Listening
Discover ways to improve your listening skills including online dictations, and general and academic listening resources.
Quick tips for listening practice
- Any listening material with a transcript may be used for dictation practice.
- Prepare mentally before you listen—what do you already know about the subject? What words and topics are likely to come up?
- Listen several times to the same passage—first for the main idea, then for detail.
- Try to guess the meaning of unknown words from context.
- Use transcripts to check your understanding after listening.
Dictations for EAP
This website is designed for PREPP and the EAP programme. Practise listening and writing, following the themes studied in class.
Beginner Intermediate Advanced NZ contentEnglish Dictation
Listen to short elementary and intermediate level dictations at slow or normal speed, then check your answers. From the Learn English Network.
Beginner IntermediateEnglish Club Dictation
Hear short dictations at normal and slow speed, from elementary to advanced level.
Beginner Intermediate AdvancedContemporary topics
A companion website with streaming videos for the book series (3rd edition) in the LLC's Self-access Library. It may be used on its own for listening practice.
Beginner Intermediate AdvancedYale lectures
Authentic lectures from Open Yale complete with videos, transcripts, and downloadable audio files in a huge variety of subjects.
AdvancedVictoria University public lectures
The university's public lecture series—older lectures are available here but may not display correctly on all computers.
Advanced NZ contentUniversity of Reading lectures
A wide range of lectures from this British university with comprehension questions and transcripts.
Intermediate AdvancedTED Talks
Search for inspiring talks on a subject that interests you. Find interactive transcripts, often in multiple languages.
AdvancedESL News—New Zealand
Listen to recent and topic-based New Zealand news, spoken slowly and clearly, with transcripts.
Beginner NZ contentListen a minute
Short listening tasks in a wide range of topics with transcripts, gap-fill exercises and downloadable worksheets.
IntermediateBBC six-minute English
Short listening tasks about interesting topics, with downloadable audio and transcripts. Set up the podcast!
IntermediateBreaking News English
Graded news articles, recordings, and communicative activities uploaded daily.
Beginner Intermediate AdvancedElllo
Listen, watch, and learn! Comprehension tasks and transcripts in many different accents—both native and non-native. Updated twice a week.
Beginner Intermediate AdvancedChasing Time English
This six-episode drama series comes with videos at two levels of difficulty (Lower and Upper Intermediate), subtitles, and plenty of activities.
IntermediateLingoHack
Authentic news video clips by BBC Learning English, with transcript and word list.
Intermediate