About ESL Materials

Our mission

ESL Materials exists for one reason: to save ESL teachers the hours they lose every week searching for, evaluating, and triaging teaching resources. The platform was built by a teacher who spent seven years doing exactly that — and decided to publish the curation instead of keeping it private.

We do not list every ESL resource on the web. We list the ones a working teacher would actually recommend to a colleague after using them in real classrooms. The shortlist is the value. The reasoning behind each recommendation is what makes it trustworthy.

Our goal is not to be the largest ESL site. It is to be the one a teacher trusts when they have 30 minutes to prep for tomorrow's class and need to make a confident decision about a platform, a worksheet library, or an AI tool.

How we test and review

Every platform we recommend (Teach-This, ESL Brains, ZenGenGo, Crystal Clear ESL, Amazy, and others) goes through the same process:

1. Subscribe and use the platform ourselves for at least 30 days in real adult or teen classes. No recommendations based on marketing copy.
2. Document the experience — what worked, what didn't, what level and audience the platform fits, what it costs in time saved or wasted.
3. Compare against the alternatives we already know. Most platforms serve overlapping needs; the right recommendation depends on teaching style, level, and budget.
4. Write the review with both pros and cons — including the deal-breakers that would make us not recommend it for certain teachers.
5. Update the review when the platform changes pricing, ownership, or core features. We re-test annually for active recommendations.

We do not list a platform we have not used ourselves. The bar is high. The shortlist stays short.

Editorial guidelines (E-E-A-T)

We follow Google's E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for every piece of content we publish. In practice, this means:

• Experience: Every recommendation comes from real classroom use, not from a press release or a sponsored placement.
• Expertise: Content is written or reviewed by a CELTA-certified teacher with 7+ years across adult ed, corporate training, and immigrant language programs. Where we cover areas outside our direct expertise (e.g., linguistics research), we cite sources.
• Authoritativeness: We link to primary sources (Cambridge, IELTS, TOEFL) for any factual claim about certifications, CEFR levels, or methodology. We do not invent statistics.
• Trustworthiness: We disclose every affiliate relationship, every sponsorship, and every sample we received for free. We tell you when a tool is no longer working for us and we have moved on.

We also update content when it ages. An ESL review from 2023 about a 2023 platform is not the same as a 2025 review. The sitemap shows the lastmod date of every page.

Affiliate disclosure

ESL Materials participates in affiliate programs with several ESL platforms (Teach-This, ESL Brains, ZenGenGo, and others). When you sign up through a link on this site, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

This income is what keeps the site running. It does not influence our reviews. We have turned down affiliate partnerships with platforms we would not use in our own classrooms. We will continue to do so.

Every affiliate link is tagged rel="sponsored nofollow". Every review with a paid recommendation includes a visible disclosure block above the recommendation.

ESL Materials at a glance

The team

ESL Materials is currently run by one person: Thomas Gueguen, a CELTA-certified ESL teacher with 7+ years of experience across adult education, corporate training, and immigrant language programs. He writes every review personally and tests every platform himself.

As the site grows, we will bring in guest contributors with specific expertise (exam prep, young learners, EdTech). Every guest contribution will be clearly labeled and reviewed against the same editorial guidelines.

Contact

For corrections, suggestions, partnership inquiries, or to share your own classroom experience with a platform we have reviewed: