educational videos for english learners

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In this section you'll find our video series. Watching and listening to videos in English is a great way to improve your level.

There are exercises to help you before you start watching and after you've watched, to make sure you get the most out of the videos. 

So, if you have 15–30 minutes to practise your English today, choose a series and get started. Then come back tomorrow to watch the next episode.

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Watch TED-Ed videos

The TED-Ed project — TED's education initiative — makes short video lessons worth sharing, aimed at educators and students. Within TED-Ed’s growing library of lessons, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which are collaborations between educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform.

In the first of a TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.

Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the “infinity of infinities” — and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.

How do metaphors help us better understand the world? And, what makes a good metaphor? Explore these questions with writers like Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg.

Featured TED-Ed videos

Why are cats so weird?

The science of skin color

How playing an instrument benefits your brain

The physics of the hardest move in ballet

What would happen if you didn't sleep

Why should you listen to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"?

What gives a dollar bill its value

Would you sacrifice one person to save five

What really happens to the plastic you throw away

How to understand power

What is bipolar disorder

Why it's so hard to cure HIV/AIDS

Einstein's miracle year

The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

What makes a hero

The science of stage fright and how to overcome it

View all TED.com featured TED-Ed videos

Explore TED-Ed

Watch a lesson, customize a lesson, and explore TED-Ed's growing library of educational resources!

About TED-Ed

Learn about TED-Ed's commitment to creating lessons worth sharing.

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10 Best Websites to Find ESL Videos for Beginners and Beyond

Videos have the power to turn your students’ learning environment on its head, awakening them with captivating material on screens big and small .

There’s a wide variety of online video platforms tailored to the needs of ESL teachers and students, so finding the perfect video for your next video lesson should be a cinch.

As an ESL teacher for many years, I’ve put together 10 of the best sources of ESL videos for all levels which will liven up your classroom. 

• 1. ESL Video: Best for Quiz-based Lessons
• 2. YouTube: Best for Content Variety
• 3. FluentU: Best for Authentic Content
• 4. VOA Learning English: Best for Real-life Topics
• 5. engVid: Best for English Learning Topics
• 6. TED-Ed: Best for Specialized Topics
• 7. Annenberg Learner: Best for School Subject Material
• 8. National Geographic Kids: Best for Young Students
• 9. elllo: Best for Short Interactive Lessons
• 10. EnglishCentral: Best for Lesson Type Variety

How These ESL Video Resources Will Benefit Your Students

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

1. ESL Video : Best for Quiz-based Lessons

ESL Video offers videos for all English levels, with enough varied content to engage and interest students from all walks of life and professions. The best feature of ESLvideo.com is that the content is posted by teachers , for teachers and students. It’s like an ESL video resource co-op.

The videos are sorted into five levels from beginner to advanced , but not by topics or content categories. This has its benefits and pitfalls, but it still offers useful video material created by teachers around the world.

It also offers video quizzes by teachers  and a quiz creator tool , so you can easily make your own video-based quizzes. Each pre-made quiz consists of multiple-choice questions to the right of the video. Students can click the “see how you did” button after taking the quiz to see the correct answers. If a transcript exists, they can see it by clicking “Transcript” at the top of the quiz box, but not all videos have them.

Each quiz has an embed code on the page, so you could potentially embed these quizzes onto, say, a blog post or class website. You and your students can sign up for accounts (which are free), so that students can then send you their quiz scores by entering your teacher code. You can view them by logging in to your teacher account and clicking “Student Scores.” Here’s more information about how the site can be used in this way.

2. YouTube : Best for Content Variety

As the biggest online video platform in the world, YouTube hosts an abundance of material formatted specifically for educational purposes or has educational potential.

One important consideration is that the quality of the videos might be variable at best . Because videos aren’t always moderated, some clips that appear to be English-teaching material may turn out to be not so learner-friendly, and you’ll have to check for yourself that the content is both reliable and accurate.

Even if you’re not going to go straight for educational content on YouTube and want to use more entertaining clips, you’ll still have to filter through the vast depths of your searches to find usable videos.

