Longman

Longman

Longman have arranged their student resources into the following groups:
Young learners
Teens
Adults
Exams
Business english
Within each group there are different type of materials… such as quizzes, reading activities and companions websites for their books

Probably my favourite thing here are the penguin dossiers… these are a collection of non-fiction articles with audio recording and worksheets (some with teaching notes). The topics range from music and sport to technology and the environment. They are at an upper elementary/pre intermediate level and suitable for both teens and adults. There is a new article each month and an archive of about 20 or so articles on the site… well worth checking out

For business English students they have a "Business of the month" feature which provides a reading comprehension activity on a well-known business. Unfortunately they do not provide an archive so I can't tell if this is actually updated monthly.

For exam students there is lots of material to help prepare for the exams including links to the companion websites for the Gold series of coursebooks as well as several practice papers. A feature of the exam area is the discussion boards for exam students. They are free to use but you do need to register.. I had a quick look and they seem pretty active and may be quite useful to students preparing for exams outside a classroom situation.

There are also companion websites for most of the course books that longman publish although I noticed when I visited the website of their most popular business title"Market Leader" they were offering a paid site via a subscription that offered new materials every week. I imagine the goal of most of these sites is to keep the customers when they return to their home countries after completing their studies. Still there is enough free material to make publishers sites very worthwile for English learners

Tomorrow.... Cambridge