Learning Assistance Center

Useful Links

You may find the following websites to be useful and informative:

ECONOMICS

• The Khan Academy (excellent, free lessons banking, economics, finance, investing, and more!)

• Economics U$A - video series from Learner.org
• Inside the Global Economy - video series from Learner.org

ENGLISH

• Guide to Grammar and Writing
• Paradigm:  Online Writing Assistant
• The Nuts and Bolts Guide to College Writing
• Building a Better Vocabulary
• Free Rice: a very cool vocabulary quiz!
• Summarizing and Paraphrasing Successfully
• Helpful Writing Skills Information
• Exercises @ Grammar Bytes!
• Dependent and independent clauses
• Analogy completion (good for SAT prep)

English:  LAC Handouts for Improving Writing Skills

• Four Steps to a Good Essay
• Find the Topic Sentence!
• Correct Word Choice
• Parallel Structure
• Writing Style

ESL Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading

• Free Rice: a very cool vocabulary quiz! (you can also change the subject to grammar)
• Language Guide (Picture Dictionary with pronunciation)
• VocabAhead: Vocabulary videos for SAT, GRE, and ACT
• 100 Short ESL Stories
• Reader's Digest
• Idiom Connection
• Dictionary of English Idioms
• Toon in to Idioms
• Idiom Quest
• English Daily Idioms
• Grammar-Quizzes.com
• Interactive Exercises
• Mini Grammar Tutorials
• Grammar Exercises at English-4u
• LearnEnglishFeelGood Grammar Tests
• Adjective or Adverb?
• Voice of America grammar and vocabulary quizzes
• Common Mistakes
• English exercises (Levels 1-4)
• Video: The Present Continuous Tense (9:45)
• Video: Present Continuous with The Simpsons
• Video: Simple Present Tense
• Video: Comparatives (includes spelling rules)
• Video: Present Perfect Tense 1
• Present Tense- Simple or Progressive?
• Punctuation Rules

ESL Listening, Speaking, and Pronunciation

• ESL video lessons @ EnglishMeeting
• Voice of America (VOA) News in Special English
• Recent VOA stories with clickable text (for vocabulary) / podcasts
• Hear anything pronounced with the Text-To-Speech (TTS) avatar!
• How to pronounce words and use them (by EmbedPlus)
• Randall's Cyber Listening Lab
• Pronunciation Dictionary of Names
• Practice English with Chat Robots!
• Real English (street interviews)

Spelling

• Spelling rules and game

ESL: General sites

• ESL4you (Instructor Snyder's ESL Blog)
• PCC's ESL Website
• Dave's ESL Cafe
• Ron Chang's ESL site
• ESL Resource Center
• Interesting Things for ESL Students
• U.S. Higher Education: A Cultural Introduction
• Think in English with 20 Questions

ESL/EFL: TOEFL EXAM

• GetTOEFL: Free daily test questions

ETHICS

• Ethics in America II - streaming video from Learner.org

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

• Free Rice: cool vocabulary quizzes in French, Spanish, Italian, and German - click "change subjects" to select language
• A great practice site for language lovers! (includes multilingual online dictionary)
• Tips for studying a foreign language
• Study Spanish
• Spanish Vocabulary Games
• Chinese Language Program
• Live Radio from France
• French in Action - online streaming lessons
• Business Spanish lessons
• Destinos - streaming Spanish educational soap opera
• Free online Japanese lessons
• Learn vocabulary in many languages! (with pictures and pronunciation) * English * Spanish * French * Italian * Portuguese * German * Russian * Hebrew * Arabic * Japanese * Mandarin Chinese
• Think in another language with 20 Questions (German * Italian * Dutch * Swedish * Korean * Chinese * French * Spanish * Danish * Portuguese * Turkish * Polish * Czech * Japanese * Greek)
• Translate any text/web page with Babelfish

FREE E-COURSES

• AcademicEarth.org - video lectures and courses from the world's top scholars
• MIT World - video lectures from MIT professors
• College video lectures/courses from Learner.org

GEOGRAPHY

• The Power of Place: Geography for the 21st Century

HISTORY

• A Biography of America - streaming video from Learner.org
• Bridging World History - streaming video from Learner.org

KEYBOARDING SKILLS

• Touch Typing
• TypeOnline
• Learn2Type

MATH

• The Khan Academy (excellent, free lessons in math, statistics, banking, economics, finance, investing, and more!)
• Algebra: In Simplest Terms - streaming video
• "Math for Morons Like Us"- Math Links
• Professor Freedman's Math Help (includes tutorials in Elementary Algebra)
• Lessons in Prealgebra, Algebra, and Geometry
• Online Graphing Calculator (click the GCALC3 button)
• Figure This!  Math Puzzles

POLITICAL SCIENCE

• Democracy in America - video series from Learner.org

SCIENCE

• The Khan Academy (excellent, free lessons in chemistry, biology, and physics)
• Succeed in Physical Science
• DNA Interactive
• How Stuff Works
• The Brain - video series from Learner.org
• The Mind - video series from Learner.org
• Earth Revealed - video series from Learner.org
• The Habitable Planet - video series from Learner.org
• Physics for the 21st Century
• The World of Chemistry

STATISTICS

• Against All Odds: Inside Statistics - videos from Learner.org

STUDY SKILLS

• Study Tips from the College Grants Database
• Learning Styles Inventory
• Study Tips for Students
• How to Study
• Study Guide & Strategies
• The Study Skills Resource Page
• The Cornell Method of Note Taking
• Free Cornell Note-taking Paper
• Test Taking Central

OTHER TOPICS

• Syvum GRE Preparation Practice Exercises
• Free Education on the Internet: catalog of free courses

THINK BEFORE FORWARDING AN E-MAIL MESSAGE

You may receive all kinds of interesting stories, petitions, virus warnings, and other kinds of warnings from your well-intended friends.  How can you tell what's true and what is a hoax? 

Check out the claim on the following websites!

• www.truthorfiction.com
• www.snopes.com

RESEARCHING A TOPIC? Try this site for great results!

• www.metacrawler.com

Metacrawler searches multiple engines, including: Google · Yahoo! Search · Bing

Revised February 27, 2013 by easnyder@pasadena.edu