Resource Guides: Open Educational Resources: Modern Languages

Textbook Collections

The following sites contain open textbooks in a variety of subject areas, but the links below will take you directly to the textbooks about languages. This is by no means an exhaustive list!

Humanities & Languages (Open Textbook Library)
These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.

Other Types of Open Resources

Language (MIT Open Courseware)
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Open Course Library
The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts. Some of their materials are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or less). Many of the courses can be taught at no cost to students.

Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon (CAPL)
The CAPL collects images that represent authentic photographs arranged by language and context. The author of the site notes that "visual perception is culturally determined and visual cognition varies from culture to culture."

The Center for Open Education Resources & Language Learning (COERLL)
COERLL's mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OER) - including courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, and more.
Languages (Open Learn)
Open Learn is an initiative of The Open University, UK. It provides supplemental materials for educators, including articles, podcasts, videos, games, and much more. In addition, it offers more than 700 free online classes.
World Languages (MERLOT)
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community. The MERLOT Collection is made up of over 40,000 materials in 19 different material type categories.
OER Commons
OER Commons helps educators, students, and lifelong learners avoid time-consuming searches and find exactly the right materials. With a single point of access from which they can search, browse, and evaluate resources in OER Commons’ growing collection of over 50,000 high-quality OER everyone can more efficiently find what they need.