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Language Guide is a wonderful site. It's presentation of vocabulary items combines audio with graphics and text - and this integration will be especially useful for lower level learners beginning to wordsurf their way to good communication skills.

The 'Language Guide' vocabulary presentations, which are available in many languages, are simply excellent - and their use of a rollover feature with the cursor is, as far as I know, the first of it's kind on the internet. This feature is enormously useful and can help to make a interesting game out of the initial vocabulary acquisition process.

The English vocabulary guide is presented here ...

Audio Pictionary-English ...( with Interface set for French students )

Learning the thousands of words needed to be comfortable in a language is a great challenge. The vocabulary guides are in essence virtual worlds. Users visit different parts of this world (i.e. insects, the family, the farm). They can then place the cursor over any of the images and hear their names pronounced and see them spelled out. In some pages, a notepad is displayed next to the title. Placing the cursor over this notepad will reveal a list of supplementary vocabulary .

The Language Guide is also expanding other useful features including Grammar and Readings.

E.g. Spanish Grammar Guide ... ( with Interface set for English students )

So far introductory grammar guides have been developed for French and Spanish ( audio hasn't been fully integrated yet). Users of these guides, can hear the pronunciation of sentences and words by placing the cursor over them. The guides also feature interactive audio based quizzes as well as additional features. They eventually hope to sponsor the creation of guides for all the world's major languages.

E.g. Graded French Readings ... ( with Interface set for English students )

The readings help users develop comprehension skills by allowing them to hear the reading of a text, manoeuver within the sound track and listen again to difficult phrases - as well as see the text of what is being read. In addition, the readings allow students to build vocabulary and develop reading skills. Readings are only available for learning French at the moment but they hope to eventually create extensive readings in different languages, tailored for different levels of fluency.

"Language Guide" is a collaborative project that aims to make available extensive free resources for learning many different languages. It is being coordinated and operated by Language Revolution, a 501 (c) non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas. All the voices you hear on the site are from volunteers. The word lists used for the vocabulary guides as well as most of the grammar guides were compiled by volunteers or with the help of volunteers.

It's survival and future development depend on volunteers and donations. Please help if you can.