Hi everyone,

Here are a few apps that I recommend to my students to practise their listening skills. They are especially useful for Intermediate students but Upper Intermediate/Pre-Intermediate students might find them helpful too. All three of them have the option of listening to the audio in English and reading the text in English at the same time. I recommend listening once or twice without reading the text and then listening again while reading the text to check any details that you missed.

Teachers/students, do you have have recommendations for listening resources?

Jamie (www.italki.com/jamie.teacher)

Excellent app for practising your listening skills

Most of the texts are short (2-6 minutes)

Click on “transcript” if you want to listen and read at the same time

Mainly for Intermediate students (but some texts are for Pre-Intermediate/Upper Intermediate level)

You can also use their website (<a href="http://www.bbclearningenglish.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.bbclearningenglish.com</a>) but the app is easier to use

Read and listen to very short news articles.

They have new articles nearly every day.

Listen and read the same article at different levels: “Level 1” (easy) “Level 2” (Medium) “Level 3” (more difficult)

and “Original” (a real news video).

You can also use their website (<a href="http://www.newsinlevels.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">www.newsinlevels.com</a>) but the app is easier to use.

Definitely write “learningenglish.voanews.com” NOT “www.learningenglish.voanews.com”

Read news articles about current topics with simplified language

Click “Intermediate Level” and “Advanced Level” to find many news articles (“Beginning Level” is not useful)

You can listen and read the text at the same time if you want but I recommend just reading (the voices are sometimes slow and unnatural)

There are many apps called “VOA Learning English” or something similar. Some are ok, but others are terrible so I recommend the website (and others are designed for native speakers)