Learning English for Beginners - Beginning ESL EFL

Learn English
Learn English at this site with resources including grammar explanations, vocabulary reference pages, quiz sheets, pronunciation help, and listening and reading comprehension strategies.

Study Skills for Beginners
This is a simple routine to use to make studying English every day a habit that you enjoy and will help you learn English quickly.

Word of the Day
Each day receive a new word, definition, sentence examples and pronunciation link. There is also a Quiz of the Day and Worksheet of the Day. The vocabulary, quiz and worksheet start off easy with intermediate level vocabulary. As the months go by, you'll improve your level to advanced vocabulary and grammar.

Basic English Lessons for Beginning English Learners
20 essential basic English lessons for beginning English learners. Use this gallery as a great way to study the basics in one easy to use area of the site. Each English lesson provides basic information and is followed by a short quiz to test your understanding.

Begin a New ESL Class
Steps students should take before they begin a new ESL class to ensure they get the most out of class from the very beginning.

Only for Beginners
The following sections have been provided to help beginning students learn English. The English and exercises used are very simple so that you or your ESL/EFL students can easily understand the information presented.

Beginner Review
Get the most out of this beginners' section. Review the beginner grammar by answering the questions then check your answers by clicking on the "Check" button. If you make a mistake you will be told and can click on the button to take you to the proper beginner review page!

Free Beginning English E-mail Course
Sign up (or sign your students up) for this beginning level course. You will receive an e-mail each week. Each lesson contains an introduction and links to learning materials on the site. The course makes for an excellent introduction to the basics of English.

Back to School Beginner's Resources
Getting ready to go back to school as a student or teacher can be as simple as reviewing what you've studied or taught, or as difficult as learning new skills to prepare you for a new class. This guide to back to school resources at the site for beginning, intermediate, advanced level and teachers will help you prepare for the new school year.

Basic English Conversations
Basic English conversations help beginning learners build basic English skills. Each conversation group includes a few short conversations introducing basic English phrases.

Conjunctions or "Joined up writing"

If you want to be rude about somebody's ability to express themselves and indicate that they can't say more than one complete sentence at a time, then you could say: they can't even string two sentences together. Now, string together is a sort of knitting expression suggesting that different parts of a material you're making are attached one to the other. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with short simple sentences all in a row. They can be appealing but sometimes you want to expand your ideas and that's when you make use of the joining words, called "conjunctions". They come in different shapes and sizes with of course different meanings and uses. They start small like "and", "but" and "as" growing into the larger varieties like "though" and "although".

How to learn English grammar?

Once you have started to learn a foreign language you want to use it, speak it, write it and above all communicate with others. But as we say, you have to learn to walk before you can run. You have to learn something about the way words work together, the way you can express different times or tenses, the way you use adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and so on. But if you are determined to get control of the language, understand it and use it properly, you must not let the things I have listed stop you. One thing at a time. Gradually bit by bit if you work hard, you will find success. The one word that sometimes makes people frightened when they start to learn a new language is "grammar". But don't worry about that word because it's only a very general title used to cover the workings of the language. The danger comes when you let grammar get in the way while you are learning. Remember that it was people who created the language in the first place. The "grammar people" or the grammarians came later.

English adverbs or "High hopes"

In this story you will see many examples of how adverbs can be used. As you know most adverbs have the ending «ly». For example:

English Grammar through Stories (PDF)
English Grammar through Stories
Improving your grammar is much easier than you think
Printable, photocopiable and clearly structured format
For use in a classroom, at home, on your PC, or anywhere

Listening Comprehension Exercises

* quickly
* really
* fairly


We use an adverb when we want to describe an activity as in this example:

* They speak English too quickly for me.


Please be aware that there are quite a number of adverbs that don't have the ending «ly». Here are some examples:

* fast
* well
* often


As with any grammar rule there are a lot of exceptions and it's really best for you to simply read stories and find the adverbs in italics.

So without futher ado, let's get straight to the point.

"High Hopes"
I had a nightmare the other night. I dreamt I was bungee jumping, that's when you throw yourself off a bridge and your feet are attached to an elasticated rope that pulls you back again. I didn't do the jump properly, in fact, I did it extremely badly because I fell only a few metres and was dangling dangerously just below the bridge for ages.

