There is a huge amount of software in English available through the Internet, and plenty of it could be adapted for use in teaching EFL (e.g. word puzzles and text editors) - try a keyword search of the major archives with shareware.com. Many of the programs in the multilingual section of this library can be applied to English, and several packages listed for other languages could be used for EFL by native speakers of that language. However, I've tried here to concentrate on programs that are aimed specifically at language education plus a few more general ones that have been reported to be particularly useful.

A range of freeware and shareware programs for use in English language teaching are available at the EFL section of CELIA (the Computer Enhanced Language Instruction Archive), although nothing seems to have been added since 1997.

Macintosh users should try the Sounds English site.

• Advanced English Computer Tutor v3.3 (shareware $65), MaxTex Int'l 1996.
  Interactive DOS tutorial teaching and quizzing subtleties of English for learners who have a good command of the language but find certain features puzzling. Includes Windows installer.

  
  

• AngloLAN (shareware £20), A.R. Consultants.
  Hundreds of questions on English grammar topics to practise at your own pace: topics include prepositions, tenses, irregular verbs, articles, uncountable nouns, passives, conditionals, modals, reported speech, relative clauses, position of adverbs, phrasal verbs, order of adjectives and many other common difficulty areas. (Windows 95 or later)

  
  

• Buensoft Inglés (shareware $30), BuenSoft.
  Listening-based Windows package for Spanish speakers, comprising flashcards, pair-matching, multiple-choice and written quizzes, hangman, scrambled phrases and a game to guess the phrase as it's written. Phrases for particular subjects can be obtained from the author for free via his website; subject files provided include numbers, days, months and daily expressions.

  
  

• Cambridge Certificate Tutors (FCE, CAE & CPE) (demos), Educational Software Products 1999.
  Information about the exams plus graded practice tests with feedback on each question.
  Also available: Crossword Challenge and Beat the Clock.

  
  

• Churchill House First Certificate English Program (freeware), Churchill House 1999.
  Prepare for Paper 3, section 4 (error correction) by checking sentences for errors with prepositions, quantifiers, articles, pronouns, verbs etc. Windows 95 or later.

  
  

• Cloze (freeware), Tim Johns 1995.
  DOS gap-fill program with over 40 sample texts. You can use your own text files too, which can be organised under user-defined topic headings. Sessions can be logged to monitor student performance.

  
  

• Contexts v0.82 (freeware), Tim Johns 1996.
  A program to aid investigation of the different contexts in which words are used, based on an 'authentic English' corpus of over 5 million words and designed to help develop good learning strategies. Ten aligned contexts can be shown for each word, and a quiz can be taken on all the words in each category, where the word has to be guessed by its contexts. Scores can be analysed and logged, and it's possible to add your own data files. (DOS)

  
  

• Dropin (charityware), J. & M. Higgins 1995.
  A text puzzle in which letters have to be dropped to the correct line in order to make sense of a message. Contains a substantial collection of short texts and an editor allowing you to extend the text library yourself; it can also print out paper puzzles. (DOS)
  A variety of other demos are available too.

  
  

• English for Little Ones (free), Verdant House Publishing 1997.
  Downloadable web-based course for young Russian-speaking students to learn to read, write, and speak English.

  
  

• English Whiz (shareware $25), Braser Soft.
  For Spanish-speaking learners of English, an interactive quizzing system for vocabulary. Multiple choice or gap-filling - allows entry of own word lists. Shareware version contains level 1 only, with levels 2 and 3 when registered. (Windows 95 or later)

  
  

• Grammar Slammer (shareware $25), J. Bair 1996.
  "Answers the questions grammar checkers can't". Assistance with (American) grammar, as a Windows Help file. There are also versions tailored to run as macros in Word for Windows, WordPerfect for Windows, AmiPro and Lotus Word Pro.

  
  

• Lingonets (freeware), Lingonets 1997.
  Lexical gapfill puzzles to promote learning of word groups associated by common setting or situation (thematic clusters). Recall is prompted by category labels, and students can get help from synonyms, definitions and typical sentence contexts. A password (available by e-mail) is needed to start the browser, and fifty or so puzzles can be downloaded.

  
  

• Mantex (demos and free documents).
  Demonstration versions of English Language, HelpDisk! and Study Skills packages to help overseas and native students with essay writing and studying. Plus free downloadable documents on a wide variety of similar topics, and articles & reviews on writing, design and typography.

  
  

• Sephonics (shareware $25), Selingua 2000.
  Teaches the English phonetic alphabet (a subset of IPA) using seven practice, including a phonetic memory game, matching a sound to a phonetic sign, and transcribing from phonetic to ordinary text. Windows 95 or above.

  
  

• Switch v0.9 (charityware), J. & M. Higgins 1995.
  Choose variant readings of a text - can run with user's own texts. (DOS)
  A variety of other demos are available too.

  
  

• Verbalist V1.2 (charityware), J. & M. Higgins 1994.
  See the different forms that an English verb phrase can take. Enter your own verbs to see what spelling rules the program uses (and what mistakes it makes!). This is a Windows program, but there is a DOS version (v1.1) included.
  A variety of other demos are available too.

  
  

• WordPilot 2000 (shareware $50), CompuLang 2000.
  A 'wordlist driven' condordancer that enables users to look up collocations while writing in MSWord, look up words and phrases from word lists, focus on particular 'libraries' of texts, connect to online references, hear any web page, text, phrase or word pronounced (via text-to-speech technology). Windows 95 or later.

  
  

• WordWeb (freeware), Antony Lewis.
  Powerful English thesaurus and dictionary, featuring 120,000 root words and 100,000 sets of synonyms.