There are tons of places on the Internet where you can find ESL/EFL hand-outs and worksheets of varied quality and varied cost.  You can find a very long list of them on my website under ESL Hand-Outs And Lesson Plans.

I thought a “The Best…” list highlighting the sites that I thought were best might be useful to readers. This is sort of a companion list to The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers.

In order to make it on this list, the site needed to have a large quantity of high-quality resources available for printing-out. In addition, most do not require registration and are free.

Many ESL/EFL textbooks have most of the same information that these hand-outs and worksheets offer. However, even — as most of us who teach ESL/EFL do — if we use a textbook, these kinds of worksheets are valuable for a few reasons:

* I’ve found that many teacher-created worksheets are just plain better at helping students learn than the textbooks I have seen, so they are excellent supplements.

* Since students can’t write in most textbooks, unless it’s a “consumable,” worksheets are good materials for students to annotate.

* These kinds of worksheets are great for use in reinforcing games. For example, I’ll have different “stations” where small groups of rotating students — under stringent time limits — have to complete different hand-outs. We then correct them as a class and tabulate the results to determine a group “winner.”

Of course, if you’re teaching in an environment that cannot afford a newer textbook — or any textbook at all —  then these kinds of hand-outs are indispensable.

As I’ve mentioned, there are ton of these kinds of sites out there, and I’m sure I don’t know them all. If you know of sites that you think should belong on this list, please feel free to write about them in the comments section.

Since all the sites listed here meet the criteria I mentioned earlier, I’m not going to describe each one in detail.  Instead, I’ll just provide the name and the link.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For ESL/EFL Hand-Outs & Worksheets (not in any order of preference):

MES-English

My English Printable Worksheets

Lanternfish

EFL Club Resource Box

ESL-Kids

English Images

Checking-out ESL Library has been on my “to do” list for quite awhile. I’ve been impressed with the free sample lessons and worksheets they offer, but, with all the quality free resources out there, I’m hesitant to spend time on sites that charge. Jason Renshaw saved me the trouble by writing a very informative and positive review of the site (which charges $55 a year (probably more now)). Since I value Jason’s opinion so highly, I’ve got to take his word for it, and so I’m adding ESL Library to this list with the important caveat, of course, that it’s not free, but worth paying for.
ESL Galaxy

Using English

EL Civics

ESL PDF

Teaching Ideas is a site in the United Kingdom that offers a ton of free printables, among other things.

ESL Flow seems to have a good number of useful reproducibles.

Teach-This.com

English Worksheets Land has a lot of free decent worksheets suitable for English reinforcement. You don’t have to register before gaining access to them.

Learn English Feel Good

iSL Collective

iSLCollective Appears To Be A Jackpot For ELL Student Hand-Outs & Interactive Videos

Reader Susan recommended I check-out the Big Learners site, and I’m glad she did. It has thousands of worksheets for elementary grades that you can print-out for free with no registration required. The English ones I looked at seemed pretty decent and could certainly be used with Beginning and Low-Intermediate English Language Learners to reinforce concepts that have been initially taught in more engaging ways.

The British Council has a number of printable worksheets.

photocopiables has a good collection of downloadable materials for use in the ELL classroom.

Twinkl looks like a fantastic site to find and/or create learning resources.

All Things Topics has lots of ESL Worksheets.

Talkmor Learning Hub has lots of free ELL workshops, and also includes teacher notes about how to use them.

You can find a gazillion worksheets on just about any topic at 15 Worksheets. They’re all free, no registration is required, and they’ve been created by a group of retired teachers.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.