Partida Rol por web

As first resource I recommend you this website (which I guess you know it too XDXD): wordreference. It's a website where you can search for a word and its translation. I think it is useful for us ^^ 

wordreference.com is a great resource. Don´t forget to check the forum section for some interesting discussions on the use of each word in context.

linguee.com is used by translators, it looks for texts were a specific word or phrase has been used in context.

Two greats rescources has been referenced. I add a new one, a grammar reference: http://www.englishpage.com/grammar/

I'm going to add a new one for people at medium or high level

http://www.dictionary.com/

It's just an English dictionary, not a Spanish-English dictionary.

Why you should use it?

1-It's good practice. At least according to my teachers, we should try to think in English and not translate from English to Spanish (I know, not exactly easy). And sometimes, certain nuances of some words are not easily translated to a equivalent spanish word.

2-If, at any point, you start to watch series or films/ read comics and books/ play videogames in English, you'll find words that won't be in a common translation dictionary: slang, obsolete words...although I think that wordreference has started to include more of those in the last years, dictionary.com is very good for that.

3-It has a thesaurus section, where you can look for synomys of certain words. That will give variety to your texts; instead of always using the same words to talk about certain ideas, use the thesaurus to look for a equivalent word (that's what I did here to avoid repeating synonym XD ). Wordreference has a synonym dictionary too, and there are others. In any way, a thesaurus is really useful for composing texts and learning new vocabulary.

And, if I a can give a suggestion to people who want to start reading English material (You should! It's great practice! Maybe a bit intimidating and frustrating at first but you'll get better fast if you keep at it), I think that webcomics are great for reading practice (although everybody has their own preferences, and the same methods of learning won't work for everybody).

-They are free (Yuhuuu!) and there are a lot of good webcomics in English.

-The drawings make the comprehension of the situation and meaning of words easier.

-Most of the text are the things that the characters say, and that means, more or less, oral language and not literary descriptions. And that means easier language (there are exceptions to that, avoid comics with too much slang and urban language). I noticed a jump in difficulty when I started reading novels in English, although I was able to read comics, tecnichal books and news article without problem. Ironically, technical books are relatively easy, too.

-Every "part" is (can be) shorter so they are less frustrating and intimidating. You read a page and you are done, you made it, you feel that you have accomplished something and you have read something fun, and if you want, you can read other page and then other (Wow! three pages in a day!). With a novel, if you advance slowly because of the pauses to look up new words, it can be frustrating to think about how many pages you still have to read to finish one chapter or the whole novel.

http://www.wordreference.com/es/

My effort and contribution.

Duolingo is a free app for Android cell phones (I think Iphones have it too on their market) to learn and improve English, French, German, Italian and Portuguese in a funny and practical way. It's simple, but I liked it to practise vocabulary. You can listen, write and pronounce the words and sentences.

I've downloaded many other apps and thats the one I like best. The worst thing of the app is that the gramatic part is not well developed, but other apps are just only grammatical, so it's offset I think.

They have a web too: https://es.duolingo.com/

This webpage is just a forum, where you can ask questions about English and its usage, and other users help you. Less institutional, more practical.

http://english.stackexchange.com/

Who said learning English shouldn't be fun?

Well, it can be fun.

Here I present you with what I believe is one of the best resources to learn any language: funny songs!

In this case, a couple of funny songs in English you can use to improve vocabulary. First one, level medium-high, second one, easy-medium I'd say.

Maybe the ones who are parents or the teachers know this youtube channel in spanish, but the original one in english has popular and traditional english songs and chants really well adapted, and some original songs. Kids in school love all the songs, in spanish and english, even the karaoke versions to sing by themselves 

youtube channel : Little baby Bum 

youtube channel for older kids or a better level of english : Little baby Bum junior

By the way, they have versions of their channels in german, portuguese and russian

An example of one of their traditional songs:

To be respectful with the literal meaning of the "reading club", I double-post here to include a video where you can read and listen the poem THE RAVEN by E.A.Poe, posted there by Tortugokamikaze.

The amazing reader is sir Christopher Lee, so enjoy it as I did when I discovered it ^_^

He read most of the Poe's popular tales, you can find them attached to this video. 

And here you have the Simpson's version of the same poem. It's really accurate, for being the Simpsons' one :)

Hi! Sorry about my english... But I want to share with you a resource discovered a few days ago.

The name is LearnOutLoud where we can find a 'free stuff' colection with Docs, Audiobooks and Courses (English and other languages courses included).

In this case, I am trying to improve my listened and spoken english. I have moved to UK two months ago and I feel very confused when native people talks to me. Because so much words have a diferent pronunciation than the pronunciation learned in my years studying english.That is the reason because I am using that web page, where I can download an audiobook and hear someone talking me (slower than other audiobooks) in english.

Then I search that book on Google as ebook format (In my case, I have an eReader device where I can read that book. But you can use some kind of computer eReader like Calibre, for example). There are a lot of web pages with free ebooks.  Such as Free-eBooks where you can find a lot of classics best sellers. So, you just have to match your audiobook with your ebook to enjoy the pleasure of reading while you are improving your english.

I hope you will find it useful! ^^

Hi all.

My contribution is related to "Idioms".

Resources:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/the-english-we-speak

Regards.

Grammar tips and corrections: