H5P for Language Teachers: A Practical Guide

H5P is a free, open-source tool for creating interactive content such as gap fills, drag-and-drop exercises, dialogue cards and interactive videos. You use it through a learning platform or website that supports it (Moodle, WordPress and Drupal are the best known) or through the paid hosted service H5P.com. For language teachers, H5P is particularly strong when you want detailed feedback, alternative answers and exercises that sit directly inside a course.

Where to use H5P

Option	Cost	Typical use	Note
Moodle	Free (H5P is integrated in current versions)	Schools and institutions with Moodle	Results can go to the gradebook
WordPress / Drupal plugin	Free plugin	Your own teaching website	Needs a site you administer
H5P.com	Paid subscription	Institutions without their own platform, LMS integration via LTI	Hosted by the provider
Lumi (desktop app)	Free	Creating and testing offline, exporting .h5p files	Sharing needs a platform
h5p.org	Free	Test-driving content types	Not intended for real teaching content

The H5P team explicitly describes h5p.org as a place to test-drive H5P, not to host real content. Plan from the start where your exercises will live.

The most useful content types for language teaching

Content type	What it does	Language teaching use
Fill in the Blanks	Typed answers in gaps	Verb forms, prepositions, spelling
Drag the Words	Drag words into gaps	Lower levels, collocations, word order
Mark the Words	Click words in a text	Noticing grammar (find all past forms)
Dialog Cards	Flip cards with front and back	Vocabulary, question–answer pairs, translation
Interactive Video	Questions appear during a video	Listening comprehension
Question Set	Several question types in a row	Short tests and revision
Course Presentation	Slides with embedded exercises	Self-study units, flipped classroom
Branching Scenario	Choices lead to different paths	Role-play decisions, reading for meaning
Image Hotspots	Clickable points on an image	Vocabulary in context (a room, a street)

Which type suits which goal is explained in our guide to designing online exercises.

Fill in the Blanks: the syntax that saves time

In Fill in the Blanks and similar types, you mark gaps by putting asterisks around the answer. Alternatives and hints use a simple syntax:

She *went* to the cinema yesterday.
I have lived here *for* three years.
They *haven't/have not* finished yet.
He *has been:present perfect continuous* waiting for an hour.

• *answer* creates a gap.
• *answer1/answer2* accepts several correct answers.
• *answer:hint* adds a hint learners can display.

Be careful with alternatives: only list answers that are genuinely correct in that sentence. Writing *for/since* in the second line would accept a wrong answer, because only “for” fits before a period of time. In the settings you can also decide whether capitalisation matters and whether minor spelling mistakes are accepted.

Interactive Video for listening practice

Interactive Video lets you add questions, text and links at specific points of a video. A simple structure for a listening task:

1. Before watching: a text overlay with the task and two key words.
2. During watching: two or three multiple-choice or true/false questions at natural pauses; set the video to pause until the question is answered.
3. After watching: a summary question or a gap fill with key phrases.

Make sure you are allowed to use the video. Your own recordings or openly licensed material are the safest choice. More on choosing material in our guide to video and podcasts.

Feedback settings

H5P gives you more control over feedback than most quick-quiz tools:

• Score-dependent feedback: different messages for different score ranges.
• Hints: per gap or per question.
• Explanations: for multiple-choice options, including why an answer is wrong.
• Retry and show solution: decide whether learners can try again and when they may see the solution.

For practice exercises, allow retries and hints; for self-tests, show the solution only after the attempt. Our guide to feedback in digital exercises explains the background.

Step by step: your first H5P exercise in Moodle

1. In your course, enable editing and add an activity of type H5P (or use the content bank, depending on your version).
2. Choose Fill in the Blanks.
3. Write a short task instruction and enter 8–10 sentences with gaps using the syntax above.
4. Add one or two hints for the most difficult gaps.
5. Set the behaviour: allow retry, enable “show solution”, decide on case sensitivity.
6. Save, open the preview and do the exercise yourself, ideally on a phone.

The exact menu names vary between Moodle versions and how your school has configured them.

Licensing and reuse

H5P content can carry metadata on authorship and licence. If you share your own exercises, add a licence such as a Creative Commons licence so colleagues know what they may do. When reusing content, check this information and give credit where required.

When another tool is better

If you need a quick vocabulary game, printable worksheets or a live quiz for the whole class, other tools may be faster. Our comparison of H5P, LearningApps and Wordwall helps you decide. More guides can be found in the tools section.