Main navigation

Learning english, we found 54 activities for you.

reading listening activities

I love sports

This activity helps you practice using words to do with time and place

reading listening activities

Bank accounts

Practice listening with this activity about bank accounts

reading listening activities

Can you understand?

Can you identify what is really being said in this listening activity?

reading listening activities

Listening to dialogues

Listen to people talking and answer questions about their conversation

reading listening activities

Can you understand the general idea in these voicemail messages?

reading listening activities

Word stress

Identify the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

reading listening activities

US or UK pronunciation

Can you tell the difference between UK and US English?

reading listening activities

Travel programme

Listen to an interview and answer some questions

reading listening activities

How do you feel?

Answer some questions about how people are feeling

reading listening activities

Try out a number of activities that will teach you words related to how food tastes

reading listening activities

Amir's adventure

Listen to Amir talking about his trip and answer some questions

reading listening activities

What do they look like?

Listen to descriptions of people and choose the right picture

reading listening activities

Mrs. Winter's Bliss - Resources For Kindergarten, 1st & 2nd Grade

Time-saving + research-backed resources, professional development training, activities, and centers aligned with Science of Reading!

View My Account

Free Listening Center Activities

reading listening activities

In this post I’m   sharing FREE Listening to Reading Response Activities for Kindergarten, first and second grade students. These activities make a meaningful no-prep literacy center.

reading listening activities

Many trends come and go in education, but one literacy activity that has stood the test of time is the Listening Center.  Whether it be on cassette tape, CD or the devices we use today, the listening center has long been a staple in classrooms because it is so incredibly beneficial for students to listen to stories read aloud.  

reading listening activities

But why is listening to reading so important for children?  

The Benefits of Listening to Reading

💗 For one, it gives students the opportunity to listen to a fluent reader while closely following along with (tracking) the text.  With no pressure to decode, a listening center allows students to focus solely on comprehension instead of getting stuck on (and frustrated by!) words they don’t know.  

💗 Children can listen on a higher language level than they can read.  When they just listen to a story they can understand more complex ideas.  They are also exposed to vocabulary and language patterns they might not hear in everyday speech.

💗 It allows students to feel successful, which builds confidence and leads to stronger readers who are more willing to take risks such as trying to read more complicated texts on their own! 

💗 Even fluent readers can benefit from listening to the expression and dramatic reading. It allows them to delve deeper into developing their comprehension skills.

💗 Finally, listening to books read aloud is an enjoyable and engaging experience for students.  It develops their interest in books and desire to be a reader !  I think we can agree that anything that helps to instill a love of reading is something we should be doing!  

reading listening activities

Clearly implementing a listening center to our literacy centers is beneficial, do you need some resources to fresh up your center or help get you started?

Today I’m happy to share with you FREE listening center activities perfect for your kindergarten, first or second grade classroom.  

Free Listening to Reading Activities

These listening to reading response sheets are the perfect addition to your literacy centers!  They help students deepen their comprehension and make listening to reading an active learning activity. 

With this freebie you’ll get four different response sheets which can be used with any book!  I recommend introducing one activity at a time.  Once you’ve modeled it and you feel confident students can all complete the response sheet independently, then introduce the next one.  

reading listening activities

The “Drawing Story Elements” sheet is ideal for kindergarten and early first grade students, while the “Writing Response Story Elements”, “Book Review” and “Types of Text” are great for 1st and 2nd grade students.   

Simply print the response sheets out and leave them in your listening center.  Students can complete them as they listen or after they listen to the story.  

In addition to the printable listening center response sheets, this resource will also provide you with a list of great online reading websites.  Simply click the link in the resource and it’ll take you directly to the reading site where you’ll find a variety of stories to choose from.  

reading listening activities

Are you still teaching students remotely? Need digital listening center activities?  No problem! These listening center response sheets come in both digital and printable files.  

reading listening activities

Ready to start using these FREE Listening Center Response Activities in your Kindergarten, first, or second grade classroom?? Simply fill out this form below I’ll send the activities directly to your inbox!   

Looking for more ways to get your students responding to reading? Check out my Free Reading Response Activities and the Reading Response Resources for kindergarten, first or second grade!  

– PIN for LATER –

reading listening activities

Excited for these resources.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Find what you need

  • MEET CHRISTINA
  • Shop teaching resources
  • Access your account
  • Privacy Policy

Teaching Resources

reading listening activities

Bliss in your Inbox

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. See full disclosure here.​

  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Need a resource? Head over to the shop and save 15% off your first purchase! SHOP NOW

  • Text Messaging
  • Facebook Group
  • Search this website

Proud to be Primary

Be inspired, motivate kids, and make a positive impact in your classroom.

reading listening activities

1:54 pm By Proud to be Primary 2 Comments

7 Listening Activities to Get Your Students Attentive & Ready to Learn

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. Any purchases made through one of our links earn us a small commission, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. All creative ideas and opinions expressed are purely my own. Read our full privacy policy  and  disclosure  for more information.

