martes, 17 de abril de 2012

Improving your listening skill - Intermediate 1 EOI

Hello Everyone,

I'm terribly sorry it took me so long to write this post, but it's better late than never. So many of you have asked me how they could improve your listening skill, so that you can pass your final exam. I'm going to list different sites and apps I've found; all of them may not help you, but find one or two that are helpful for YOU (we're all different so those that help you might not help your classmate, and that's completely normal). Therefore, let's start up with simple tips:

Tip
#1
- You can change the audio setting/language of your tv and listen to some English for 15-20 minutes every day.
#2
- Watch films in English, with English subtitles
#3
- Listen to songs: you can either listen to songs you like, reading the lyrics at the same time as you're listening (and looking up the words you don't know), or you can practise with this site Songs to learn English Intermediate
#4
- You can listen to the cd that comes with the books we've got for you to borrow at the school. You can play it while you're driving, or upload it on your mp3/mp4 player or smartphone, and listen to it while you're running/jogging/waiting. You may even connect your smartphone to the car speakers and listen to an English radio station.
#5
- Listen to English news radio stations, and choose pieces of news you've already heard in Spanish, just to check how much you undertand from a topic you already know what it is about.
VOA - Voice of America
Words in the News BBC Learning English (you can download the podcasts)
breakingnewsenglish Do level 5. Choose a piece of news, and once you're on the page, go to LISTEN and click on "mp3", right below the heading. Then choose the speed (medium).
TheNewYorkTimes - videos
#6
- Follow a series that you like, and watch it in English (if you can watch it with English subtitles, even better).


And now I'll list some websites that may help you:

- Better at English - real English conversations This website has got podcasts (that you can download) and they come with the transcription. The author tries to use idioms and phrasal verbs in them.
saberingles Listening exercises taken from news on VOA.
-Listening exercises with The Simpsons
elllo Choose level 4, but if you find it difficult start with level 3. However, if you find it easy, try level5.
- Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab Try "Medium" level.
- ompersonal - video
- ompersonal - audio
- englishclub - news They publish a new audio every week, so keep it as one of your favourites and check it every week; make it a routine. That's the only way to see an improvement, being constant.
manythings Many different topics, with transcriptions.
- Khan Academy In the Khan Academy you've got a wide range of topics, and also, you can find texts to improve your vocabulary. It's probably a bit complecated, since it's what students in the US use to study. However, it may help people interested in specific topics related to science or history, and it may come in handy in Intermediate 2 and above. Go to the upper left side of the page, click on "subject" and choose the one of your choice.
National Geographic This could be difficult, but some of you could be interested in these topics/videos, and it's also important that this is fun for you, otherwise you'll give up really quickly.

You can also give it a go to Dictation:
ompersonal -dictation
dictationsonline  Start up by Pre-intermediate and go on form there.
- learnenglish.de - dictation

And finally, here you have two apps you can use to improve and listen anywhere:
english_conversation_app
- voicepaperapp As far as I know, this one is only for iPhone (sorry!). There must be one also for Android, I haven't found it yet.

Try to download the audios or podcasts, it may be useful to have them on your mobile.

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