Foreign Languages and Cultures: Web Resources

This is an archived page aimed at helping users to learn a foreign language through free online lessons.

CTCFL at the University of Oxford is located in the Institute for Chinese Studies in Walton Street, Oxford. Workshops and research projects run by the British Chinese Language Teaching Society are supported by CTCFL. The Centre focuses on creating web-based or computer assisted programmes to improve Chinese language teaching and learning.

Excellent podcasts aimed primarily at beginning and early intermediate learners of French, Spanish, Italian, German and more.

Animated online games for learning languages.

A collection of free interactive language learning resources from the University of Texas for beginning Mandarin Chinese. Students can practice pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, listening, and reading skills at their own convenience.

Your guide to languages on the web, iLoveLanguages promotes Internet resources related to language learning, education, and use. Links for language practice, translation and dictionaries are included.

Language by Country videos focus on practical aspects of everyday life. They were filmed by Five College international students between 1999 and 2002. Some cultural information is out-of-date, but many of the videos remain linguistically useful. Transcripts and translations are provided.

This site offers free medical Spanish immersion, with vocabulary including greetings, history, examination, and everyday speech, all with translation and audio. It is designed to be helpful for a variety of medical personnel.

Busuu provides courses in 12 different languages via the web and mobile devices to more than 100 million learners worldwide. Learners can sign up for free, or subscribe to a Premium membership to unlock further features like advanced grammar lessons, Offline Mode, McGraw-Hill Education certification or the adaptive Vocabulary Trainer.

Free, effective, bite-sized lessons available on your computer, phone, or tablet (iPhone/Google Play apps available).

With over 50 million users worldwide, Mondly offers 33 languages to choose from. They also have games, interactive lessons, and even a version of Mondly for kids.

Quickly translate words, phrases or blocks of text, or ask their online community for help with a translation.

Translate blocks of text or entire documents with just a few clicks.

Lexicool is a directory of online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries freely available on the Internet. It is a resource intended for translators, linguists, language students and all those interested in foreign languages, and includes 8000 dictionaries and glossaries in 70 languages.

This dictionary will help you translate words in English, Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Japanese and more.

This is an up-to-date, expansive body of international data utilized by tens of millions of visitors annually.

The foreign-language newspaper sites listed here are a sample of material available on the Web free of charge in Chinese, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.

A bilingual web site developed by the National Library of France and the Library of Congress chronicling the history of France's presence and influence in North America.

LANIC has been a trusted Internet portal for Latin American Studies content since 1992, from The University of Texas at Austin.

The MLA Language Map is for students, teachers, and anyone interested in learning about the linguistic and cultural composition of the United States. The Language Map uses aggregated data from the 2006–10 American Community Survey (ACS) to display the locations and numbers of speakers of twelve languages commonly spoken in the United States.

A list of professional organizations for language teachers and learners, provided by The Consortium, an organization that provides services, best practice standards, professional development and more to language professionals.

A report from The Language Flagship, an initiative of the National Security Education Program (NSEP) at the U.S.Department of Defense, aimed at assessing and understanding the needs for global skills in business.

Information about countries and their cultures, organized alphabetically and by continent.

This is an index of translated books published in approximately 100 countries. Published by UNESCO, it contains “more than 1.600,000 entries in all disciplines : literature, social and human sciences, natural and exact sciences, art, history and so forth.”