Listening activities: 7 important ideas for teaching listening skills in the classroom, such as whole body listening, class games, and daily practice ideas.

Listening Activities for Kids: Teaching Listening in the Classroom

As teachers, we always hope that our students are listening carefully to our lessons and assignment instructions. Unfortunately, we find that sometimes they aren’t paying close attention to what we’re saying and this can affect their learning. This becomes a problem when they miss key information during instruction. It’s a good idea to take some time to explicitly teach listening skills so that students retain more of the information we are giving them.

How do we do that? Well, in this post I’m going to share with you 7 strategies for teaching listening skills in the classroom.

These 7 actionable ways to teach listening skills in the classroom will be just the ideas that you need. Your students will gain knowledge of what it looks like and feels like to be an active listener, engaged and responsive to a speaker, and able to complete a task by following directions. By taking the time to practice good listening skills with your students, I’m sure you will find your job just a little bit easier.

7 Listening Activities that Promote Attentiveness in the Classroom

1. model good listening strategies.

In front of the classroom, play a short game of Simon Says with one child volunteering to be “Simon” and you are the game player. Model good listening strategies such as looking the speaker in the eye, repeating the directions to yourself (aloud so they can hear you), not starting until you’ve heard all the instructions (say aloud, “Ok, he’s finished giving me the instructions so now I may begin”), and speak aloud what you’re going to do as if you were picturing it in your mind before doing it. After “Simon” gives you a few short instructions, ask the class to tell you what they witnessed you did well. Write their answers in a thinking map on the board.

Classroom meetings are another great opportunity to model and practice listening skills. The class sits together in the circle and takes turns sharing their thoughts and feelings on the topic being discussed. Children are encouraged to look at the speaker and listen to what they say.

Listening Activities for Kids: Teaching Listening in the Classroom

2. Partner Conversations

Pair children up and give them a general discussion topic. Each child takes turns being the speaker or the listener. When the speaker is finished speaking, have the listener repeat one of the speaker’s main points, and offer them a compliment. Having “Think, Pair, Shares” during lessons and discussions is a great way to practice receiving and sharing what is heard.

Listening Activities for Kids: Teaching Listening in the Classroom

3. Teach “Whole Body Listening”

A much-used concept in the early primary grades is “whole body listening.” In whole body listening, a student practices keeping particular key parts of their body focused on the speaker. Their eyes are watching, ears are listening, brain is focused on the speaker’s information, mouth is closed, shoulders are squared toward the speaker, heart is caring about the message, hands are folded or in lap, feet are still on the floor.

In other words, they are actively “listening” with their entire bodies. Teach your whole class this concept and practice it as a group, before expecting them to put it into practice. I use this book, Whole Body Listening Larry at School by Elizabeth Sautter , to teach this concept. More go-to books for reinforcing listening skills are Listen, Buddy , Listen and Learn , and My Mouth is a Volcano .

You can grab a fantastic FREE whole body listening pack from Erica Bohrer to help teach your students this important skill.

4. Daily Listening Activities

One way to see a marked improvement in your students’ listening skills is to give them short, daily skills practice. Any daily practice should be fun, and practical. In this case, the skills should include encouraging kids to focus on oral instructions, visualizing the tasks given, and completing them accurately. Give them short instructions verbally for completing a task, or two or three tasks in succession (depending on their age/cognitive development), and have them practice listening and completing the tasks without repeating the instructions.

See our Listening Mats in Store

One idea for this activity is to have them pull out a blank sheet of paper and give them instructions. For example, “Draw a large brown oval in the center of your paper. Add an orange letter V in the center. Use a black crayon to draw two large circles, side by side, above the V” (and they end up with a basic sketch of an owl on their paper that they can finish drawing details and color on their own). Want some pre-made activities for daily practice such as this? Try my HUGE assortment of Listening Mats, perfect for any time of the year .

Listening Activities for Kids: listening mats

5. The Storytelling Listening Game

In this game, you start a story with a beginning phrase, and then each child in the classroom adds one word to the story in turn. Students must be active participants and follow the story closely so that when their time comes to add a word, the story will make sense. Another way to practice this is by playing a traditional game of Telephone where a message is passed around the room to see if it stays the same.

6. Storytelling Pods

Sort children into groups of three. In these “pods,” they are to play the storytelling game, only in successive story events rather than one word. For example, the first student starts with an event such as “The rabbit found a carrot in the garden.” Then the second student adds an event that happens afterward in the story, such as “The carrot was too big to carry.” The third student adds, “So the rabbit put it in a wagon to pull it to his burrow.” After the time is given for the pods to come up with their three-event stories, instruct the students to move to a new pod. In those groups, they must retell their stories with perfect accuracy to their new pod members.

