ESL/EFL Teaching/Learning Resources

Listening Comprehension

Listening Resources for ESL--audio/video

See also my list of Listening and Reading resources.

News / Talks

Breaking News English <www.breakingnewsenglish.com/> -- EFL/ESL news in British English with audio files (.mp3 downloads), free lesson plans with skill-based activities, handouts, games with answer check; topics include business English, environment, health, issues, lifestyle, people/entertainment/gossip, technology, world news; Activities with Answer Check: Vocabulary - Fill-in-the-blank; Matching; Hangman; Flash cards; Games with Answer Check: Sentence jumble; Missing words (cloze); No letters (text reconstruction); Crossword (puzzle)

Voice of America--Learning English <http://learningenglish.voanews.com/> -- captioned videos, audio with/without scripts, news/topics by category, and classroom activities for learners of English (simplified), some by difficulty level.  

• Charles Kelly's site for VOA's Special English <http://www.manythings.org/voa/voa.htm>-- includes links to the daily 30-minute audio program; audio files by topic, scripts, and quizzes; includes a concordance in full sentences for the scripts used in VOA's Special English broadcasts.

• Listen and Write <http://www.listen-and-write.com/> -- dictation practice for audios of VOA news; includes a level test!

Using Online Lectures for Authentic Note-Taking Practice -- links to free online lectures, resources, suggestions by Nina Liakos, specifically Learn.org's directory of ranked 25 schools with open coursewareYouTube (Search for university lectures, college courses, or lectures + the name of a school); Open Yale Courses; MIT Open Courseware; UC Berkeley; Academic Earth; Cosmo Learning; Open Culture; iTunesU; more lectures in many subjects available in free courses from MOOCs: Coursera, edX, Khan Academy

CNN 10 <https://edition.cnn.com/cnn10> -- a 10-minute news show on many different topics; designed for use by teachers in US middle/high school classrooms; appears as a daily digital video on CNN.com; free of charge with no sign up or subscription needed on CNN.com’s CNN10 page and on CNN 10 on YouTube; archive available

TED Talks (topics) or TED Talks filtered by subtitles, topic, length, e.g. TED Ed Lessons (substitles, no transcripts); TED Talks Education; TED Education on YouTube (subtitles, no transcripts); TED Ed playlist (Links to an external site. (subtitles, no transcripts); TED-Ed|Subjects (filtered by topic)

Frontline (PBS) <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/> -- videos with transcripts and discussion guides

60 Minutes <https://www.cbsnews.com/60-minutes/>  -- weekly broadcasts with in-depth analysis and interviews; Up Next (most recent shows)

NPR Online <http://www.npr.org/programs/> -- National Public Radio; no commercials/ads, news and feature stories;

• Morning Edition is the daily NPR briefing of World News. Listen online!

• All Things Considered <http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/> -- a great listening site for advanced students.  All Things Considered is an American news program that looks at the news in much greater detail than most news programs.  At this site, you can listen to one of the Special Features on the main page, or you can click on LATEST SHOW to hear the most recent program.  You can listen to the complete program, or an individual story. To listen to previous programs, or to do a search of news topics, click on ARCHIVES.

Aljazeera English / Aljazeera Video-- breaking news in video and pictures from around the world; live stream, interviews on many topics

ChannelOne <www.channelone.com> -- At ChannelOne Livewire, watch and download to iPod or PlayList--video/audio broadcasts of current news topics geared toward teens; includes free lesson plans, quizzes, and PowerPoint resources, e.g. on Black History Month and the Underground Railroad <http://www.channelone.com/news/2003/02/07/black_history/> , the First Amendment <http://www.channelone.com/news/2006/12/15/1_voice/>

NBC News Video <https://www.nbcnews.com/video>  -- features world news, U.S. news, travel, politics, business, sports, entertainment, health, weather, tech and science

History

History--Speeches <http://www.history.com/speeches>  -- Here's a really interesting place to practice your listening! Every day you'll find a new speech to listen to.  Click on Q to search for a list of all the speeches.  You can listen to many famous and historical speeches here.

History--Video Gallery <http://www.history.com/videos>  -- searchable; playlist can be established; some advertising

Learning English--AUDIO

Using Online Lectures for Authentic Note-Taking Practice -- links to free online lectures, resources, suggestions by Nina Liakos

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab <http://www.esl-lab.com/> -- an amazing collection of audio/video lectures for all levels of listening comprehension, together with self-tests and answers; Pre-Listening Exercises; Listening Exercises; Post-Listening Exercises with voice-recordings and typed comments from native speakers and international students; voicethreads for students recording themselves; Vocabulary lessons; pronunciation; Internet searching;  Accent Reduction and Conversational English; Language Learning and Life Tips with audio and discussion questions; TOEFL/TOEIC Preparation with lectures, interviews, and conversations

Real English <https://www.real-english.com/> -- on-line video/audio lessons for beginners and intermediates with exercises

BBC Learning English: Watch and Listen <http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/> -- articles for English language learners with audio (some with video), vocabulary--definitions in text and audio, and script; see also web casts

English Language Listening Lab Online <www.elllo.org> -- Learn English by listening to English speakers from all over the world. 7 leves; 8 different varieties and accents of English;  many audio and video lessons

English as a Second Language <https://www.rong-chang.com/>  -- many kinds of audio materials for beginners and intermediate learners, by Rong-chang Li

Audio Concentration/Memory Games <http://www.manythings.org/ac/> -- exercises with similar-sounding words

ESL Gold Listening <http://www.eslgold.com/listening.html> -- for all levels: exercises, quizzes

Dress Up <http://memorialhall.mass.edu/activities/dressup> -- Learn about the unfamiliar clothing that Americans have worn throughout our nation's history (1700-1900).  Interactive files with audio and text explanations; require the Flash Player. (link contributed by Sheena MacPherson)

International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) <http://web.ku.edu/idea/> -- recordings representing the English language accents/dialects spoken by people from North America. For ease of browsing they are listed by country and/or region; International Dialects of English Archive, IDEA, University of Kansas--Lawrence.