There’s also the fact that YouTube videos don’t always offer learner features . Subtitles and closed captions are nice, but they’re not always 100% correct. You can slow down the video, but the speech becomes warbled and distorted.

For teaching purposes, you can still utilize what YouTube has to offer in terms of entertainment and variety. Even if they lack learner features, YouTube videos have a high chance of eliciting engagement and interest from your students.

3. FluentU : Best for Authentic Content

If you’re looking for a video resource that handles most of the heavy-duty work for you, FluentU is a fantastic choice.

FluentU for English learners creates a special educational experience by utilizing real-world media— the kind of videos and clips native speakers would watch.

Not only does this guarantee your students will be treated to authentic content they’d surely appreciate, but they’ll also be exposed to the English they should expect to encounter in real life.

Furthermore, you can choose from the plethora of available options without worrying about how you can make any of them learner-friendly.

All of FluentU’s videos (which are labeled by learner level and topic) are supplied with interactive subtitles and transcripts, vocabulary lists and context-dependent definitions for words.

There are even short quizzes which you can use as post-viewing reviews. With all these learner features in your control, you can make ESL video learning in the classroom seamless, meaning you can commit the necessary time and effort to the video activities you plan.

4. VOA Learning English : Best for Real-life Topics

While it’s primarily a news website, Voice of America also offers specialized ESL lessons for interested learners. These lessons appear in compilations and there are various options for different levels . 

For example, the 52-lesson “Let’s Learn English (Level 1)” beginner’s class helps students learn the fundamentals of the English language and bits of culture. “Everyday Grammar TV” is specialized to teach grammatical concepts.

There are also other amazing collections of videos depending on your teaching needs . You can find series on idioms, pronunciation, English in movies, vocabulary in the news and more. Intermediate and advanced levels also have videos on topics such as history, health, culture and science.

What’s great is you can also use the main page of the Voice of America website as a supplement for higher-level students. You can combine VOA’s coverage of news and cultural topics with English education to make a more engaging and relevant learning experience for students.

5. engVid : Best for English Learning Topics

engVid boasts 1,930 videos (and counting), so there’s no shortage of material here. Their videos cover many aspects of the English language and are easily digestible for learners of all levels .

At first glance, it might seem to be a little overwhelming or hard to navigate the website, since there’s so much content. But it’s well-organized and there are filter options that allow you to choose your topic, level or teacher. 

The accessibility of the videos is enhanced by the friendly and casual nature of the instructors themselves, who often try to talk about the topics in a current and up-to-date way so the information stays relevant.

There are videos tailored for more specific topics and learning needs , such as test prep for standardized English exams, tips for interviews and even a brief overview of some accents.

There’s even a bit of a community engagement aspect here. If you’d like students to use the resource for their personal use, they have the option to create an account and post comments and questions for the instructors beneath the videos. 

The videos are usually set in a classroom . This, plus the variety of topics that engVid covers, can offer a lot of opportunities for you to further explain different concepts in ways that encourage interaction among your students.

6. TED-Ed : Best for Specialized Topics

With TED-Ed, finding engaging educational videos is a piece of cake. The website is filled with educational videos arranged by subject, making it easier for you to find the most relevant video to your curriculum.

It’s not designed for language learners specifically but with students in mind. Because of this, it might be a good supplementary option if you’re covering a specific topic in class .

Videos are organized by collections and subjects. There’s a function that allows you to filter the videos by subject, content type, video length and grade level (or age level), so you can find videos appropriate for your students.

There are even collaborations with other organizations to bring extra content for in-depth explorations of particular topics such as character education, economics and climate change.

This resource works best when your students understand native English speakers relatively easily. If necessary, there are subtitles that come with most of the videos, which will make it easier for less proficient students to follow along in English and many other languages. 

7. Annenberg Learner : Best for School Subject Material

The Annenberg Learner is the education division of the Annenberg Foundation , a philanthropic organization. Part of its mission is to advance excellent American education. 

This option serves both as professional development for teachers and as a classroom resource. The professional development part is a bit more established and there’s even a podcast for educators. 

Because of this, some of the classroom resources are a bit limited, but it greatly depends on the subject—so you might need to do a bit of sifting to find the video materials . 