7. 20 Questions Listening Game

In this classic game, lots of listening skills are practiced without even explicitly calling it a “lesson in listening skills”. Play this game any time you feel you need subject review, and practicing listening skills at the same time! For instance, tell the class you are an item that starts with a certain letter, a fictional character, or a Science object you’ve recently learned about. Have them ask you 20 yes/no questions to try to figure out what you are.

Listening Activities for Kids: listening games

Listening Activities and Resources for Teachers

Listening mats.

Practice and building listening skills year-round with Listening Mats . Students must listen, visualize, and think what is read and complete the appropriate task on the mat (picture) provided. They will build listening and reading skills through repeated practice.

There are 20 different Listening Mats are included for each month. There are 3 variations of these printable activity mats included. Every mat covers a different topic or theme. Each type of mat covers and builds different listening skills and following instructions.

listening activity mats for daily practice

FREE Listening Activities

Download the FREE printable Listening Mats today by clicking the image below. These activities will help teach kids to focus on oral instructions, visualize the tasks given, and complete tasks accurately.

Click here to subscribe

More Listening Activities for Kids

teaching respect in the classroom

Teaching Respect

teaching responsibility in the classroom

Teaching Responsibility

social skills games for kids

Social Skills Games

PIN for Later

listening activities for kids

FREE Classroom Management Email Series

Sign up for the classroom management email course filled with positive, actionable strategies and tried and true advice, plus tools and free resources you can access right away. Everything you need to rock your classroom management this year!

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. Stay tuned for the social-emotional learning email series coming your way soon! -Elyse

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

I'd like to receive the free email course.

You may also enjoy these posts:

3 quick and effective following directions activities that build listening comprehension

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Shop Our Site
  • Social-Emotional learning
  • Classroom Management
  • Teaching Ideas
  • Directed Drawing
  • Best-Sellers
  • Social-Emotional Learning
  • Sight Words
  • Non-Fiction

Join more than 100,000 proud primary teachers!

Sign up for exclusive access to teacher freebies & weekly emails filled with teacher tips, lesson ideas, and resource suggestions sent straight to your inbox!

listening activities for kids

Buy ANY 3 Resources. Get the 4th FREE! 👉 SHOP NOW 👈

Listening to reading – listening ideas for literacy rotations.

  • June 8, 2021

Sometimes it can be tricky to incorporate listening to reading in your weekly literacy rotations. But we are here today to share some simple Listening to Reading ideas your students are going to love (read to the bottom to grab these ideas in a free printable version).

There are many benefits for kids when listening to reading:

  • They allow listeners to access books at a higher level.
  • Exposes the listener to a wider variety of sophisticated vocabulary
  • The reader may use silly voices and emphasise character traits using their voice, making it enjoyable for the listener.

So why not try listening to audiobooks, online stories, or podcasts as a part of your literacy rotations? There is so much content online designed to engage kids.

To save you the time of trawling through the internet looking for great listening post choices (because teachers are busy people), we have collated some free audio options to check out:

Podcasts are a super easy and fun way.

  • ABC’s Little Yarns – explores Indigenous language
  • Annabel and Turtle – explores Growth Mindset
  • The Beanies – fun stories
  • Imagine This – puzzling science questions
  • The Fact Detectives – About two curious kids on a mission to find out all the cool facts about everything!

test alt text

Online stories are an excellent option for audio plus the visual element. Here are some free options:

  • Storyline online
  • Stories for Kids
  • Mem Fox’s website (you can listen to her stories)
  • ‘Cool Kindergarten’ has some links to online

test alt text

Helpful Apps to use:

Finally, there are so many apps out there to assist students listening skills. There are many that involve a subscription fee such as Epic, Oxford Owl, RazKids. However, if you are looking for a cost free option try these:

  • ABC Kids Listen
  • ABC listens
  • BTN:Behind the news is a website but you can also print comprehension questions from the site to accompany the activity.

Teacher Technology Tips:

You may be wondering what is the easiest way for students to access these platform.

If you have devices in the classroom you can download the apps or add website addresses as a home screen button.

Alternatively, QR codes are another great way. Simple create the code and print it off for students to access.

test alt text

Want these ideas in an easy-to-access printable list? Grab your FREE printable version here:

test alt text

Includes ideas, teacher tips, and free student reflection template.

test alt text

Before you go…

WHAT IF YOU COULD MASTER SETTING UP AND RUNNING YOUR READING GROUPS IN JUST ONE WEEK?

Imagine running a reading group program that is uncomplicated, easy to implement and stress free. ..

Introducing…

Transform your reading groups.

  • Discover a streamlined system to take control of your reading groups.
  • Learn our step-by-step instructions.
  • Create a time in the day you and your students love.

test alt text

Click here to join us and TRANSFORM YOUR READING GROUPS.

What to read next….

Reading Group Activities that are simple and effective

5 Technology based activities perfect for Reading Groups

Setting Strong Foundations in Maths

test alt text

share this post

The things they don’t teach you at uni when studying teaching, preparing your students for naplan, how to plan and implement hands-on maths lessons, 7 awesome maths games to start the school year, member logins.

Rainbow Sky Creation Logo

Rainbow Sky Creations acknowledges the Dharawal people and Whadjuk Boodjar people, the traditional custodians of the lands on which they live, work and learn. They pay their respects to the past, present and emerging Elders of this nation, and supports the cultural, spiritual and educational practices of First Nations peoples.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Site Maintained by Nyssa

Math anxiety can be a significant barrier for many students, causing feelings of fear, stress, and avoidance when it comes to math-related tasks. 

Children may suffer from math anxiety for various reasons, including past negative experiences, pressure to perform, a lack of confidence in their abilities, or a perception that math is too difficult or uninteresting. This anxiety can impact their academic performance and overall attitude towards mathematics, making it essential for educators and parents to address and support students in overcoming these challenges.

Today, we share 8 strategies to help you support students suffering from Maths anxiety, particularly in the lead-up to standardised tests such as NAPLAN.

We discuss the following ideas:

  • How games can have a huge impact on alleviating stress when it comes to Maths
  • The importance of dedicating time to building number and fact fluency
  • How you can integrate craft and Maths
  • Using the ‘Write the Room’ strategy to engage students
  • How to create a low-pressure environment and build growth mindset skills in Maths
  • Offering emotional support and encouragement to our students
  • Getting familiar with the language to help students succeed

Forewarning students before an event that may cause anxiety such as NAPLANvant to children’s lives. By incorporating these ideas into your classroom Maths routine, you can help them develop a positive attitude towards Maths and build their confidence in this important subject.

If you loved or could relate to this episode, don’t forget to follow and review our pod to stay updated with the latest content. And, send us a post on social media so we can say a personal thank you!

You can access more teacher strategies, classroom inspiration and a wealth of resources by visiting our website   www.rainbowskycreations.com .

Rainbows ahead,

Ashleigh and Alisha

Resources mentioned in today’s episode

FREE Multiplication Flip it game

FREE Division Bus Stop resource

7 Awesome Maths Games for the Classroom

Write the Room Investigations

Language of Maths Craft

18. How to Best Support Your Students With Maths Anxiety

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

FluentU Logo

How to Teach Listening in the ESL Classroom: 15 Valuable Activities That Create Solid Skills

Teaching listening skills can be tricky, as all students learn at different paces.

Some students will “get it,” others may struggle… and what if a student is hard of hearing?

In this post, I’ll discuss how to teach listening skills in the classroom, including methods to improve your students’ listening and confidence, and activities you can do with them to improve their skills overall.

3 Ways to Increase Listening Skills and Confidence

1. limit the use of translation., 2. avoid confusing listening skills with literacy skills., 3. use videos because students can watch and listen..

  • Pre-listening activities

1. Predicting and guessing

2. vocabulary preparation, during listening activities, 3. listen for specific words and expressions, or even watch for specific items., 4. listen for sequence and order., 5. listen and watch for specific events., after listening activities, 6. refer back to pre-listening vocab and sequences., 7. notice collocations., activities for later practice and reinforcement, 8. listen again for the same things (maybe some students missed them) and new things., 9. listen for particular words and expressions in new environments., 10. listen to new expressions and compare them with similar ones., 11. play “listen and do” games., 12. use technology for listening practice at home..

  • Extra activities for after listening

13. Dictation

15. flashcard games.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

First of all, here are three basic principles.

Translation is a habit that needs to be limited because…

  • Students tend to start to panic when they find they don’t know every word.
  • Using those electronic translators especially can give warped ideas of meaning.

This doesn’t mean that you never let them translate. Sometimes having an equivalent from their first language is the only way to move them forward, but quickly move on and don’t allow them to keep returning to it.

When students hear a new word or expression, they need something to tie it to. As their teacher, you can help them with this by providing…

  • Context:  Help them to find clues to the meaning in the context of the listening “text.”
  • Pictures: Show them a picture so that when they hear the word or expression again later, the picture will come to mind.
  • Action:  Get them to perform an action so that when they hear the word or expression again later, they will remember that particular action.
  • English synonyms or antonyms:  Their understanding of English will grow by leaps and bounds if they can explain an English word with other English words. Encourage (and guide) them to look up unknown words in an English dictionary.

When you first introduce a new listening “text” (e.g., video, story, song, podcast…) concentrate on listening and don’t provide subtitles or written script (yet).

The reasons for this are as follows:

  • Firstly,  we don’t want students with poor literacy skills to be disadvantaged in learning the listening skill.
  • Secondly, students who are confidently literate often want to be able to see and read the words while they are listening, but this would rob them of the opportunity to really listen.
  • Thirdly, as mentioned above, it can be a real confidence booster when they discover just how much they do understand without any other help.

Once they have listened without seeing subtitles or script the first time, and you have discussed some issues, then you can listen and watch again with the assistance of subtitles or text.

