A4ESL.org Review: Free ESL Quizzes for the Classroom

A4ESL.org is a free ESL/EFL practice site that has been online since the late 1990s. It is a project of The Internet TESL Journal, an academic publication for ESL teachers that ran from 1995 to 2012.

The site offers four sections:

• Grammar quizzes — by level and topic (present simple, conditionals, gerunds, reported speech)
• Vocabulary quizzes — by topic or difficulty, some with images
• Crossword puzzles — reproducible for print
• Bilingual quizzes — English paired with Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean

The design looks like 1999. That's because it is. No animations, no progress tracking, no mobile app. For teachers who want quick no-frills practice materials, that dated design is part of the appeal: nothing distracts from the quiz.

A4ESL works best for these specific things:

• 5-minute warm-ups: a quick grammar quiz while you take attendance. Self-grading means no prep from you.
• Printable homework: crosswords and vocabulary quizzes print cleanly to PDF. Students without reliable internet can still complete the work.
• Substitute teacher plans: leave 3-4 quiz URLs by level. Students work independently for 30+ minutes.
• Bilingual support: heritage-language learners see grammar explanations in their first language.
• Level checks: a 15-minute quiz gives you a rough CEFR estimate without a formal placement test.

Yes — but with caveats. A4ESL has survived 25+ years because it does a few things well and doesn't try to do everything. If you need free, no-signup quizzes and can accept a dated interface plus occasional outages, A4ESL is genuinely useful.

The bilingual quizzes alone make it worth bookmarking. That feature is hard to find for free elsewhere, especially for languages like Korean, Japanese, and Portuguese where most free ESL resources default to English-only explanations.

Honest recommendation: use A4ESL as a primary or secondary resource, but don't depend on it exclusively. Pair it with one of the alternatives below for a more modern interface (British Council), more structure (Teach-This), or more variety (AgendaWeb).