English Conversations https://www.eslfast.com/robot/> - 1,500+ ESL/EFL conversations on 25 topics

The Apartment: Introduction to the Game <http://www.duber.com/thegame/> -- The exercise provides plenty of practice with intermediate level listening & reading skills, and can easily be adapted for discussion and/pr writing work as well.  Both a student and teacher study guide are linked as further support.

Learning English--VIDEO

Real English <https://www.real-english.com/> -- on-line video/audio lessons for beginners and intermediates with exercises

YouTube <http://esl.about.com/od/listeninglessonplans/a/youtube.htm> -- lesson plans for using YouTube for ESL

TeacherTube <www.teachertube.com> -- videos uploaded by teachers or useful for teaching; for ESL, see http://www.teachertube.com/search_result.php?search_id=ESL&x=0&y=0

Movies/TV

Learn English with TV <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKgpamMlm872zkGDcBJHYDg> -- popular TV series, e.g. Friends, and movie excerpts, e.g. Harry Potter, with subtitles

Movie+Video+Cartoon Worksheets <http://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-listening/movie-worksheets/> -- activities for listening with movies, videos, and cartoons; can be filtered by level

Comingsoon.net <http://comingsoon.net/trailers/>  -- movie trailers in alphabetical order

Internet Movie Database (IMDb) -- search for movie trailers by title, characters, people, quotes, bios, plot, ratings

Movie Archive <http://www.archive.org/movies/index.html> -- "Our goal in digitizing these movies and putting them online is to provide easy access to a rich and fascinating core collection of archival films."  Movie trailers in .avi format.

YouTube <http://www.youtube.com> -- search for video clips, movie trailers, etc.

Google Video <http://video.google.com/> -- Search thousands of videos, TV shows, movies, and more

Sound Clips (movies, lyrics/songs)

LyricsTrainng <https://lyricstraining.com/> -- great site for ESL/EFL learners (beginners, intermediate advanced, expert level) to practice listening comprehension with gap-filling whle listening to songs of many genres to choose from

The Movie Sounds Page <www.moviesounds.com> -- short audio clips of quotes from famous movies.  See also Making your own sound samples at <http://www.moviesounds.com/diy.html>

Lyrics to Pop Songs:
SongLyrics.com <http://www.songlyrics.com/> -- search by artist in alphabetical order
Lyrics to Pop Songs @ Universal Music <http://www.umusic.com> -- contains links to all of their bands' sites

Teaching with songs <www.isabelperez.com/songs.htm> -- song lyrics and activities for ESL, by Isabelle Pérez Torres; include matching, cloze, and other interactive exercises to practice vocabulary, grammar, sounds; arranged in alphabetical order by singer; link to IPA Fonts for downloading; phonetic symbols appear in some exercises.   

ESL Video.com <http://eslvideo.com/index.php> -- songs and other activities with video clips at beginning/low-intermediate/intermediate/high-intermediate proficiency levels, quizzes for listening comprehension, transcripts, and notes on culture, grammar, slang, pronunciation; quiz builder included

Podcasts for ESL

Fun English Lessons <http://china232.libsyn.com/> -- This ESL podcast is a comedy style talk show done by two Canadian brothers living in Shanghai, China. Fun to listen to and a great way to improve English.  Lots of good vocabulary and expressions with repetitions; concepts are repeated as well; topical issues.

Breaking News English--Podcasts <http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/podcast.html> -- Ready-to-use EFL / ESL Lesson Plans & Podcasts; level selections: easier or harder; includes articles with activities and fill-in-the blank quizzes and .mp3 files for listening (British English)
          To subscribe: copy and paste the following web address into the URL field of the podcast software you are using
          (http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/rss.xml). If you are using iTunes, just click here for automatic subscription to this podcast.

Interesting Things for ESL Students

• Learn a Song Podcast -- Learn to sing songs that native speakers know; line-by-line highlighting, lyrics, notes, guitar accompaniment, links
• Jokes in English Podcast -- You can listen to and read the jokes.

Sound Stories

Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/> -- 60,000 free ebooks; search for audio books (human-read audio books, downloadable .mp3 files)

Candlelight Stories <https://www.candlelightstories.com/>  -- free audio books and stories with scripts; folktales from around the world;

Stories to go <http://feeds.feedburner.com/StoriesToGo> -- stories/short stories in audio; mp3 files

Audio Recording Tools

VoiceThread <www.voicethread.com> -- audio and text comments (group conversations) on pictures, video, graphics, documents, etc.; see/listen to example at http://voicethread.com/#home
Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/> -- [1.5Mb] click to download this free, cross-platform software to record, amplify, fade, edit, copy, paste etc; converts audio files to .mp3 format. Download the Lame client in order to process the conversion.
Springdoo <http://www.springdoo.com>  -- send your audio or video recordings with text via email; now called Bedroom TV (http://www.bedroomtv.com/)

Text-to-Speech Programs

See also CALL-EJ Online, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Jan. 2006). Text-to-Speech Technology: What does it offer to foreign language leaners?"

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Last Updated: June 11, 2021
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