ManyThings.org Review: Free ESL Quizzes, Audio, and Bilingual Resources

ManyThings.org is a free, non-commercial, ad-free ESL/EFL resource site that has been online since 1997. It is run by a single maintainer (Charles Kelly) and focuses on audio-based listening practice, sentence drills, vocabulary games, and bilingual content.

The site is organized into several sections:

• Daily Study — a rotating set of vocabulary and grammar exercises
• Listening & Speaking — sentence pairs with audio, irregular-verb videos, and YouTube Listen & Repeat material
• Read Along Stories — full audio recordings of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Raggedy Ann with synchronized text
• Vocabulary — anagrams, proverbs, slang, and a learn-a-song section
• Bilingual Sentence Pairs — pulled from the Tatoeba Corpus, available in 40+ languages with downloadable Anki decks
• VOA Quizzes — practice grammar and vocabulary based on Voice of America special English programs

The site has no animations, no progress tracking, no mobile app. It looks dated. But like A4ESL.org and AgendaWeb, that dated design is part of the appeal: nothing distracts from the listening and vocabulary work.

ManyThings.org works best for these specific things:

• Bilingual listening practice: the Bilingual Sentence Pairs let students hear English and 40+ other languages side by side. Tab-delimited Anki exports mean teachers can build flashcard decks in minutes.
• Extensive listening homework: the read-along classics (Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn) give students 30-60 minutes of audio per chapter with synchronized text — useful for extensive listening programs.
• Vocabulary warm-ups: anagrams, proverbs, and slang sections make good 5-minute warm-ups or end-of-class activities.
• Irregular verb drills: the irregular-verb videos cover the most common irregulars with audio and examples.
• VOA-aligned practice: for teachers using Voice of America Special English in class, the VOA Quizzes provide ready-made grammar and vocabulary exercises.

Yes — but with the same caveats as other long-running free ESL sites. ManyThings has survived almost 30 years because it does a few things well (audio, bilingual, vocabulary games) and doesn't try to do everything. If you need free listening practice with audio, this is one of the best resources available.

The Bilingual TTS Player and downloadable Anki decks are the standout features in 2026. Most free ESL sites give you text or a few audio files; ManyThings gives you 40-language parallel corpora you can import straight into a flashcard system. For heritage-language learners and bilingual classrooms, that's a genuine teaching asset.

Honest recommendation: bookmark ManyThings.org as a free bilingual-listening resource, especially if you work with Anki or other SRS-based study tools. Pair it with a more modern site (British Council) for design polish or a structured curriculum (Crystal Clear ESL) for CEFR alignment.