The resources here are made with native-speaking students in mind , so if you’re teaching students about challenging grammar concepts or how to use context clues to build their vocabularies, this site is perfect for you.

8. National Geographic Kids : Best for Young Students

The National Geographic Kids online platform offers a wealth of learning resources for your students, including videos. Since this site is geared toward kids, the content may not complement all adult learners’ goals—though your adult students will likely still find some of the videos entertaining. 

That said, most of these videos can work really well for beginners . Many of the videos are short, often showing a clip with music. This essentially takes the garden variety picture description exercise to a new level of student connection. Instead of your students simply looking at a picture and describing it, they can now see it in motion. It allows them to become more verb-oriented while keeping the focus on the newly presented material.

Types of video segments include but are not limited to: Animals and Pets, History and Culture, Freaky Creatures, Weird and Random, Cool Inventions, Awesome Places, Fun Science, Real or Fake?, Making Stuff and Wild Beats.

Each video has a short excerpt you can discuss with your class prior to watching the video as well. Your students can also gain knowledge about specific places and things with these informative videos. For example,  “50 Birds, 50 States”  shares a state’s geography told by the state bird.

9. elllo : Best for Short Interactive Lessons

elllo has a wealth of ESL materials to draw from, one of the best features being their video resources. Each video consists of one question answered by native speakers in one minute or less, such as “How often do you check your email?,” “Do you vote?” or “What is the typical breakfast in Germany?”

The videos come with a transcript, which you can hide by clicking the “Hide / Show Transcript (+ / -)” button underneath the video player. Click “Video Quiz” on the right to make a quick three-question multiple-choice quiz appear. Buttons at the bottom of the quiz include “Check Answers,” “Reset Quiz” and “Show Answers.”

Videos have either one or two speakers , and from the main library, you can see the country flag(s) next to each video, corresponding to each speaker’s native country. This way, you’ll know at a glance which accents to expect. Unfortunately, you can’t sort by country or any other category. All videos are numbered, so you have to browse the 1,500+ videos as a numbered list.

Even though they’re not well-sorted, this is still an excellent video resource to use. The fact that each video is around a minute long makes them useful for specific purposes , and the candid real-world responses will help your learners comprehend native speaking speeds.

10. EnglishCentral : Best for Lesson Type Variety

EnglishCentral allows you to browse videos by topic (Academic English, Business English, Media English, Social English, Travel English and Young Learners) or skills (Grammar, Pronunciation, Test Preparation and Useful Expressions). Once you’ve clicked inside a specific topic or skill, you can then choose between three skill levels (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced).

There are four steps to EnglishCentral’s learning platform: (1) watch, (2) learn, (3) speak and (4) golive.

In watch, you watch the subtitled video and mark any words you don’t know . Being able to watch videos with subtitles is how you can use a free EnglishCentral account with a full class.

If students have a paid account, the next step is to learn, where they type in missing words while the video plays, filling in the blanks.

Speak involves saying phrases from the video into a mic , and getting a score back.

Finally, golive is a 20-minute live call with a native speaker , who asks questions about the video. On a premium account, you get one golive call for every 10 videos you learn.

With a free account, you can watch any of the subtitled videos from their library but are limited to just two videos for the “learn” and “speak” steps. Premium accounts are 57 US dollars per month but can be as low as 29.3 US dollars a month if you purchase a full year’s subscription.

Present-day technology has undoubtedly shaped our current society and culture. The advancements in connecting with one another and sharing information can also be useful for you and your students. Implementing videos into your lesson plans can tantalize all of your students’ senses.

Learning a second language via video is also a fun experience. That’s why YouTube is worth billions. The use of visual stimulation for learning  is not a new idea, but you can harness it in your ESL class in a more meaningful way, engaging students of all ages, English levels and backgrounds.

