YouTube is a wonderful resource for both teaching and learning many things, and the English language is no exception. In fact the majority of teachers and students that I have encountered all turn to YouTube from time to time. With so many channels available, I thought I would put together a list of my top 5 YouTube channels for adult English language learners, and here they are.
Rachel’s English: Rachel’s English may just be my favorite ESL YouTube channel. It is a fantastic resource for English pronunciation and conversation. All of Rachel’s videos have captions to help English learners and she uploads new videos all of the time. If you scroll through her playlists you can find a video for almost any topic you can think of including: idioms, slang, intonation, vowel sounds, accent training, and more. She even has a playlist for learning English with movies where she focuses on pronunciation using clips from movies like Toy Story 4,Get Out, Captain Marvel, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Woodward English: Coming in at 2nd place for my favorite ESL YouTube channel is Woodward English. This channel has tons of grammar lessons for beginning to advanced English learners. Woodward English’s channel has videos on English vocabulary, grammar, phrasal verbs, idioms, IELTS (International English Language testing System), and occasional live English lessons. Their YouTube channel coincides with their website where they offer lots of free English lessons. Woodward English’s website also has a teacher resource shop where teachers can purchase charts, lesson plans, tests, quizzes, flashcards and more.
VOA Learning English: VOA Learning English is a fantastic YouTube channel for adult ESL students. This channel has news report videos that are summarized, captioned, and read slowly and clearly while still looking like a newscast. I find that this is a great resource for ESL classes because the material is: geared towards adults, current, and over topics that both apply to and interest my students. Many students love being able to watch the news on a level that they can understand in English. Another major pro is that this channel also uses each news video to teach a little new vocabulary.
Learn English with EnglishClass101.com: English Class 101 has a great YouTube channel. The channel is geared directly towards students and I love it because of the wide range of video times they offer. Some videos have mini lessons and conversations with videos as short as two minutes and some videos contain full lessons and can be over an hour. This is perfect because with so many different video lengths it’s easy for teachers to find a way to fit a video into their lessons or for students to fit a little English into their free time. English 101 has videos on vocabulary, conversation practice, listening comprehension, and grammar.
EnglishLessons4U: English Lessons 4 U is another wonderful channel for ESL students. The channel has English lessons on pronunciation, grammar, and spelling with teacher Ronnie. Ronnie has tons of videos on grammar and vocabulary as well as some of my favorite videos on English slang. I love Ronnie’s videos because they’re very casual and often very funny, and they tend to go over very well with students. Another pro is that most of her videos are under 20 minutes, so they are perfect for inserting into a class without taking up too much time with a video. A warning about this channel: Ronnie addresses the entirety of the English language and that includes some topics that aren’t suitable for most classrooms such as bad words. Because of this, I usually don’t directly give students the link to the channel but rather show the videos I want them to watch in class.
Do you have a favorite YouTube channel? Drop the link below in the comment section so we can check it out.
by Taynim Johnson