Let’s get started by taking a glance at an interesting website that accumulates English students from all over the world and besides providing some learning resources suggests ways to talk with the other learners world-wide using either Skype or MSN as the main framework. I think active talking is the biggest problem concerning foreign languages, all other activities seem to be much easier compared to it.

Speak-English-Today maintains a database of people who are willing to break the weird feeling of talking to other English learners and start improving their and their partner’s capabilities of self-expression. Experience conversation with people from different countries, it’s even fun sometimes. The initial courage will pay off in the end. Paid courses with native speakers are also available, optionally.

How about some listening exercise? High quality (maybe rather prestige) listening materials often cost fortune but you can try out some interesting listenings at ESLVideo without paying a single dime. There are several videos for each level of knowledge under which you can find a survey asking you question related to information mentioned in the video. There aren’t many of them so far but it’ll take you a few tens of minutes to go through all of them.

Finally, two useful online tools to help you with the studies. The first one would be an amazing Flash application called Visuwords that allows you to put in any word and consequently shows all words related to the one you provided connected with varied lines that show their relationship. Types of words are distinguished by having different colors explained in the legend.

The second tool is a definition dictionary called LingoZ, sort of a wiki for vocabulary that allows people share their definitions, vote for them or just search for them and browse glossary if they don’t intend to register.

Good luck with your studies :)

Not all podcasts are like radio shows of course, some look much more like audio lessons, like university courses without the classes. And this is what I will be talking about now. I found a great website that has three large lists of links to websites that offer podcasts that teach you something. That something is either languages, cultur or university courses. It is up to you of course to decide what you want to learn and hear, just download all the podcasts you like and transfer them to your mp3 player. All podcasts are encoded in mp3 format which makes it possible to have even large lessons take up just some megabytes.

Let us take a look at the three possibilities:

Languages: Links to podcasts that teach you 14 languages including German, French and Japanese. Most of the courses are for beginners, I suggest you read the explanation at the website that compiled the list before you download the podcasts.

University Courses: A compilation of links to colleges and universities (US) that offer free podcasts of some of their lectures. You find a wide variety of courses such as law and social sciences.

Culture: Many links to interesting podcasts and even audio texts. Concentrates on art, pop culture and media. Great.