The Best Free Apps for Elementary ESL learners

1) Duolinguo – This app is advertised as a language learning app, but more accurately it is a gameplay/language quiz app. The app takes the learner through a series of words and sentences in a multiple-choice quiz format. The learner chooses the correct translation of the words or sentences to complete the quiz. The app treats this as a game, and learners earn crystals for every completed quiz.

I would recommend using this as a vocabulary and grammar review activity. The instructions will be in English and the learning content will be in the second language. The instructions can be in their home language (Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, and many others) and the content being learned is in English. 

2) Quizlet – This app allows you to create flashcard sets for your learners, or download flashcard sets other teachers have already created. The flashcards can contain pictures! This is especially helpful if you have English language learners who are not literate in their first language, or with multiple first languages. Pictures solve many problems in language learning.

3) Kids’ Picture Dictionary – This picture “dictionary” app works like an alphabetical list of flashcards. It is a set of high frequency words grouped by letters of the alphabet. To use this “dictionary” the learner clicks on a letter of the alphabet and scrolls through the pictures. Every word has a sentence with audio that goes with it. It allows learners to listen to audio, and record themselves repeating the words they are learning. Then learners can playback their own voice and compare their pronunciation of the words with the apps prerecorded audio. This now doubles as a pronunciation practice tool.

4) Starfall – Starfall has one of the best letter learning and phonics reading online programs around. And now it is in app form. Starfall has really good books and literacy activities. The website reads its phonics books to you word by word. Then if you can’t read a word, you click on it, and Starfall helps you sound out the word letter by letter (unless it’s a sight word, where sounding out is impossible, then it just reads the word).

5) Storyline Online – This is an app version of the website/YouTube channel where celebrities read great children’s books. Every video is very nicely produced, and they even add in little animations to each book. 

6) Epic! Kids’ Books and Videos – This app has been called the “Netflix of kids books” and rightly so. Epic has gathered together over 35,000 books from leading publishers and digitized them. The app reads the books to you while highlighting every word as it goes. 

7) Monkey Puzzle – Cambridge English created this very entertaining mini games app that lets your learners practice simple English vocabulary for free. This is like a more simple, and more fun version of Duolingo. The games have your learners reading and spelling simple words in order to score points and unlock new levels. 

8) Little Bird Talks – This app allows your learners to take their own pictures or draw pictures and arrange them into a storyboard that becomes a video when they hit play. Learners can narrate the story with text and audio. The app also allows you to upload the content you create to the little bird talks website and view/edit things there and vice versa. This app provides great scaffolding to help English Language Learners tell stories. 

9) Google Translate – The best online translator.  Your learners can hand write words into this and get translations of their handwriting pumped out in other languages. Learners can even use the camera mode and translate any document into any language, right on the device’s touchscreen.

10) 英语趣配音 Yīngyǔ qù pèiyīn – This is a Chinese app that allows learners to overdub video clips like TV commercials and clips of famous movies. The app breaks up each clip sentence by sentence and allows you to listen to the audio and then record yourself speaking. Then you can compare your recording to the original audio. It is excellent pronunciation training. If you just open this article on your phone and copy and paste the name into your app store, you too can start overdubbing your voice on Pixar films like Despicable Me, or cute cartoons like Peppa Pig.

(Adapted from: https://practicaltesolteacher.com/12-best-free-apps-for-elementary-esl-learners/)