Free English classes on-line offer both advantages and disadvantages over traditional on and off-line classrooms. A deft foreign language learner, whether a student or teacher, must analyze educational content, recognizing what would be in his or her best interest. I highly recommend taking advantage of free English classrooms as a supplementary learning resource while utilizing a traditional classroom for fundamental concepts and professional on-line English training schools for continued growth in the target language.

Students should keep in mind that free English programs are generally not designed specifically for students from a particular region, not unlike mainstream textbooks. Overall quality of free English schools typically leaves much to be desired. Curriculum development, web design, navigation, presentation, and content accuracy unnecessarily challenge visiting students. Site administrators and instructors habitually provide limited hours of availability with sparse feedback and a sluggish response time: 24-hour customer service and technical support would be a contradiction in terms.

Supply and demand render a student-teacher ratio too high for individualized attention. Free English schools frequently fail to offer teacher training programs, relying on affiliate marketing to solve curriculum deficiencies. Hence, are free English schools indeed gratuitous? Sponsored links, advertisements, and programs such as Google AdSense produce income for web sites. Although free English schools do not charge students, such web sites are still able to generate revenue.

Another tactic is to present limited content while extending the concept of premium content at an affordable price. For example, a free English school could present a static text environment to foreign language learners with audio and video content requiring a form of payment acceptable to the school’s accountant. Without previous knowledge about instructors, teaching platforms or methodologies utilized, students should inquire about free trials.

Adroit teaching professionals and foreign language students alike should avail of high quality English language learning material on-line. Blogs (web journals), RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, podcasts, Skypecasts, and screencasts are typically free in nature. In addition, reading and writing exercises should take advantage of free English chatrooms although I strongly warn students to beware of sexual harassment from wicked predators on and off-line.

Moreover, I steadily uphold and advocate the utilization of on and off-line gaming with native speakers to enhance fluency in the target language. Newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television shows, and movies just await the eager foreign language learner: all forms of media should be taken advantage of to ensure correct linguistic input. Teachers should guarantee that on-line educational content is visible to all virtual classroom participants, as certain countries tend to ban entire servers in order to confine knowledge not approved by governmental agencies.

Whether at home, school or at work, your imagination is the limit as far as being able to take advantage of the learning resources surrounding you to effectively learn another language. Full-immersion does not require a student to travel abroad: utilize what the Internet has to offer by listening, speaking, reading and writing to your heart’s content with native and non-native speakers of the target language from the comfort of your own home. Discard ties and opt for pyjamas.