine more free ESL websites. Breaking News English. https://breakingnewsenglish.com
elllo. (2022). elllo. https://www.elllo.org
Epic. (n.d.). Educators. https://www.getepic.com/educators
LAZEL, Inc. (2025). Instructional support. Raz-Kids. https://www.raz-kids.com
SAG-AFTRA Foundation. (2025) Storyline Online. https://storylineonline.net
