As part of the BBC World Service, BBC Learning English has been teaching English to global audiences since 1943, offering free audio, video and text materials to learners around the world. The BBC Learning English website, which was launched in 1997 and revamped in 2014, remains one of, if not the best place to find self-study resources for learning English. As such, I decided it deserved a whole article to itself.
Perhaps the best thing about BBC Learning English is that many of the materials are delivered as full length courses, a service which would you usually have to pay for. However, each component of the course is standalone and can be studied on its own. This means the learner can choose the best way to study for them; by following a full course or by following the individual materials most appropriate to them. A new feature is site maps, which allow you to find a particular grammar point or language area to work on. You can see the site map for the Lower-Intermediate Course here, and find out more about the current and future courses here.
Here are direct links to the courses:
As well as courses, they also have a range of long-running features such as 6 Minute English, Words in the News, and The English We Speak, some of which are available as podcasts.
Although not accessible from the main English site, there are also special versions for specific languages like Chinese, Russian. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel and on Twitter.
TIP
When the new BBC Learning English site was launched in 2014, the old site was archived, but can still be accessed here. Although the old site does not have ‘responsive design’, it does have a fantastic collection of resources including General and Business English, Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation, and all 204 (!) episodes of a series called The Flatmates. Definitely worth checking out!
