General online English courses for confident everyday English

A general English course takes you through the six levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the European scale from A1 for beginners to C2 for near-native command. Cambridge English estimates about 200 guided learning hours per level, meaning lessons plus supervised practice. Most adults learned some English at school, so a placement test shows where your course should start.

Many adults stall at B1 or B2. They understand far more than they can say and keep using the same small set of words. Teachers call this the intermediate plateau. A general course moves you past it with more speaking time and with vocabulary learned in fixed combinations, such as 'make a decision' or 'take a break'.

English spelling tells you little about pronunciation. The letters 'ough' sound different in though, through and tough. A general English course therefore teaches every new word with its pronunciation, often in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a set of symbols that shows exactly how a word sounds.

Four areas trouble learners from almost every language background.

• Vowel length and quality separate words such as ship and sheep or full and fool.
• The th in think and this does not exist in many languages, so learners replace it with s, z, t or d.
• Word stress moves between related words, as in photograph and photographer.
• Unstressed syllables shrink to a weak vowel called schwa, as in the first syllable of about.

A general course trains these sounds with minimal pairs, meaning two words that differ in only one sound, such as ship and sheep. A conversation course adds shadowing, a technique in which you repeat a recording straight after the speaker to copy rhythm and intonation.

English verbs barely change their endings, so the grammar looks simple at first. The difficulty lies in choices that many languages make differently.

1 The present perfect

The present perfect links a past action to the present, as in 'I have lived in Madrid since 2020'. Many learners use the present or past simple instead. A general course introduces this tense around B1, the third of six CEFR levels, and returns to it often.

2 Simple and progressive forms

English separates 'I work' from 'I am working'. The progressive form describes an action in progress or a temporary situation.

3 Articles

English uses a, the or no article, depending on whether a noun is countable and whether the listener knows what you mean. Speakers of languages without articles, such as Russian, Polish, Japanese or Korean, need extra practice with them.

4 Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs combine a verb with a small word, such as give up or run into. Their meaning rarely follows from the parts, so you learn them in example sentences.

A general English course follows a fixed syllabus and trains listening, reading, writing and speaking. A conversation course spends almost the whole lesson on speaking, pronunciation and situations such as travel, small talk or phone calls. Both state their level on the CEFR, the European six-level scale from A1 to C2.

English has the largest pool of online teachers of any language, so conversation courses are easy to find at any level and time.

The right format depends on your level and on how much speaking time you need. The prices are rough 2026 market values from typical offers.

• Live group classes with four to eight learners cost about 8 to 25 euros per hour.
• One-to-one lessons cost about 15 to 60 euros per hour and adapt completely to your gaps.
• Self-study platforms with a tutor give you structured units and marked writing.
• Apps and AI tutors suit 10 to 15 minutes of daily vocabulary and listening practice.

A teacher's training matters more than the teacher's passport. The CELTA, a Cambridge certificate for English teachers, shows assessed training in teaching. A native speaker without such training may speak perfectly and still be unable to explain why your sentence is wrong.

Teachers in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region teach English at almost every hour of the day, so evening and early-morning classes are easy to fit around work.

Children learn English online in short units with games, songs and pictures. Many providers sell lessons of 25 or 45 minutes, a length that fits a child's attention better than a full hour.

Cambridge English offers exams that give children a clear goal. The young learners exams Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers and A2 Flyers use pictures and topics from a child's daily life. For teenagers, A2 Key, B1 Preliminary and B2 First come as for Schools versions with school-friendly topics.

The CEFR is the six-level European scale from A1 to C2 that these exams follow.

Data protection deserves extra care. In the EU, a child under 16 needs a parent's consent when an app relies on consent, and each country may lower that age to 13. In the US, the COPPA law requires verifiable parental consent for children under 13.