Videos offer your students a wealth of benefits:

• Real-world applications. Many video resources on the Internet encompass some sort of practical real-life situation. This allows students to get a feel for how English is used natively.
• Problem-solving and critical thinking. Your ESL students will need to adapt to the speech and conquer the different learning tasks that each video presents. This also allows students to think critically about the material they hear and see , rather than just focusing on what they read.
• A welcome break.  Keeping your students engaged in new material using video resources is a great strategy. It will revitalize your class material, as well as your students.
• Large content base. You can pretty much find a video for any ESL student or class. The wealth of material online is virtually endless, allowing your students to find a unique way to learn new English skills.
• Subject-oriented approach. Your students will not only be learning English via videos. They may also gain valuable knowledge in other academic areas as well. This could provide a cool CLIL (Content and Language Integrate Learning) approach to learning English through meaningful academic material.

Once you dive into these resources, you’ll have an endless supply of video material for your classes. Get ready to watch your students improve their English by leaps and bounds. 

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• Listen and watch

Do you like watching fun videos in English? Watching videos is a great way to practise your English and learn new things about interesting topics. We have lots of great videos here for you to watch. Watch videos, play games, print activities and post comments!

DIY pranks to fool your friends!

Have you ever played a prank on someone? Watch this video to find out how to make some quick and easy pranks!

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Celebrating Holi

Do you know about Holi, the Hindu festival of colour? Watch the video to find out more about it!

Dua Lipa's advice to girls – International Women's Day

International Women's Day is all about girl power! Watch some girls and women giving their advice in this video.

Ramadan begins

Do you know about Ramadan? It's a very special time for Muslims all over the world. Watch the video to find out about it!

What is International Women's Day about?

International Women's Day is celebrated around the world on 8 March. Find out all about this very special day in this video.

What's cyberbullying?

What do you know about cyberbullying? Watch this video to find out what to do if you see cyberbullying.

Do you know what to do if you see or experience bullying? Watch this video to find out how you can help your friends and classmates, or ask someone for help if you need it.

Get involved in Safer Internet Day

Do you always believe what you hear or read on the internet? Watch this video to find out more.

Ten-year-old chess champion Tani

Have you ever played chess? Watch this video to find out how Tani became a chess champion!

Pizza recipe with Nikki Lilly

Do you like pizza? Watch the video to find out how to make a delicious four-course pizza!

Mrs Claus explains Christmas traditions

What do you know about Christmas traditions? Watch the video to find out about some of them!

Make a sock snowman

Do you like making decorations? Watch the video to find out how to make a sock snowman!

Brydi's story

Brydi is a talented wheelchair athlete. Watch this video to find out how she's helping children understand people with disabilities. 

Mr Tumble's bedtime routine

What do you do before you go to bed? Watch Mr Tumble getting ready for bed and learn some sign language with him!

Siblings who love inventing

Would you like to be an inventor? Watch this video about a brother and sister who love inventing things.

What are child rights?

What do children need to live a full and healthy life? Watch the video to find out about child rights!

Happy Diwali!

Do you know Diwali, the festival of lights? Watch the video to find out about it!

What to do with your leftover Halloween pumpkins

Pumpkins are great for making scary lanterns at Halloween! But did you know that you can also make delicious snacks from pumpkins? Watch this video to find out about it!

Thomas and Friends

Thomas the Tank Engine has lots of friends, and they are good at doing lots of different things. Watch the video to find out more about them.

History of teaching

Teaching has always been one of the most important jobs in the world! Find out how it has changed in the last 100 years, and what the job really involves.

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Learning english, we found 175 activities for you.

Uses of like

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I love sports

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Add some prepositions to a story about going on a family holiday

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Choose which parts of these sentences have been left out

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Practice listening with this activity about bank accounts

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Answer some questions to learn new words to describe animals

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5-Minute Film Festival: 7 Videos for ELL Classrooms

Videos can be a highly effective tool for teaching and learning English when used strategically. Check out these 7 videos to use with ELLs in the classroom.

Videos can be an effective tool for teaching and learning English (or, for that matter, any academic subject) if used strategically and not as a "babysitting" device. My colleague Katie Hull Sypnieski and I wrote a previous post for Edutopia titled Eight Ways To Use Videos With English-Language Learners that shares instructional strategies for many kinds of clips. Here are a few of my favorite videos to use with those exercises. 

Video Playlist: Resources for English-Language Learners

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube .

There are many popular television shows and movies that can be great tools for English-language development, and it's probably a safe bet to say that Mr. Bean is one used by English teachers throughout the world. You can find countless videos on the official Mr. Bean YouTube channel . Mr. Bean clips are great for use with the "Back to the Screen" technique explained here . 

English Central has a huge quantity of videos on their site integrated with their own software. The videos teach English vocabulary and grammar, and they automatically evaluate the pronunciation of users who are recording what they hear. Much of this content is free, and you can also pay for more advanced features.

This is perhaps the best-known video from Jason R. Levine's Fluency MC, and he offers many similar ones on his YouTube channel . Music is a great language-learning tool, and Jason combines it with a video demonstration, making this an unforgettable lesson in verb tenses.

This is a beautiful and popular song to use with English-language learners -- it's slow and reinforces learning adjectives. More importantly, however, this video shows the lyrics in time as the song is sung. You can find many of these clips by searching the name of a song plus "lyrics videos" on YouTube. Even the New York Times has written about their growing popularity. I specifically look for songs that reinforce the thematic unit we're studying. We practice the song with students, record them on SoundCloud, and embed it in our class blog, providing students and their families with an opportunity to hear their growing English abilities.

The British Council Learn English Kids YouTube channel is a great source of videos for younger English-language learners. "If You're Happy and You Know It" gives you a taste of what you can find there.

Research has shown that perseverance is a key quality of a successful language learner. I show this video to my ELL students, and after they describe it in writing and verbally, I ask them to tell me how they think its content might be related to learning a new language. The video serves as a fun introduction to an important topic.

While the other videos on the playlist are for English-language learners, this one is for teachers. It's just one of a nice collection from Colorin Colorado showing educators demonstrating instructional strategies in the classroom. Three other similarly good classroom collections can be found at The Teaching Channel , the Southwest Regional Educational Laboratory Educational Program , and the University of Oregon's Online Learning Language Center .

More Resources on How to Teach ELLs With Video

For more sources of good videos designed for English-language development, and for ideas on how to use them, visit these websites:

• The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them) is an exhaustive collection that I've developed.
• Lessons on Movies is a site created by Sean Banville and is filled with language-development lessons for a long list of popular movies.
• Using Video In The Classroom – A Teacher’s Handbook is a free resource by David Deubelbeiss, who has recently begun a great free video site for ELLs called GIF Lingua .
• Film In Action , Kieran Donaghy's site, is a treasure trove of video and related lessons for English-language learners.
• Video For All is a European-funded site with tons of ideas on how to use video for language-development instruction.

ESL Video downloads

Learning english video project.

The Learning English Video Project is a series of seven films designed especially for English learners. To view the films, you can watch them online or download them free to your computer from the links below. There are several advantages to downloading the films, especially for teachers:

• better play quality
• you always have the film available on your computer, without worrying about Internet or dropped connections
• easier pause, rewind, replay, fast forward

To download, click on a film, with or without subtitles (subs). This will download a .mov file to your computer which will play in the free QuickTime player .

Encounters in the UK with subs (click to download .mov file)

Encounters in the UK no subs (click to download .mov file)

Thoughts from Brazil with subs (click to download .mov file)

Thoughts from Brazil no subs (click to download .mov file)

Insights from China with subs (click to download .mov file)

Insights from China no subs (click to download .mov file)

Conversations in Spain with subs (click to download .mov file)

Conversations in Spain no subs (click to download .mov file)

Tales from America with subs (click to download .mov file)

Tales from America no subs (click to download .mov file)

Lessons from Romania with subs (click to download .mov file)

Lessons from Romania no subs (click to download .mov file)

Stories from Morocco with subs (click to download .mov file)

Stories from Morocco no subs (click to download .mov file)

First they tried protests of anti-gay bills. Then students put on a play at Louisiana’s Capitol

The Associated Press

March 31, 2024, 12:05 AM

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ava Kreutziger was in high school English class last year when she heard about the passage of legislation that could affect LGBTQ+ students like her. She excused herself from class to go cry in the bathroom, and found two of her classmates already there in tears.

