For plenty of reasons, ESL teaching has recently turned to online platforms to cover the increasing needs of the ESL industry. These platforms aren’t different from ordinary classes and face to face meetings for they similarly provide interactive and diverse tasks that help students sharpen their skills at their own pace.
The type of Apps this article shares with us are not only useful for teachers when designing activities or writing curriculum, but they’re also exciting for students to use during classroom activities or unstructured classroom time.
1. FluentU

With its user-friendly interface and variety of tasks, FluentU is very unique among the Apps on this list. It takes real-world videos such as music videos, commercials, news, cartoons and inspiring talks and turns them into English learning situations. FluentU believes in time, and thus, it uses a natural approach to help students learn at ease.
FluentU’s great collection of authentic videos provides all that students might need, from stories and tales to scientific scripts and experiments. Students get fully engaged when they see their favorite trailers pop up in their English classroom. More importantly, these videos are sorted by skill level and come with built-in language lessons.
The content on FluentU is carefully annotated for students to suit their abilities. FluentU provides interactive captions and in-context definitions on-screen with plenty of interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games.
Teachers, looking for audio-visual resources, cannot find better than FluentU. It’s perfect for in-class activities, group projects and even solo homework assignments. It is guaranteed to get your students excited and mainly engaged.
2. Duolingo

Duolingo is one of the renowned platforms to learn a new language. Actually, a great number of learners all over the world use duolingo for its well-constructed language rules. The good news is that ESL teachers can additionally use duolingo for their classroom activities.
Duolingo has also an interactive interface that helps learners develop different skills. Learners can move from one level to another going through a couple of lessons, which assemble listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks. At the end of each section, the user is tested. This in fact offers a feedback on what parts the user is excelling in and where they can use more practice.
For ESL teachers, duolingo is unequally resourceful; it serves as a pool of varied tasks and topics that would certainly engage learners. Its guided instruction let students explore plenty of topics, and thus, a great amount of words and expressions. This actually whets the learners’ appetite for more bits of information.
3. Grammar Up

It is common among ESL tutors that grammar can be very challenging to teach, but with “Grammar Up”, it doesn’t have to be. This app offers different sections, which are intended consolidate different parts of speech, namely adjectives, adverbs, verbs and many more. Each section has an introductory stage, usually a technical definition of the part of speech. Grammar Up needs to measure the learner’s progress, and thus, at the end of each section, there is a test to take in order to “Grammar up” and reach the next level.
Grammar up is ideal for individual assessment that ESL teachers can cheerfully use as it helps them determine which parts of speech their students understand, and which parts of speech they need to review.
4. Speak English like an American

It is said that the learners’ pronouncing abilities would never sound like a native speaker. In fact, this is the hardest part in learning English. Any language has plenty of idioms and expressions that only native speakers understand.
With The Speak English like an American App, developing native-like pronunciation models becomes possible. This app uses a couple of techniques that teach its users common figures of speech and expressions that Americans use in day-to-day language.
Idioms like “break the news” and “it costs an arm and a leg” can be hard to explain in a classroom setting, but this app offers the right learning situation to reinforce the learners’ understanding.
Speak English like an American is very helpful in the sense it gets students less anxious to have casual conversation with Americans outside of the classroom.
5. Head’s Up!

Actually, Heads Up isn’t exclusively an ESL app, but it can be used in ESL classrooms. It provides a chance to learn through games. In Heads Up, one student has a word that other students are trying to guess. They need to listen carefully for the description or rather the definitions. The winners are those who could predict the right words or expressions.
Accordingly, this game helps learners build up their speaking confidence. It additionally encourages them to use vocabulary.
Heads up is an interactive game that guarantees to get the giggles going while students are practicing their vocabulary.
Without any doubt, using any of ESL apps mentioned above will provide an innovative strategy to student learning English. They will certainly boost their vocabulary, reading skills, writing abilities and listening. They help students interact and cooperate with their peers and tutors. Of course, they shouldn’t be a replacement for a well-planned curriculum, but ESL tutors will find that these apps are supplements to scaffold any ESL course.