Useful Links for Writing and English Skills

Whether you need to brush up your English before a writing assignment, want tips on how to
create an effective introduction to your thesis, or find out more about how to quote or give
references properly, there are many excellent websites that can be of help. Here we have
picked out some of the more useful ones that we often recommend to students, with lots of
explanations, quizzes, video lessons, and exercises to explore.

Academic Writing
The University of Toronto has a well-structured and informative website on how to plan and
structure an essay. Check out Using Sources for information on how to use references in the
correct way, and how to avoid plagiarism. Under English as a Second Language you can
also find help to master common grammatical stumbling blocks.
http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/planning-and-organizing
Eslbee.com is the website of an online course in academic writing for non-native speakers of
English. Here you can find helpful explanations and quizzes on both writing skills and
grammar, as well as recordings where the teacher explains grammatical rules.
http://eslbee.com/
The Roane State College Online Writing Lab offers accessible and concise advice on writing
and grammar.
http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/

Learning English
At the Free English Video Lessons site you can find hundreds of useful video lessons on
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, writing skills etc. and there are also some quizzes where
you can practice what you have learnt. Highly recommended!
http://www.engvid.com/
The BBC Learning English site offers opportunities to practice your English by listening to
audio and video clips with for instance a weekly soap opera and simplified news stories.
There are also discussion groups and quizzes on grammar and vocabulary.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
The British Council has a website with lots of interactive games, multimedia exercises and
stories.
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/
This non-commercial site provides information on both grammar and writing, and has a great
many interactive quizzes, word games, proverbs, a random-sentence generator and other study
materials where you can practice for instance prepositions, verb tenses, or article usage.
http://www.manythings.org/

Dictionaries
Longman English Dictionary
http://www.ldoceonline.com/
Macmillan Dictionary
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Heinle's Newbury House Dictionary of American English
http://nhd.heinle.com/home.aspx
Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com
http://thesaurus.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
Norstedts Swedish-English/English-Swedish Dictionary
http://www.ord.se/

Pronunciation
Do you want to practice speaking English with the help of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?
At the English Central website you can improve your English pronunciation by repeating
sections from video clips of famous speeches. The site uses speech recognition to provide
instant feedback and advice. There are also lots of educational video clips that can be used to
practice talking at meetings or during job interviews.
http://www.englishcentral.com/
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If you want to improve your English, make it a habit to visit some of those websites a couple
of times each week; watch lessons, and do quizzes and exercises. If you also pick up a novel
in English to read every once in a while (you can find a list of our book recommendations
below), you will soon notice that writing and reading in English becomes much easier!

(As all of these websites are external, we are not responsible for the material being updated or
available. You are more than welcome, though, to contact us if there is a problem with any of
the sites, so that we can consider removing it from our list.)

Book Recommendations from the English Language

Tutors!
Do you read advanced text books in English for your studies, but never a novel? A
sophisticated terminology is not enough if you are going to write a thesis or paper; you will
also need a firm grasp of basic vocabulary and grammar. Reading good books is probably the
most efficient way of mastering a second language, and reading something you enjoy makes it
a lot easier to learn. Here we have compiled a list of books that we recommend to students,
and we hope you will find something that interests you. The books are organized according to
genre, and titles in bold are particularly easy to read, but all the books have been chosen
because they are both entertaining and written in an accessible language and style.

The Classics
Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book
Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland
Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little House on the Prairie series
Richard Adams. Watership Down
Roald Dahl. The Witches, Matilda, The Twits etc
Jane Austen. Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey etc.
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield, The Adventures of Oliver Twist etc
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird
George Orwell. Animal Farm
Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises
Toni Morrison. Sula

Fantasy novels and series

C.S. Lewis. The Narnia series
J. K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series
John Lenahan. Shadowmagic
Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games
J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Ursula K LeGuin: The Word for World is Forest and The Earthsea Series

Margaret Atwood. The Robber Bride

Science Fiction
Douglas Adams. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man
Isaac Asimov. The Foundation series, the Galactic Empire series, I, Robot etc
Isabel Allende. The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts etc
Orson Scott Card. Enders Game
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five, Cats Cradle

Crime Fiction
Arthur Conan Doyle. A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes
Agatha Christie. Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Five Little Pigs, The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Alexander McCall Smith. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency-series.
P. D. James. Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes etc
Raymond Chandler. Farewell My Lovely, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye

Humor
Helen Fielding. Bridget Joness Diary
Nick Hornby. About a Boy, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch
Sue Townsend. The Queen and I; Rebuilding Coventry
Marian Keyes. Watermelon etc