I have to try it out some more to be sure, but Kngine looks like it might be a truly exceptional search engine for English Language Learners and other students.

It calls itself a “revolutionary Semantic Search Engine and Question Answer Engine designed to provide meaningful search results.” Users can write a question in — for example, “How many years do you have to go to college to be a teacher?” (I chose that because my students have been doing research on careers). I was really quite impressed with the results that come up in response.

My students had tried using questions like that at some of the “question/answer” sites like Wikianswers. They easily found answers, but they varied wildly in terms of quality. The answers from Kngine seemed to take the best answers from those kinds of sites and include additional resources, too.

Even though I need to experiment with it more before I’m sure, I feel good enough about it to add to The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2009.

I’d be interested in hearing what your experience with it is, too.