Free Beginner English Lessons: Using Boston English Center's 36 A1 Lessons in Class
Good material for true beginners is harder to find than material for intermediate learners. Most free worksheets assume students can already read instructions, and most course books assume you have the budget for them. So when a school puts a complete beginner course online for free, it's worth knowing about.
Boston English Center's free beginner English lessons are 36 lessons for A1 learners, built around everyday situations: work, shopping, travel, health and getting around town. Each lesson combines video, audio, vocabulary and interactive exercises, and no registration or payment is needed. This post explains what's in the course and then, lesson by lesson, how to turn it into a full week of speaking, listening and writing practice.
What's in the course
The 36 A1 English lessons are split into three classes of 12 (A1 Part 1, 2 and 3), each class grouped into four units of three lessons. The school gives an average lesson length of about 60 minutes. Each class ends with a revision test and a test, so there are six progress tests in all.
The topics are the situations a beginner actually meets first:
- Class 1: meeting and greeting, talking about yourself, a job interview, family, home, daily routine, asking for directions, getting to work, the supermarket, shopping at the mall, problems in the house and paying bills.
- Class 2: sports events, festivals, a school visit, the doctor's, the pharmacy, emergency calls, planning a trip, the travel agency, packing, airport check-in, security and boarding.
- Class 3: the hotel (arriving, staying, checking out), taxis, the bus and railway stations, signs around town, describing your neighbourhood, places in your community, the gas station and buying a phone.
Inside a lesson the structure is consistent. Take "At the Doctor's": it opens with a short video and an idiom ("under the weather"), moves through body-parts vocabulary with a picture quiz and audio cards, teaches phrases for symptoms and for saying how long something has hurt, and then gives a model dialogue and listening practice: a gap-fill conversation, short listening quizzes, video questions and a sorting task (doctor's phrases vs. patient's phrases). There are teacher cues along the way, and the page can go fullscreen for the board.
That makes the course useful in two ways. Students can work through a lesson alone, at their own pace, with the audio as many times as they need. Or you can project it in class and use it as the input stage of a lesson. The rest of this post is about that second use, and about what to do after the lesson, because input alone doesn't make beginners speak.
Who it suits
The course fits adult beginners best: newcomers who need English for work, appointments and transport, and evening or community classes where some learners miss sessions and need to catch up at home. Because no account is required, you can send a single lesson link as homework without asking anyone to sign up for anything.
It also works for a mixed class where a few students are well below the rest. Give them the matching Boston English Center lesson as a parallel track while the class works on something harder.
A week built around one lesson
A1 learners need the same language many times, in different ways, before they can use it. A practical pattern is to use one lesson as the anchor for a week and recycle its language across all four skills. Here's that week for "At the Doctor's"; the same shape works for any of the 36.
| Day | Skill | What students do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Input | Work through the lesson together: video, vocabulary cards, model dialogue |
| 2 | Speaking | Rehearse and perform a doctor–patient dialogue |
| 3 | Listening | A second, new listening on the same situation |
| 4 | Writing | A short, guided text using the week's phrases |
| 5 | Review | Vocabulary game, then the lesson's own quizzes again |
If you want a fuller version of this receive-then-produce structure in a single session, the four-skills ESL lesson plan template walks through it step by step.
Speaking: from the model dialogue to their own
The lesson gives students a model dialogue. The step most A1 classes skip is getting from reading that dialogue to saying something like it without the text.
Dialogue Factory is built for exactly that step. Set the level to A1 and the theme to the lesson's situation ("at the doctor's", "checking out of a hotel", "buying a train ticket") and it generates a fresh two-person dialogue. Pairs rehearse it, then the lines are progressively removed until they're speaking from memory. Because it's a new dialogue rather than the one in the lesson, students have to transfer the phrases instead of reciting what they've just read.
When they're ready to improvise, Act it Out takes the same theme and gives students a scenario to role-play with no script; the class votes on the most convincing performance. At A1 that might be as simple as a patient explaining where it hurts and for how long, which is exactly what the doctor lesson teaches.
Two more fit specific lessons:
- Number Ninja for the lessons full of numbers: paying bills, the gas station, buying a phone, train times. Prices, dates and phone numbers are where beginners freeze, and a timed race makes them say numbers aloud rather than just recognise them.
- Spelling Beef for the vocabulary-heavy lessons. Set the theme to the lesson topic and two teams race to spell the words. It's a quick way to check the vocabulary cards actually stuck.
If you'd rather not use an app at all, the ESL conversation questions in our free library are printable and need no account.
Listening: a second listen that isn't the same recording
Beginners benefit from hearing the same language in a different voice and context. The Boston English Center lesson gives them the first listen; the second should be new.
Listening, no kidding generates a graded listening lesson from any topic and CEFR level, with AI-generated audio, including multi-voice conversations. Ask for an A1 conversation at a pharmacy or a hotel reception and students get a new recording built on the same situation, so they recognise the phrases from the lesson but can't rely on having memorised the audio. There's more on how it fits a lesson on our ESL listening lessons page.
No internet in the room? The teacher-read listening activities in our free library include A1 scripts you read aloud, with dictation and simple true/false tasks and the answers on the teacher's pages.
Writing: one short, guided text per lesson
Most of the 36 situations have a natural writing task attached: a message to a landlord about a problem in the house, a note to a teacher explaining you're ill, a short paragraph describing your neighbourhood, a postcard from a trip.
In Writing, no kidding you create that task as an assignment, students write in a focused space, and the AI analyses the writing, while you always set the final grade. At A1 keep it short: three to five sentences, with the week's phrases as a word bank. The AI essay feedback for ESL teachers page explains how the feedback and grading work.
Writing, no kidding can also build a reading-comprehension exercise from a passage, either one the AI writes or one you supply. For a beginner group, write your own five-sentence text on the lesson's topic (for example, a patient's short description of a visit to the doctor) and let it generate the questions. Please write your own text rather than copying the Boston English Center lesson into it: link students to their lesson, and keep the copy for your own material.
For ready-made alternatives, our free library has A1 sets in the ESL writing prompts and the reading comprehension passages with answers.
Review: back to the lesson
On the last day, return to the lesson and redo its own quizzes (the picture quiz, the gap fill, the sorting task). Students who struggled on day one usually notice how much easier it is, and that's motivating at A1. Every third lesson, use the course's revision tests and tests to check progress across a whole unit.
A note on using the materials
Boston English Center says the lessons are free to use and share, and offers a version with your own school's name on it. The site's footer also says "All Rights Reserved", so link to the lessons rather than copying or editing them, and check their terms and conditions before reproducing anything.
One account for the rest of the week
Speaking, Listening and Writing, no kidding run on a single teacher account. The free plan needs no credit card, and one subscription covers all three; details are on the pricing page. The Boston English Center lessons stay free, and you don't need an account with us to use them.
FAQ
Are the Boston English Center lessons really free? Yes. The 36 lessons and the progress tests are free, with no registration or payment, according to the school's own page. They're aimed at A1 learners and work on a phone as well as on a computer or classroom screen.
What level are these free beginner English lessons? All 36 are A1, split into three parts of 12 lessons. They suit adult beginners best, because the situations (job interviews, bills, the doctor, travel) are adult ones.
Can I use them in class, or only for self-study? Both. Each lesson can be projected fullscreen and includes teacher cues, so it works as the input stage of a class lesson. Students can also work through a lesson alone, replaying the audio as often as they need.
How do I get beginners speaking after the lesson? Move from the lesson's model dialogue to a new dialogue on the same situation, then to improvisation. Dialogue Factory at A1, with the lesson topic as the theme, covers the first step; Act it Out covers the second.