1. BBC Languages -- BBC Online (bbc.co.uk)

• Modern Language Courses

The BBC offers in-depth instruction in six European languages and also in Mandarin Chinese. The free foreign language courses are highly interactive, including video presentations, dialogs, audio files and multiple-choice quizzes. Each course also includes a placement test that helps students determine the best course level.

2. MIT OpenCourseWare (mit.edu)

• Foreign Languages and Literatures

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology makes a wide variety of foreign language studies courses available for free online. Specific offerings include Japanese, Chinese, German and Spanish. Most of the course materials are in PDF format, and the comprehensive, mostly text-only materials also provide information about the culture, history and literature of each language studied.

3. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)

• Open Learning Initiative -- French

This online French course by Carnegie Mellon includes streaming video and interactive quizzes. Students can log in anonymously as guests, but an established account is necessary for saving quizzes and noting progress.

4. Open University (open.ac.uk)

• Modern Languages

Britain's Open University offers a modest selection of modern language courses, with emphasis on German, Spanish and French. Specialized English classes in areas such as business are also available. Each course includes both text and multimedia elements, and a number of courses deal with cultural and historical topics.

5. Utah State University (usu.edu)

• Languages, Philosophy, and Speech Communication Courses

Utah State University offers two free introductory courses in the Chinese language. Quicktime and Media Player are required for the videos, which include virtual face time with the professor and simple, easy-to-understand drawing instructions for Chinese characters.

6. eLanguageschool (elanguageschool.net)

• Ten World Languages for Free

This website offers tutorials in ten modern world languages, including Russian, Chinese, Korean and the major European languages. Extensive vocabulary lists are a key feature of eLanguageschool's offerings, as are outbound links to other language resources on the Internet. Quirky video and audio files complement the text-based lessons.

7. Madinah Arabic (madinaharabic.com)

• Arabic Reading Course
• Arabic Language Course

The Arabic lessons on this website are broken into language and reading sections. The student is expected to become familiar enough with the Arabic script to understand basic vocabulary and simple sentences. The phrase and vocabulary lessons include helpful audio files.

8. U.S. Institute of Languages (spanishprograms.com)

• Learn Basic Spanish

Complete courses are only available to registered (and paying) students, but students looking for a freebie can access several well-designed grammar and speaking lessons, including the essentials of Spanish word order and conjugation. Additional courses are available free to registered users, making this an ideal site if you're looking for an easy introduction to Spanish mechanics.

9. Internet Polyglot (internetpolyglot.com)

• Cross-Language Lessons

This unique website's major draw is that its lessons are available in a variety of combinations of learner language and target language. That means if you're a native speaker of Hindi and you want to learn Hungarian, you can simply get lessons in Hindi. The free cross-language lessons are a great resource for students who already speak one foreign language and for stuidents who want to teach English as a second language

10. CELA Online (cela-ve.com)

• Free Online Course Component

CELA Spanish School is a physical language school in Venezuela, but it offers a variety of introductory-, intermediate- and advanced-level Spanish courses for free on its website. The relatively extensive lessons are broken into units and most include audio files.