We want to prepare our students to take part in conversations. A large part of that listening involves reading a speaker’s facial expressions and body language , which can vary from culture to culture. So, most of the time, your students need to practice their “listening” skills by watching videos, or watching you talk or tell stories.

You could use FluentU to give students a leg up in this challenge. FluentU teaches English with the same videos that native English speakers watch, like movie clips and trailers, vlogs, news segments and inspirational talks.

But it does so with the addition of learning tools that make the content approachable for learners of any level.

reading listening activities

Students will have a number of other tools at their disposal with FluentU , including transcripts, interactive subtitles with a built-in contextual dictionary and personalized quizzes.

Just as you would for a reading text, you need to prepare your students to deal with something new to concentrate on and listen to, whether they are watching a video, listening to someone read or tell a story , listening to a song or just listening to a live talk.

Here are some examples of how to teach listening skills to your ESL students using various engaging activities.

Pre-listening a ctivities

In normal conversation, what we hear tends to fit in with what we expect to hear, and without necessarily thinking about it we tend to listen for specific details.

It’s telling that when someone says something totally unexpected or out of context, many people respond in surprise with “What?!” as if they didn’t actually hear the words. While listening to people we are familiar with in a particular context, we can easily guess what they will say.

So before playing the “text,” prepare your students for the experience, and get them thinking about the topic:

  • Tell them the title of the piece, and ask them to guess what it is about, or what they think might happen in the story. Writers and filmmakers think very carefully about the title of their story and they want readers, listeners or viewers to think about the title, so all of the words are important. Sometimes the title is designed to be tricky and possibly misunderstood at first to pique interest, so you can guide your students to enjoy that, too.
  • Tell them the names of characters involved and let them predict and guess who they are and what they are like. As the students get into the movie or story, they will probably identify with one or more character, so let them enjoy guessing about them and discovering more later on.
  • Ask a question to get them thinking about the theme of the “text” or something in it. For example: If it is something to do with food, you could ask them, “What is your favorite food?” If it is something that happens on a train, you could ask them about their favorite or most frequent mode of travel and talk about transport, just to get them thinking along those lines.
  • Show them a picture:  a snapshot from the video, or a picture from the cover. Discuss it. Predict and guess. If the students are going to listen to you read or tell a story from a book, show them the cover and talk about the picture—there is usually a lot of information hidden there, and it helps bring out relevant vocabulary.

Hopefully, they might even remember relevant English words they have previously learned. All of this will help to review known vocabulary, and introduce some new vocabulary.

When you choose something for your students to study in the context of a listening lesson , you need to consider its suitability  for the age and maturity of your students and whether it is at an appropriate difficulty level. This could be based on the amount of “new” vocabulary in the “text.”

Make sure you have watched or listened right through (never use something you haven’t thoroughly examined!) and note down words or expressions that they might find challenging. Obviously, if there are a great many new words, maybe it’s too difficult—unless maybe the meaning is really obvious from the visuals.

Make a list of words from your movie or story that some or all of your students may have difficulty with, especially words that are key to the story.  You don’t have to teach the students all of the new words the first time through. Just choose a few that are essential and teach them before playing the “text.” Of course, including one or two that they already know will probably boost their confidence, too.

Remember: When you are introducing new words, translate only if absolutely necessary. Where possible, connect the words with pictures, actions and other English words.

While students are watching and/or listening, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether they are really still paying attention or just relaxing and daydreaming. (At least if it’s a video, they are more likely to stay focused.) So it’s a good idea to give them tasks to do while playing the “text.”

Here are some ideas.

Obviously, your students need to be listening specifically for the words and expressions you have just taught them. They should also have some words they already know to listen for, to help them focus and improve the skill of listening.

Give them specific questions to focus on, such as…

  • What is the word that comes after the target word?
  • Who says this word?
  • How many times do you hear this word?

You can even give them a small “Bingo!” card with the target words for them to mark off as they hear them.

They could also be looking for specific visual items. On the board or a worksheet, put the things they are looking for into chronological order as they appear: This could be in the form of English words or pictures.

Students could be asked to work out the order that things happen. They could, for example, have several pictures on a worksheet that they have to put into the right order as they notice them happen. (Before listening, they could guess the order, and then check as they go along.)

Ask the students to watch out for specific happenings.

For example:

  • Notice who wears a hat.
  • Notice who gives something to someone else.
  • How many people say, “Hello!”?
  • Who drives a green car?

Right after watching the video or listening to the story for the very first time is a very important moment. At this moment, you want to…

  • Reassure students if they are feeling lost or overwhelmed.
  • Help them to make sense of what they have just seen and heard.
  • Help them to hang on to learning they have just acquired.
  • Prepare them for the very valuable second time through.

Here are some ways to cover that ground.