Those bills were vetoed, but similar proposals — now with a better shot of passing under a new Republican governor — would regulate students’ pronouns, the bathrooms they can use and discussions of gender and sexuality in the classroom, which opponents call “Don’t Say Gay” bills.

In the past, students at Kreutziger’s high school in New Orleans have held walkouts to protest anti-inclusion proposals. This year, a group of students tried something different: a play, based on their own experiences, performed on the steps of the state Capitol. Compared with a raucous demonstration, the students hoped a play could spark more empathy.

They have seen up close the mental health struggles of queer students, who were four times more likely to attempt suicide during the pandemic compared with straight students. For those involved in the play, the proposals before the legislature are a matter of life and death.

“I just hope they can see something in us that’s worth saving,” said Kreutziger, a 17-year-old senior at Benjamin Franklin High School.

For students who can feel like pawns in political and cultural fights playing out around the country, the play also offered an opportunity to regain a sense of power.

“It’s the deepest expression of who they are. And that part of it, knowing that you can create something beautiful, that can make change,” said Ariella Assouline, a program manager at the It Gets Better Project, an organization that supports LBGTQ+ youth.

Benjamin Franklin High, a selective charter school, used part of a grant from It Gets Better to fund the production and hired Broadway director Jimmy Maize to help students develop a script. Maize is a member of the Tectonic Theater Project, best known for “The Laramie Project,” a play about the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard.

The students’ play, dubbed “The Capitol Project,” came together with just a few rehearsals on Saturdays and in the school’s elective playwriting course. They performed it on Wednesday, four days ahead of Sunday’s international Transgender Day of Visibility.

Students were jittery with nerves as they ascended the steps of the Capitol building, the tallest in the U.S. Facing the entrance, the teenagers shared their stories. Some were about the joy they felt when they learned about LGBTQ+ history in school, or about their parents’ acceptance. One student laughed about a plan concocted at the age of 12 to come out to family by kissing their best friend at midnight on New Years’ Eve.

Others spoke to feelings of despair and shame. In one scene, two students brought out a thick rope tied into a noose at one end. Jude Armstrong, 17, walked across it like a tightrope, legs wobbling.

“What do you you say to a little kid who prays to the same God you do?” Jude, who is transgender, asked in another scene. “When they ask God how much longer until they’re allowed to be themselves?”

Bills targeting the rights of gay and trans people have topped conservative agendas in statehouses around the country, with state legislatures over the last two years considering hundreds of proposals affecting teachers and LGBTQ+ students .

Earlier versions of the Louisiana proposals were vetoed last year by the state’s Democratic governor. But with a new Republican governor and supermajority control of the legislature, there is a clear path to passage for the bills introduced this session.

Louisiana state Rep. Raymond Crews, a Republican who wrote a bill that would ban schools’ use of a child’s preferred pronouns without parental permission, said the debate over pronouns is a distraction from learning that he hopes the bill will “relegate to the background.” He said it is misguided to adopt a students’ preferred pronouns if they don’t align with their gender at birth.

“We can’t ultimately be responsible for people’s feelings,” he said.

As the students performed, legislators inside the Capitol were on the House floor debating a bill about car insurance. It appeared that only one lawmaker — state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat — stopped to watch the play for an extended time.

Royce said he is worried the bill will drive talented young people to leave the state.

“How do we expect kids to stay in a state like this when laws are being passed that basically say to them, we don’t care about you?” he said.

In the production’s final scene, a mother and her child came forward for a dialogue. Eve Peyton, a marketing and communications coordinator at the school, spoke of how she struggled when her child chose a new name. It felt like they were rejecting a precious family gift. Eventually, Peyton realized “gifts can be outgrown.”

“I’m here to fight with them, every step of the way,” Peyton said.

She passed the mic to another adult, who said the same thing. The mic got passed again, and again. For a total of 49 times, while the performers looked on with tears streaming down their faces, adults and kids in the audience said the same thing: “I’m here to fight with them, every step of the way.”

Associated Press writer Sara Cline contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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Prince George's Co. man dead after DC tunnel crash at Massachusetts Avenue exit

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