The links below are specific to English and should be of great help when completing an assignment
Shmoophttp://www.shmoop.com/literature/Literature learning guides. Summaries, themes, quotes, characters, practice quizzes, study questions. See many sides to the argument.
Bartlebyhttp://www.bartleby.comBartleby.com is "the preeminent Internet publisher of literature, reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge." A summary or short note about the origin of the work is given above the search bar for each resource. Reference Librarians will find this full-text site and all that it contains to be very valuable.
The Encyclopedia Mythicahttp://www.pantheon.org/mythicaAn encyclopaedia on mythology, folklore, legends, and more. The Mythology section covers 23 different cultural mythologies ranging from Aboriginal to Roman with articles and definitions of varying length. Articles may be submitted by anyone, but there is a long list of contributing editors who verify and edit information accepted for the site. This is a great companion for readers of all levels studying mythology.
Wordnik: All the Wordshttp://www.wordnik.comWordnik is much more than an interactive online dictionary of English. Beyond giving definitions (from the 2008 American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language and other sources), Wordnik provides example sentences showing words in context, information about word frequency and use patterns, related words, and more. It allows users to contribute information, such as recorded pronunciations, tags, and suggestions for new words.
The Poetry Tool - The Poetry Foundationhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/browse/This is an excellent resource for finding poems in full-text and finding articles about poetry and poets. The Poetry Tool site can be searched or browsed by category, occasion, geographic area, first line, time period or popularity of a poem. There are articles, podcasts, as well as audio versions of poems.
Speech Accent Archive
(S. Weinberger, Assoc Professor & Dir of Linguistics in Dept of English – George Mason Universityhttp://accent.gmu.edu/The Speech Accent Archive is a teaching and research tool for linguists, ESL teachers, and anyone interested in the accents of various English speakers. It provides short audio recordings of native and non-native speakers of English saying the same English paragraph. Phonetic transcriptions and linguistic analysis of the recordings are available. Users need to download a free QuickTime plug-in to hear the recordings. This is a helpful site that is easy to use.
Tom March: Thesis Builderhttp://tommarch.com/electraguide/thesis.phpPersuasive essay thesis builder & Online outliner. A tool to help high school students find a topic, create a good thesis statement and generate an outline.