Resources for listening and speaking practice 

Although not so abundant as other type of material (and probably not so popular), we can also find listening and speaking materials for the foreign language classroom on the net. You should also have in mind that this type of material is usually slower to download and sometimes requires special software. There are two types of listening materials: authentic material and purpose-written listening material for the English classroom. I will also add to this list, sites with information about songs, lyrics and music, as this popular resource is usually used in the English classroom with listening tasks.  
 
 

authentic listening material

  • Talk Radio. A public news service for the Internet community.

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purpose-written listening material

  • Randall's Cyber Listening Lab, an online listening quiz site created  to help ESL/EFL students self-test and improve their listening comprehension via interactive Web pages.
  • "How to" guide for using the Internet to teach listening and speaking skills. This page is written by Kent Trickel, a TESL specialist and instructor at University of Florida's English Language Institute. The page is devoted to helping ESL teachers effectively use the internet to teach listening and speaking skills. It contains links to other sites on the Internet as well to some of Kent's own projects that may be of interest to ESL teachers and students.

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  • ESL Listening Neighbourhood. Using streaming audio on the net, students can practice their listening skills. Many topics and activities are available. Also written by Kent Trickel, these pages are designed to be used for ESL listening practice in the computer lab. Students can choose from a variety of topics, depending on their interests. These pages can also be assigned as homework for ESL students. Each topic page contains not only listening comprehension questions, but also questions for class and small group discussion. Try a sample activity for  ESL beginners Beginning ESL Listening Activity. I think it is a good way to start!

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  • Weekly Idioms Listen to a short dialogue to learn an idiom (from the "weekly idiom" section in the Comenius Group site).

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  • Listening Quizzes by John Wong from Hong Kong.
  • Speaking Games, a site with really creative ideas (games) for conversation classes.
 

songs and music 

  • International Lyrics Server. This is perhaps the most popular site with song lyrics. I have found it to be quite comprehensive (it claims to have 67000 lyrics). You will find any song you are interested in. With the text of the song you can prepare a song worksheet. If you want to add some information about the singer or the group, or even add a picture to make the worksheet more visually attractive and stimulating go along to Yahoo and click on music, then artists, or to Lycos. The International Lyrics Server site also offers interesting links to other lyrics and music sites:

    • a) Lyrics Links 
     

    1. Songs, Liedertexte, Lyrics - A really useful list of links to lyrics sites. 
    2. Top 40 Lyrics - Lyrics to the chart breakers of the last decades. 
    3. Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive - Excellent for HH and Rap lyrics. 
    4. Lyrics Quizzes - How good are you? New Quiz every month. 
      
    b) Music Links 
     
    1. All-Music Guide - Find information to over 200 000 albums. 
    2. CD Universe - The best place to buy CDs. Audio samples available. 
    3. MusicNewsWire - Check out the latest music news. 
    4. RockOnTV - Never miss a music event on TV anymore. 
    5. The Music Database - Find Chords/Tabs/MIDI to many many songs. 
     
  • Ultimate band list. This site has a search engine the results of which includes Web pages (both official and unofficial sites), any newsgroups and mailing lists devoted to a particular artist, as well as any music bulletin boards related to the artist or group you are interested in.

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  • The Music Project. Its-online provides teachers and students with a list of links related to the subjects covered in The Music Project (Part One and Part Two). If you have not read about this project, do not waste more time and do it!! 
 
 

Go back to links for teachers 
 
  please, report dead links to  dpermany@pie.xtec.e