  • Discuss how (and why) they were correct (or not) in their pre-listening predictions and guesses.
  • Talk about the characters, e.g., who they like and why.
  • Review the vocabulary that was discussed before listening.
  • Ask if they noticed the things they were asked to watch for.
  • Ask about the sequencing.

This could take the form of a class discussion, a prepared worksheet, discussion in pairs or even a quiz-type game.

Draw attention to the context of the newly-acquired vocabulary and ask if they noticed any familiar or unfamiliar words that might tend to collocate with them. The ability to notice this can become a valuable skill for students.

This is also a preparation for the second time they listen or watch. Now that they have noticed specific words, expressions and characters, get them to widen their observation to see what is around.

For example: Let’s say you are watching “Finding Nemo,” and your students have been listening for the word “ocean.”

Students could notice that…

  • Everyone says “the” ocean, not just “a” ocean.
  • Three times, someone mentions “the entire ocean.”
  • Right at the beginning, Marlin had promised Coral an “ocean view.” (What does this normally refer to?)
  • What always leads to the ocean? All drains.

Of course, if you are going to try to talk about specifics like this you could also…

  • Use FluentU videos , where there is lots of help from interactive subtitles.
  • Watch and be very familiar with your videos.
  • Find a script database and download the script. (Making it easy to do a search on particular words.)

Depending on your class setup, how long your lesson is, how old your students are and how long the video or story is, you could listen again immediately to reinforce all of your recent learning.

If that is not possible, then make sure you do take time later to listen again—more than once!

Here are some things to try:

Listen (and watch) again, with the same instructions as the first time, to make sure that every student enjoys success.

Here are some additional ideas:

  • Students could be in pairs to point out to each other the things to pay attention to.
  • Add some extra things to listen for and notice, especially those collocations mentioned above.
  • Add some other new during-listening activities this time.

Learning increases when students can start using new vocabulary in new situations. If possible, let them listen to something else that uses some of the new expressions. Maybe you could use a different medium. For instance, tell them a story (made up, if you like) that uses some of the new vocabulary. You could tell a story about a place that has great “ocean views,” referring to the Nemo example above.

Now take the newly acquired words and expressions and change them a bit, making substitutions for parts of them. Let students listen and notice the differences. Again, you could tell a story and change some parts. For a simple example: Instead of Goldilocks and the three bears , there could be three frogs, or Goldilocks could be a boy, etc.

There could be other changes in the language, such as gender of pronouns, or tense.

The addition of movement to a learning activity can improve and cement the learning. So practicing newly-acquired words and expressions using action is both fun and beneficial. If students have learned some verbs , these can be mixed with already familiar verbs in an activity that involves responding to the words with actions. For example, a “Simon Says” type game.

If students only think about English during class time, then it will take them a very long time to learn it well because they need to learn to think in English. Nowadays, it is not difficult to provide them with a video, or story podcast, to listen to again at home.

They could be so enthusiastic about it that it doesn’t even feel like “homework”! They can be given set exercises or questions to help them focus, or they can simply relax and enjoy it, soaking up the language.

E xtra activities for after listening

There are other ways that students can be reminded of words and expressions taught during a listening session.

The teacher can dictate quotes from the video or story that they have already watched and enjoyed, and the students can try to write them down. This helps to tie in their literacy skills with their listening, as well as reinforcing what they have learned through watching.

This could also be a “running dictation” where students are in pairs—one to run and dictate, the other to listen and write—and the written text to dictate is posted somewhere at a distance such as outside the classroom. The running student goes and reads and remembers as much of the text as he can, then runs back and dictates it to his partner to write down. Here’s an example of this in action.

Words or expressions focused on in the video or story can be incorporated into a “Bingo!” game. Go to a website such as ESLactivities.com  to create enough cards for the whole class, each containing the same words but in random order. Give students objects such as small stones or sunflower seeds to use as markers.

Students place markers on their cards as you call out the words, and when someone gets five in a row in any direction they call “Bingo!” The winner becomes the next caller, the markers are removed and the game starts again.

Words and expressions to be focused on can be written on flashcards and used for many different games. For example, students could have their own small set of cards and hold up the appropriate one when it is heard while listening to the “text.” Or pairs of words could be placed on the boards with students in pairs racing to claim the right one when it is heard.

It is very important for students to listen to the story or watch the video again, as soon as possible after the first time.

But it’s also important to keep doing this later at greater intervals.

With every repeat, old information will be reinforced and new things will be learned, too!

Enter your e-mail address to get your free PDF!

We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe

reading listening activities

Free Online Reading and Listening Resources for ESL Learners

For English language learners who want to continue their studies at home during this time, there are a wide variety of online resources available. In fact, it can be challenging to know where to begin! Here are six free online resources that you can recommend to learners that will help them develop their reading and listening skills while they are unable to attend language classes.