Then I woke up and thanked my lucky stars enthusiastically that it had been only a dream. I lay quietly in bed the following morning and wondered how I had come to have such a terrible dream. Never would I contemplate the idea of jumping off a bridge with or without an elasticated cord. Then I remembered I had seen a film on the television the night before showing some students bungee jumping. The funny thing about this strange sport is that you often see people jumping off but you never see them come back. As I said, in no circumstances could I be persuaded to do it for the simple reason that I am terrified of heights. I remember once sitting petrified at my desk at work listening to a colleague describing how he had jumped out of a plane by parachute on one occasion in order to raise some money for charity, I can recall how I almost fell off my chair in fear. No sooner had he finished telling his story than I had to get up and go and lie down quietly in a darkened room. I can still remember one incident that illustrates my fear of heights — I haven't got over it yet and it's still very vivid in my mind.

I never have to find an excuse to go the seaside. I always agree to it when someone suggests going to the coast. I never can resist the sight and smell of the sea. A trip had been planned for the weekend. I always used to pack the night before one of these trips and invariably I rarely slept in anticipation of the event. That's what comes of working in a large city day in day out. We set off early and reached our destination quite quickly at about 11 a.m. Hardly had we finished our morning coffee in a small cafe when it started to rain really heavily. Then we decided to drive around to the front and watch the sea as it pounded violently against the beach. We were just going to abandon the whole idea of staying there any longer when the sun made an appearance suddenly.

As quickly as the rain had started equally as speedily it stopped. We all got out of the car and walked slowly up the cliff at the end of the town. Usually you get a magnificent view of the bay at the top but on this particular afternoon rarely had I seen so much mist. And that, in a manner of speaking, was my down fall. Although I knew this particular piece of land quite well, the fog had obscured the edge of the cliff and although I was walking very slowly as I always do on high ground, I stepped on a piece of grass which I thought was solid but soon discovered was anything but. I slipped immediately and began to descend almost as if I was nearly doing a slow motion bungee jump only this time I was the right way up. With a jolt I stopped abruptly and realized I was going nowhere. Only then did I start to panic. I could hear the sea but I didn't dare look down and I started to yell as loud as I could. I waited patiently on my little edge for at least half an hour while I was being assured that help would come soon.

Eventually a rope was dropped down to me and I gradually hoisted myself up to the top of the cliff. By now the mist had cleared completely and I took a quick look down to discover that I had only been about half a metre from the beach. But I thought I'd conceal that information subtly.

The sign was not constructed, as one might suppose, by the movie business as a means of celebrating the importance of Hollywood to this industry ; instead, it was first constructed in 1923 as a means of advertising homes for sale in a 500-acre housing subdivision in a part of Loa Angeles called “Hollywood” The sign that was constructed at the time, of course, said “Hollywood”. Over the years, people began referring to the area by the shortened version “Hollywood” and after the sign and its site were donated to the city in 1945, the last four letters were removed.

STAN English Test

The Hollywood sign in the hills that line the northern border of Los Angeles is a famous landmark recognized the world over. The white-painted, 50-foot-high, sheet metal letters can be seen from great distances across the Los Angeles basin.



The sign suppered from years of disrepair, and in 1973 it needed to be completely replaced, at a cost of $ 27,700 per letter. Various celebrities were instrumental in helping to raise needed funds. Rock star Alice Cooper, for for Example, bought “O” in memory of Groucho Marx, and hugh Hefner of playboy fame held a benefit party to raise the money for the “Y”. the construction of the new sign was finaly completed in 1978.

141. What is the topic of this passage ?
a. Hollywood versus Hollywoodland
b. A famous sign
c. A famous city
d. Woeld landmarks

142. The expression “the world over” in line 3 could be best replaced by ……………
a. in the skies
b. in the northern parts of the world
c. ontop of the world
d. in the entrie world

143. It can be inferred from the passage that most people think that the Hollywood sign was first constructed by ………
a. the city of los Angeles
b. an advertising company
c. the movie industry
d. a construction company

144. The pronoun “it” in line 8 refers to ……………...
a. this industry
b. the sign
c. the movie business
d. the importance of Hollywood

145. Which of the following is NOT mentioned about Hollywood ?
a. It was the most expensive area of Los Angeles
b. It used to be the name of an area of Los Angeles
c. It was formerly the name on the sign in the hills.
d. There were houses for sale there

