Teaching Listening

Below are my favorite resources for teaching listening. Please use and share! 

Tools for listening activities

• Specific listening problems in English: Tips & activities based on lexical segmentation (thanks to Tamara Jones!)

• Youtube now allows you to slow videos to any speed you want. Often, just slowing it down to 90% does the trick. See instructions here. 

• Listening skills checklist, lower level version

• forvo.com/ - the pronunciation dictionary

• Using videos - Teaching with Videos Ideas - from ELT Buzz 

• Copy & paste or download Netflix subtitles with Subadub

• Rachel's English: these are mostly focused on pronunciation, but I find them super helpful for teaching listening also. 

Listening tracks

• Beginner tracks: developed for ESOL beginners on common topics (if clips are longer than 2-3 minutes, choose small parts)

  • ISS of BC ESL video with simple English (my favorite is "Trying on Clothes") 

  • Literacy Partners: Great videos enacting real-life situations 

  • Command Performance Language Institute - 2-3 minute videos with basic English vocabulary for daily life, illustrated with live action (but simple & quiet) video

  • How to go grocery shopping - a one-off video by an English teacher

  • ESL Fast Conversations and Rong Chang - these 2 sites are similar - short dialogues with audio & transcripts  

  • VIPS TV - some good videos with simple English conversations 

  • Videos in Levels

• Leveled audio stories, 100% planned speech, designed for ESL, mostly with transcripts

  • ESLvideo.com/ (you can make your own video quizzes on this site too)

  • All Eyes and Ears - fun stories for extensive listening with some lesson tools 

  • Basic English Speaking.com - dialogues on a wide variety of common topics, each with audio only & video of the words

  • ello.org- leveled, dialogues with transcripts, video/audio

  • Agendaweb.org - short stories to listen and read

  • ESLYes - hundreds of stories with audio & transcripts

  • Randall's Cyber Listening Lab - Short ESL stories with transcripts and lots of exercises

  • ESL-bits.net - a wide variety of stories & audiobooks with transcripts. Each story offers 2 speeds of audio. 

• News: 100% planned speech, many familiar topics 

  • Learning English with CBC - news stories with learning materials (gotta love those Canadians!)

  • 1 minute BBC News

  • CNN10 - the day's news in 10 minutes. They tend to be a little fast, but you can use Speed Controller to slow them down. Here are transcripts for CNN10.

  • Transcripts for many CNN news programs can be helpful for creating great curriculum

  • Breaking News English - click on any article and look for the "LISTEN" menu just under the article title. Most articles offer a choice of British or American English as well as many exercises.

  • EnglishClub - news stories recorded slowly in simple English. Includes cloze, vocabulary, comprehension & discussion questions

  • VOA Learning English - a variety of video and audio news-related stories (and just text). They also have an even slower "Learning English Broadcast"

  • New York Times Op-Docs - 2 to 20 minute clips on a wide variety of newsy and human interest stories. A favorite - Bike Thief. Some are kind of depressing; I stay away from those. 

• Intermediate & Advanced - podcasts & radio stories

  • How I Built This (audio only, different accents, unplanned speech)

  • Many public radio stories have introductory information on-line along with the audio. Here's an example and a bit of material that can be used with it ("Legendary Rock Climber Lynn Hill" on H.

  • Are Organic Vegetables More Nutritious After All? 

    • Audio, transcript, lesson (vocab & listening guide), phrases from the audio to apply to our lives

  • Antonio Banderas interview (he couldn't speak or understand English when he landed his 1st American role! Lesson plan with links

  • Mom in Translation - lesson plan with links, adapted for teaching online

  • Air travel - recordings of announcements in airports & airplanes

  • Podcast lists

  • Listening / video tracks & lesson plans from Lane Community College

• Videos

  • Who doesn't love animals? Try the TV show "Nature" - a large selection of 30-60 second nature clips. Language tends to be slow, video aids comprehension, varied English accents.

  • Khan Academy: Interviews with entrepreneurs  - unplanned speech, interviews - hearing the question helps set expectations about the answer. Some of these have graphics in the video, which is really helpful. 

  • TED.com, though I find most TED talks to be too hard for all but very advanced students

  • The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb) (has scripts from TV also)

  • Learn English Online 

  • New Years traditions from around the world. Youtube video with sequential comprehension questions that enable understanding. Good catalyst for discussions about New Years traditions

• Natural speech

  • real-english.com - man on the street snippet interviews, many English accents, includes quizzes

  • ello.org video lessons - include transcripts & quizzes, many English accents

  • Doctors' office recordings 

  • Air travel recordings

Fun sites for listening activities

• lyricstraining.com - plays popular songs and stops for students to fill in missing words 

• Melodicpop.com - similar in concept to lyricstraining but designed differently - gap fill for lyrics, click on a lyric to advance the video to that spot so you can hear the line.

• 10 Cool Pop Songs (for learning English)

• Long Story Short - fun, rhythmic, 3-5 minute active videos on a topic

• Youglish.com - type in a word or phrase, and see lots of examples of that phrase being said on TV, in lectures, in interviews, etc

• Netflix ESL - ESL activities based on movies & series

Books and articles about teaching listening

• Why your students have problems with listening comprehension - a terrific article explaining the different listening issues that learners face and practical ideas for teachers

• Ready to Learn? The Key is Listening with Intention - a great article about using metacognitive skills to improve listening comprehension

• American English Teacher's Corner: Listening - this site also has listening resources

• Book: Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action, by Larry Vandergrift & Christine C. M. Goh

• Book: Active Listening, by Michael Rost & JJ Wilson

• More listening ideas from Fluent in 3 Months

Linda's May 2019 Portland Literacy Council workshop presentation - here