Reading Skills for Today's Adults

http://resources.marshalladulteducation.org/reading_skills_home.htm

This project was designed to create leveled reading selections that are appropriate for and valued by adult learners.  These materials, combined with the research-proven strategies of repeated reading and guided oral reading, aid in building learners' fluency and comprehension skills.  The focus of these reading selections will be on topics such us:  Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government. 

https://www.usalearns.org/

USA Learns is a free website funded by the U.S. Department of Education to support immigrants who want to learn or improve their English skills as they become part of American society. Designed as an online tool for learning English outside of a classroom, the site offers contextualized practice activities in listening, reading, writing, speaking and life skills necessary for success at work and in the community.

Learn English Free: English Club

https://www.englishclub.com/learn-english.htm

EnglishClub is a free website designed to help beginning to advanced English Langauge Learners develop their English skills. Learners can find activities and materials to learn about and practice listening, reading, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. The site includes audio tracks, videos with subtitles, interactive quizzes, and forums where learners can chat with other English learners from around the world. Teachers can also find materials and lesson plans.

5 Minute English

http://www.5minuteenglish.com/

Learners will find short lessons and explanations on a variety of topics, including reading, grammar, listening, pronunciation, vocabulary, and idioms. After each lesson, there is a short comprehension quiz for learners to test their understanding.

A Digital Workbook for Beginning ESOL

https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/esol23/

This free online book contains three levels of interactive grammar lessons and reading activities for beginning students of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). The grammar section includes a select set of YouTube videos, and the three original readers include short picture or chapter stories. Each lesson is accompanied by self-correcting exercises.

Bow Valley Readers

https://globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/learners/readers.php

ESL students can access seven levels of stories written for adult learners. Each story focuses on a different learner, and has an accompanying listening track so learners can listen as well as read the story.

Adult learners working on computers in a computer lab

Get the Latest 

Get the latest teaching tips and resources.

tutor and student

  • Impact and Mission
  • Staff and Board
  • Annual Reports and Financials
  • Jobs and Internships
  • Classes for Adults
  • Programs for Children & Families
  • Digital Literacy
  • Trainings & Workshops
  • Volunteer Recruitment
  • Northstar Digital Literacy
  • AmeriCorps Programs
  • Literacy Strategies (Consulting)
  • Open Door Collective
  • NEW! English Unlocked
  • Educator Resources Library
  • Distance Learning Platforms
  • MN Distance Learning Support
  • Ways to Volunteer
  • Work with Adults
  • Volunteer Interest Signup
  • Volunteer Training Calendar
  • New Volunteer Information Sessions
  • AmeriCorps VISTA
  • Open Door Learning Centers

reading listening activities

  • About OnTESOL
  • Who is OnTESOL for?
  • How it Works
  • Testimonials

TESOL/TEFL Certification Courses

  • 120-hour Advanced TESOL Certificate
  • 168-hour Hybrid TEFL Certificate
  • 250-hour TESOL Diploma
  • 10-hour Live Lesson Planning Workshop
  • In-Class Teaching Practice

20-hour Specialist Courses

  • TEYL Certificate
  • Teaching Business English Certificate
  • Teaching English Online Certificate
  • Teaching IELTS Certificate
  • Explore Online Courses Contact an Advisor Request Brochure Request Callback (US/Canada Only)
  • TESL Canada
  • TESL Ontario
  • Teach English Abroad
  • Teach English Online
  • Job Assistance Program
  • TEFL Job Board
  • Teaching English Abroad
  • Teaching English Online
  • How to Teach English: Resources for the ESL Classroom
  • Online Registration
  • Course Login
  • TESOL Training for Institutions
  • Certificate Verification

5 ESL Games for Teaching Reading and Listening Skills

  • Activities & Games
  • November 11, 2021

Students get a bit stressed with reading and listening activities. I don’t blame them. It’s hard.

I imagine it’s incredibly frustrating to be forced to read something or listen when you don’t understand a majority of the words.

Luckily, there are a few tricks to make these aspects of English classless painful for everyone involved.

These 5 ESL games are perfect for teaching listening and reading skills in a fun and effective way.

-OnTESOL: Accredited TESOL Certificate Courses –

1- What’s the Question?

This is a super simple ESL game that focuses on listening, reading comprehension, speaking skills.

In many ESL settings, teachers focus very heavily on training their students to answer questions. While this is useful, questions and answers form a symbiotic relationship.

This game forces students to think backward and work out the grammar for themselves, using hints from the answer, of course.

It can be tailored to all levels.

Read: Teaching Grammar with Concept Questions

“What’s the Question?” can be played game-show style, either in teams or with every student representing themselves-although teams often encourage more participation from students since they are constantly engaged (as opposed to waiting ages for their turn).

Provide students with a few examples of how the ESL game will go before you start. Give answers focusing on a story that you’ve all read together, a sign, or an audio recording, and then state the appropriate question that goes with this answer.

The teacher can act as the host, while a representative of each team can come to the front, standing side-by-side and waiting to “buzz in” to answer.