VOCABULARY

146. If something has never happened before, it is …….
a. unprecedented
b. reconvene
c. contradict
d. inscription

147. Water that is underground is in a (n) ………..location
a. circumscribe
b. convocation
c. subterranean
d. graphology

148. To write or place a limit around something is to …..it
a. visualize
b. circumscribe
c. convocation
d. revise

149. if you see something that is not out of the ordinary, it is …..
a. mismatched
b. introvert
c. unspectacular
d. inscription

150. If you are not careful in making decisions or in expressing opinions, you are ……
a. unprecedented
b. extrovert
c. introspective
d. injudicious

151. I am trying to ….the the place you are describing ; I would like to see it in my mind
a. visualize
b. revise
c. submit
d. reconvene

152. The Merger of the two companies was funded by a …..
a. capital
b. capitalist
c. capitalism
d. capitalize

153. The student did not do well in the class because he had a problem with ……
a. absentia
b. absent
c. absently
d. absenteeism

May 27, 2006, was a day that I will never forget, it was the day I experienced my first earthquake. I had just…(154) home from masque and was lying on the living room sofa watching the news on TV. My little brother was in my room playing, and my older sister was in the kitchen preparing our breakfast our parents were still sleeping.


At exactly 5.49 a.m., the earthquake…(155)….my country. Our house started …..(156)….violently as it ….(157)…a small wooden boat being tossed by giant waves in the ocean. At first, none realized what was happening. Then my sister yelled, “Earthquakel Get under something!” I was too stunned to move, but the shaking was so strong that I soon fell off the sofa onto the floor. I half rolled, half crawled across the floor to the dining table and got under it. My sister was sitting on the floor in the kitchen. Holding her arms…(158)…her head to protect it from falling dishes. She yelled at my little brother to get under his desk, but he wanted to be near us. He tried to get out of my room, but he kept falling down. The earthquake lasted less than a minute, but it seemed like a year to us.


154. a. getting
b. gotten
c. got
d. get

155.a. stricked
b. striking
c. strike
d. struck

156.a. sheking
b. to shake
c. shaken
d. a and b are correct

157.a. was
b. were
c. is
d. had been

158. a. through
b. over
c. on
d. in

159. All of my time ….in the library
a. has spending
b. is spent
c. are spent
d. spending

160. “Tokyo is crowded and noisy just like New York.”
The same structure with the sentence above is …
a. Tokyo is crowded and noisy just us New York is.
b. Tokyo is crowded and noisy alike New York
c. Tokyo is crowded and noisy just us New York
d. Tokyo is crowded and noisy as New York

161. I started school when I was five years old. I …a student for seventeen years now.
a. am to be
b. am
c. am being
d. have been

162. I was scared, ……I was also curious about the old lady.
a. yet
b. but
c. instead
d. and

163. Because the river ….steadily since Sunday, the residents of the area have been advised to prepare for flood conditions.
a. has been ris
b. rose
c. had risen
is rising

164. The best diamonds are transparent and colorless, but they actually …..in color from clear to black,
a. have been ranging
b. range
c. are ranging
d. ranged

165. …..certain molds and fungi to multiply very rapidly
a. Tripical weather causes
b. A tropical weather causes
c. Tropical weather causes
d. The tropical weather causes

166. No one knowa where Tony is living now. The last time that I ran ….was about four years ago.
a. into him
b. him down
c. down him
d. him into

167. It is generally considered unwise to give a child …he or she wants.
a. whatever that
b. whatever is it
c. whatever
d. that

168 Response : I used to, but I resigned my membership
a. wouldn’t you have belonged to the English club ?
b. Didn’t you use to belong to the English Club ?
c. Wouldn’t you belong to the English club /
d. Won’t you belong to the English club ?

169. The proposal ….discussed when I called the office this morning
a. been
b. being
c. have been
d. was being

170. Armansyah seems …the point you were making.
a. misunderstanding
b. having misunderstood
c. to have misunderstood
d. misunderstood

171. Not only ……a good thing : he did the right thing
a. will sam do
b. Sam did
c. Sam do
d. Did Sam do

172. Soekarno, …..one of the strongest Indonesian President, served from 1945 to 1965.
a. considering
b. considered
c. is considered
d was considered

173. In the view of the STAN lecturers’union, it is essential that discipline …..maintained in the classroom.
a. is to be
b. is
c. was
d. be

174. Ditto …Indonesia before he came to Jakarta to study in the international student program.
a. had never visited
b. has never visited
c. never visited
d. would never visited

175. Thomas Alfa Edison invented …..
a. the electric lights
b. an electric light
c. electric light
d. electric lights