How does this sound?

Along with my classmates in Oral English Teaching and Methods of Foreign Language Education, I've been reading, thinking, and learning about how we perceive sounds in our second languages and how we begin to understand what we're hearing.

In my time at DHS, I had a bunch of links to websites with listening practice. I'm going to try to recreate that list here:

esl-lab.com -- Randall Davis created this site, and I really enjoy listening to the quirky conversations he (and I presume his family members) have recorded. The response activities vary a lot from one topic to another; sometimes they are quite in depth, but often they are not. A draw back to this resource is there is not much variety of accents or voices; the same people record almost everything.

real-english.com -- This resource has short videos with a lot of conversations and interviews with people with a variety of accents. The activities are skimpier than in esl-lab, but it's fun to have a video.

English Club -- This site is by no means exclusively a listening site; however, their page of listening options is awesome! They provide links to dictation activities, authentic radio programs, news programs, television programs, and more.

Let me know if you have another site that you would like to recommend; I'd love to expand this list!

Comments

  1. Janet SabbOctober 23, 2009 at 7:27 AM

    Hi Will,

    I really appreciate the three sites you've listed here. They seem like a treasure trove full of material that a beginning ESL teacher, like myself, will be able to access. At this point in time, I am looking for activities that expand on the material to help me in forming lessons and it seems all three sites fit the bill. (Good idiom to teach students--notice I'm becoming VERY aware of how often these are used lately. :) Thanks!

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