There really is nothing quite so tedious and boring as a prescriptive grammarian.  And I’m a native speaker, and an English teacher with a section about grammar on his blog!  I really have a lot of sympathy for people who are learning English.  Let me explain what I mean by “prescriptive grammar.” To paraphrase the linguist David Brazil, a grammarian must begin from one of the following assumptions: We can discover the rules...

We all use a spell-checker when we write, but most of them don’t notice when we write the wrong word.  If I wrote, “I had a bear at the pub last night,” all of the words are spelled correctly but I should have typed “beer.”  Ginger is a new kind of spelling and grammar checker that checks the context of your words, not just the words in isolation.  Ginger notices “pub” in the sentence and offers to...

English Club has lots of information, quizzes and guides to help you understand and practice English better.  Their forums are a great place to chat with other learners about things that interest you.

The BBC is possibly one of the richest sources of high-quality, free English learning material on the Internet.  Their Learning English site has so many sections I really can’t talk about all of them here (although I will say Words in the News is a very good place to start).  Skillswise has excellent sections on spelling, reading, and writing.  Their Video Nation site has interviews with real people and a short quiz afterwards to see if you...

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is a resource for American college students so the language on the site is considerably more advanced than on a site for English learners.  However, the information is extensive and you may find the pages on punctuation (under Word and Sentence Level) and sentence combining skills (under Paragraph Level) particularly useful.