The advantages of taking free English courses online are many. You can use these courses to complement the instruction you receive or start learning English on your own time. This is a great chance for many people to receive instruction in English when they are unable to leave their home country to live and study in an English-speaking one. When you take an online course, you don have to pay any tuition costs or make changes to your work schedule so that you can attend actual classes. As long as you have a computer and an Internet connection, you can take your lessons at any time of the day or night and set your own schedule.



Don be misled into thinking that by taking an online course you will be studying alone and will not be able to interact with English speakers or with others that are learning English just like you. The online sites have chat lines where you can talk with other students and get answers to any questions that you may have from native English speakers. Therefore you have the interaction you need and it is very similar to being immersed in the language because when you are online doing the lessons, you are immersed in English all the time.

The lessons are all introduced by dialogues that use the structure being explained in the lesson. You can listen to the dialogues being read as you read along with the print on the screen. The main problem that most language learners have is that they always try to translate the English into their own language first. This is perfectly normal for beginners and is the reason that one of the resources commonly found on an English language learning site is a dictionary into which you can type and word and have it translated into your own language. After you get used to the main vocabulary, you will gradually start to think in English and won have to use this resource very often.

All of the lessons contain all four components of learning English. You listen to the dialogues and read along with them. You read and listen to the instructions about each structure of grammar and then you get an opportunity to write the language when you complete the practice exercises.

The audio component of an online course allows you to pick and choose which topics you want to hear and read. There is a listening center in which you can hear various passages on a variety of topics. Reading books in English is an important part of learning the language, but if you are studying from home in your own country, you may have great difficulty finding these books. That is why the online sites have a literature library where you can choose to read some books, such as Aesop Fables, Junior Classics or folk tales from all over the world. You can also read essays in English from which you can gain valuable information on how to write your own essays, if you are studying for the TOFEL exam for English proficiency.