Erin Bouma's Recommended
Listening Skills Practice
Do you find you need more listening practice in English? Is your ear tuned to British but not American or Australian pronunciations?
Do you need some lively new input for your classes? Then try these Web resources for authentic, scripted and unscripted audio and video clips.
Some downloads are faster than others.
www.elllo.org
Created by an American teacher in Japan, this site features a variety of topical Interviews, “Mixer” (6 people discussing a topic), News Center, and Songs Page (8 artists – original, pleasant songs with lyrics).
You can start with “Talking Points” and take a tour of what the site has to offer.
www.breakingnewsenglish.com
1,000 ready-to-use ESL/EFL lessons with listenings, some divided into easier/harder. New ones uploaded daily. Brit-Amer-Aust. World News stories, with vocabulary, discussion and homework notes, plus an online test and answer keys.
Offers themes such as: Business, Health, Lifestyle, Tech. Exercises for both reading and listening. Highly recommended.
www.english-trailers.com
This site, created by another American teacher in Japan, is for English students to watch recent Hollywood movie clips/commercials and strengthen their language skills. The site has its own Dictionary database of 3,300 words in context.
The short clips are rated for difficulty and listed alphabetically. You need “Quick Time” to view the films. Activities include: A script, summary, general warm-up questions, cloze and after-viewing quiz.
http://australianetwork.com
Go to “Learn English with Us” Section. Excellent video program from Australian TV programs, mostly news/documentaries, with transcripts, story notes and vocabulary exercises.
www.esl-lab.com
Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab. Site with over 150 audio and video activities to help improve their listening comprehension. Comprehension and vocabulary activities on three different levels (easy-medium-difficult) using both adult and children’s voices.
www.lingual.net
This site has a large selection of short original films, each with a built-in quiz. The categories are: Drama, Animation, Cine-poetry, Home-made (“What is happiness to you?”), Travel, Documentary, Commercials, and Home and Garden.
You can watch with or without English subtitles.
www.englishryan.com
Another ESL teacher’s free site with audio passages, video and downloadable lessons. In the “Extra Lessons” Section, the “POW! POW! English for real life (easy)” video is really funny and so is “What is Sarcasm?”
If you like, you can even record your own voice to be used on this site.
www.manythings.org
A study site for students of English as a Second Language. Includes jokes (MP3) and Listen & Read along (Flash/MPs).
www.manythings.org/pp
Pronunciation Practice American English minimal pairs and tongue twisters.
www.eslpage.podomatic.com
Johnny’s ESL Page, started by an America ESL teacher in Japan, contains short podcast texts (many with dialogue) rich in slang and idiomatic expressions in context.
Episodes #74–77 include “Just Brush it Off”, “There’s no reason to Sugarcoat Anything”, and “A Pat on the Back”. Scripts can be found at www.eslpage.blog-city.com
www.betteratenglish.com
These real, spontaneous English conversations on this site were created by an American female teacher. She offers an introduction to the “episodes” and a forum to discuss them. Downloads rated as Inter-Upper and Inter-Advan.
www.englishcaster.com
This site has a large index listing downloadable pod/videocasts in several areas for students and educators.
They are rated by viewers/listeners and listed by Content (culture, news, conversation, vocab, etc), Variety of English (British, Austral, New Zealand, North American), Level (Beginner, Inter, Advan, Native), and Target Age (Elemen, Secon, Univ, Adult).