Of the 140+ languages offered in Transparent Language Online, English is the most learned.
And for good reason.
Linguistic diversity continues to grow in the United States, bringing opportunities and challenges for schools and libraries alike. In 2024, 23% of U.S. residents age 5 and older reported that they spoke a language other than English at home. 4 in 10 of them report speaking English less than "very well."
In classrooms, more than 5.3 million English Learners were enrolled in public schools in fall 2021, about 10.6% of all students. Beyond school, Those students' parents and other adults in the community are often learning English too, and there aren't enough programs to serve them. One 2024 study estimated that fewer than 2% of potential adult English learners were enrolled in a program, and some programs have waitlists that run for months or years.
Public libraries are stepping in to fill that gap. According to the American Library Association, nearly half of public libraries (46%) offer services for English language learners.
Many libraries and schools support thier ELLs with e-resources like Transparent Language Online. All of the courses in our 300+ hour ESOL collection can be learned independently at home, at school, or on a library computer.
The "English for Newcomers" course helps immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers quickly learn the English they need for daily life. Its 25 units cover practical situations like grocery shopping, job interviews, housing, healthcare, public transit, school enrollment, and citizenship, with about 1,780 words and phrases in roughly 56 hours of content.
It's available in three distinct variations:
Available for speakers of 30+ other languages, these supplemental vocabulary lessons introduce more than 2,000 words and phrases covering a range of thematic topics from adjectives and verbs to animals and weather terms.
The lessons are modular, so learners can jump around and build vocab on the topics they need most, while skipping what they already know.
Elementary Conversations in English is a 3-level, 30-unit course designed specifically for elementary students in grades 3-5.
Each unit contains 2 lessons: one grammar-focused and one conversation- and culture-focused. The course includes 30 original conversations and 30 sets of relevant, kid-appropriate grammar activities. It also includes 18 culture topics and 1600 lexical items.
A paired Spanish version is also available, which includes an additional 5-6 lessons per unit focusing on basic English vocabulary.
For those on the cusp of beginner and intermediate, the Low-Intermediate Conversations in English course is an extensive 27 unit course challenges learners to a higher level of reading comprehension and speaking abilities. The units are organized around 15 day-to-day themes such as going to the gym or shopping at the grocery store and include a dialogue, grammar topic, and vocabulary selection. This course is a full-immersion English course with no paired languages.
For intermediate-level English learners, the Intermediate Conversations in English course leverages a series of authentic dialogues that will prepare learners for life in an English-speaking country. 39 skill-building, conversational lessons focus on 10 themes, including landing a job and finding a home. This is an immersion style course, available only in English (with no paired languages).
Workforce English Essentials is a business English course for customer-facing employees at roughly a CEFR B1 level. Available to native speakers of Arabic, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
Instead of a fixed linear course, learners can choose from 50 hours of modules, such as Customer Phone Communication, Negotiating, Sales and Prices, and Professional Writing for chat and email. Vocabulary lessons are paired with the learner's native language, and each module ends with English-only immersion lessons like simulated live chats, sales calls, and follow-up emails, plus a scored assessment.
The Advanced Conversations in English courses are the most advanced materials among our English offerings. They were created for advanced English learners, from high school to professionals, who are interested in business and medical topics and want to work with more complex texts, speech patterns, and cultural nuances. Learners will be exposed to and asked to interact with business language in the form of reports, presentations, negotiations, telephone conversations, emails, blogs, websites, and more within three main topics: Medical, Finance, and Sales & Marketing.
100+ lessons covering practical business topics will get English learners off on the right foot in their new career. Business English is available as a paired language course for speakers of Spanish, Mandarin, and Turkish.
Created with the input of ESL professionals and public librarians, our American Citizenship Test prep course is designed with the goal of preparing test takers to comfortably answer all 128 civics questions. More than that, the course is intended to teach the vocabulary needed to understand what's being asked about the American government, history, and culture.