The BBC world service has been one of the most respected English teaching center in the world for several decades. It used to be radio programs. Today it becomes a huge website. You will find free lessons, radio and TV programs, games, quizzes and grammar points for all levels. The website has specific resources for beginners, business people and teachers.

Explore the website: BBC Learning English

Totally free English<->Chinese dictionary. The definitions are very good and there is an audio file for the pronunciation. You can search in Chinese or English, in pinyin or in character. Uniquely you can also search by drawing a character.

This ability to handwrite characters directly on the website is the best feature. This feature is a bit hard to use but it is fantastic and the system will offer you some choices based from your drawing. So even if you don’t know the Pinyin of a character you still can have a translation.

You can also search conversations by place and by topic. There are also good example and idioms. Build your vocabulary from “Theme of the day” or “Theme category”.

This is a really good Chinese-English online dictionary , take a look at: nciku.com

The BBC offers beginner lessons and travel phrases in a wide variety of languages. The website includes online multimedia language learning software, videos and more. Take a look.