CNN Student News

CNN Student News is another great free listening resource on the web. It is a daily (Monday - Friday) news programme designed to be used by high schools in the United States but which provides great listening practice for students around the world.  It is only 10 minutes long and usually has three or four current new stories in each programme. It is also a great way to follow current news events.

The best feature about CNN Student News for EFL students, however, is that unlike many other major news organisations, CNN Student News provides a complete transcript of each programme.

This is my advice on how best to use this resource. Rather than listen to the whole programme, choose one of the stories (which will probably last 2-3 minutes) and watch that a few times. Make notes on what you think 1) are the main points of the story 2) are some key words. Next, have a look at the transcript and check your notes. Next, watch the story again while reading the transcript. Finally, write down 5-10 new words from the story that you think will be useful to learn and make vocabulary flashcards for these words on Quizlet.

If you study like this once or twice a week for a year, I think that your understanding of news programmes in English will really begin to improve. Plus, you will learn lots of new, useful vocabulary.

It's a great resource, so please give it a try. You can find it at: http://edition.cnn.com/studentnews/

Summer Listening

As the summer holiday begins, a few students have asked me what they can do over the break to improve their English. One good idea is to do some English listening every day. Here are some ideas.

     If you have the Podcasts app (see the previous post), you can subscribe to two good podcasts. First, there is 6 Minute English, which I discussed in a post a couple of months ago. In this programme, two people discuss a recent news story and use it learn some new vocabulary.
   






Second, you can subscribe to English at Work. This programme is a weekly drama about people working in an office called Tip Top Trading.

The programme follows the lives of four main characters and is a good way to study English communication in an English-speaking office. If you go to the BBC learning English website, you can also find the transcript for each episode. However, please remember, it is better to listen first and read later.

     Finally, also at the BBC Learning English website, you can find Words in the News. Here you can find a simplified BBC news story every few days. You can listen to the story and read it. Any difficult vocabulary is explained at the bottom of the page. For students who want a more challenging listening or reading exercise, you can follow the 'Related BBC links' link to find a more complete version of the news story.

BBC Learning English Website

The BBC Learning English website is one of the best resources on the web for students. In fact, there are so many good things there that it can be a bit overwhelming when you first take a look. In this post, therefore, I'll just tell you about two great resources to help you with your listening skills.

The first is a soap opera (weekly drama with the same characters) called Flatmates. Each episode is quite short at just over a minute and you can watch a simple animation of the drama on the BBC learning English website. The animation includes character speech bubbles so you can read what the characters are saying as you listen. Flatmates also has other features including a quiz, downloadable audio file and an archive of old episodes. Overall, it's short, fun and great listening practice.

The second resource is 6 Minute English. In this radio programme for learners, two people discuss a recent story from the news and use it to learn some new vocabulary. You can download the programme as an audio file, listen to it on the BBC Learning English website or subscribe to the 6 Minute English Podcast. Personally, I think that subscribing to the podcast is best because this way you'll always have some English to listen to on your MP3 player or phone. This is very convenient if you have a long commute to university in the morning!

Elementary Podcasts

The British Council has lots of great resources to help you study English. In this post, I want to tell you about Elementary Podcasts, a series of podcasts that you can listen to on your computer or download to your MP3 player or phone.

Elementary Podcasts are short radio shows for learners of English. There are two regular presenters called Tess and Ravi, and each show has regular topics. As a general guide the different parts of the radio show are 1) chat between the presenters 2) someone talking about somebody or something they like 3) a quiz to help you learn the meaning of new words 4) a feature called 'Your Turn" where people give their opinions on something 5) Carolina - a feature following the story of a young woman who has come to live and study in the UK 6) a joke 7) Tom the teacher

So far, there are three series of Elementary Podcasts. Series 1 and Series 2 podcasts have 10 episodes and are 20-30 minutes long. Series 3 podcasts are only 10 minutes long but there are 20 episodes. Series 3 also has a slightly different format to the other series.

You can listen to the Elementary Podcasts at the British Council LearnEnglish website:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org

Or, even better, download the free LearnEnglish Elementary app to your mobile device. Go to the iTunes store if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, and go to the Google Play store for the Android app. Once the app is on your mobile device, you can download all the podcasts and listen anytime you want.

The Elementary Podcasts are not particularly difficult for learners to listen to, although the speaking can be quite fast at times. However, if you find the podcasts a bit difficult, there are a few things you can do. If you have the app on your mobile device, you can read and follow the transcript of the radio show, although it is probably better to listen first and read later. You can also break down the listening experience and listen to the podcast bit by bit, or listen again to something you don't understand the first time. Also, for each podcast, there are some Exercises for you to do to check your comprehension. Once you have completed the Exercise, you can check your answers and get immediate feedback.

The British Council has lots of other English learning resources, but the Elementary Podcasts are a good place to start.

Listening at elllo

The ello website is one of my favourite resources for students. At elllo you can listen to native speakers of English speaking about a wide variety of topics, including travel, sports, family and the environment. It is a great place to listen to naturally spoken English.

Click here to go to elllo: http://www.elllo.org

These are real conversations and speakers often use idiomatic language, so the website is most useful to intermediate and advanced level students.

When you go to the website, have a look at the topics listed, find one that interests you and click on it. You can listen while reading the audio script or while watching an audio slideshow. I suggest that you listen without looking at the audio script for a few times first and just focus on the main ideas in the conversation. You can look at the audio script later and also check any difficult vocabulary. Also,
after listening, you can check your understanding by taking a vocabulary and comprehension quiz.

If you want to try one listening at elllo to find out if you like it, click on the link below. A Vietnamese woman is asking an American man about his recent trip to Vietnam.
http://www.elllo.org/english/0951/T964-Todd-Vietnam.htm

Listening is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your English.