The faster player to respond earns a point for his/her team. Each student should get multiple turns.

3- What’s the Lyric?

Who doesn’t love listening to music? TV and music are one of the universal elements that are often recognizable cross-culturally.

However, I don’t pretend to know or even be able to detect every word to my favorite songs, so how could I expect students learning a new language to do so? I’ve only used “What’s the Lyric?” with very young learners- I’m talking pre- K, Kindergarten, and first grade. At those ages, the students still get excited by singing simple songs and nursery rhymes.

In my pre-K and Kindy classes, we’d always have a ‘song of the week’. We’d practice listening and singing along for the first few days, then at the end, I’d put their listening skills to the test.

As the song plays along, stop it randomly and have the students sing the line that comes next. I promise: they’ll love it!

Read: Using Songs with Adult Learners

Some textbooks come with a multimedia program that includes a song that goes along with that week’s grammar and vocabulary themes, which will make your job a whole lot easier.

If you don’t have that resource, hit up Youtube and search for slow versions of simple songs, like the one below. I used this exact link to teach my three-year-old students in Turkey to identify weather.

After the first week, they no longer needed the video and could identify the weather outside by singing this song to me each morning. It was great!

4- Make a Board Game

I recently found a cool idea aimed at making reading comprehension discussions more fun and interactive.

While adults will typically be mature enough to engage in a simple question and answer session, kids get bored easily- and who could blame them? To combat this, create a board game for a post-reading game.

You can make this on the floor for young students to hop along on or write one on your whiteboard. Plus, you’ll need dice. Have different squares along the path represent different questions, themes, and discussion points relative to the reading.

For example, one square could simply say a new vocabulary word/definition that was introduced in the reading, and the students could be asked to explain how it was used, etc.

Another square could ask a direct comprehension question (i.e. “Who stole the cookies from the jar in the story?” Or “Where do panthers live? , while another could present the student with the question, “Who was your favorite character and why?”.

If your students are capable, have the last square ask the students to propose a different ending to the story!

Read: Top-Down Processes For Teaching Reading Skills

If you don’t use textbooks and aren’t given reading materials from your boss, take the opportunity to get thrifty with old magazines and newspapers.

On the board, write a list of things that you’d like your students to find by sifting through the written word and reading the right articles.

For example, you could distribute the travel section of the newspaper and have the students identify one budget location, one piece of information about an airline, one outdoor adventure scheme, and so on.

You could also write completely random things that require the students to go through the entire paper, such as: find the results of a sporting event, summarize an advertisement, find something about a political figure or other celebrity, detail an event that just happened abroad, tell me about the weather forecast for x, etc.

This is a great way to put a reading study into practical use. 

Read: Supplementing the Textbook with Authentic Material

Pre-Reading Discussions

The pre-read is almost as important as the actual reading process itself. For younger learners, ask them to look through the pictures in order to predict elements of the story.

What characters might be present? What do they think might happen? Is it a happy story? Having a discussion like this is a great way to prepare them for the story and get them in the right mindset for reading.

With older students, you can ask similar questions if pictures are present with a story or article. Otherwise, I usually have them do a pre-read skim to identify any words that they might deem challenging.

Clear these up as best as you can, or encourage them to figure it out together using context clues once they begin reading the article properly.

Related Articles

ESL Games for Teaching Speaking and Writing

ESL Games for Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary

Related Posts

Creative Back-Up ESL Games

Are You Using ESL Games with a Communicative Purpose?

  • February 9, 2023

Young learners love ESL games because they are engaging and motivating.  Having fun, however, doesn’t mean the activity is effective… 

How to teach English to beginners with Images

Teaching Integrated Skills with Information Gap Activities

  • September 22, 2022

‘Spot the Difference’ and ‘Picture Description’ are some of the most popular information gap activities that work well for all… 

Teaching with EPIK Middle School TESOL Jobs in South Korea

5 Fun Task-Based Learning Activities for Teaching English to Intermediate and Advanced Students

  • May 31, 2023

Task-Based Learning (TBL) is one of the most popular TESOL methods because it supports English language acquisition through relevant, applicable… 

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

JIMMYESL

12 Great ESL Listening Activities & Games

Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills?

Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting.

By the end of this article, you will have 12 interesting English listening activities that you can use with ESL students of various ages and skill levels.

Join our mailing list to receive a free ESL teaching resource every week.

Click to Join

We even selected some great resources for your next listening lesson!

ESL listening exercises free worksheets

Why are Listening Skills so Important?

12 low or no prep esl listening activities, listening exercises for beginners, listening activities for advanced students, listening games for children, listening activities for adults, free worksheets with listening exercises.

Listening makes up one of the four core areas of language: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

If our students’ listening isn’t good enough then they are missing out on a quarter of their language ability!

Listening is needed in order to do things such as watching movies, listening to music and having conversations .

The problem is that this skill can easily become underdeveloped. Visual tasks such as reading and writing may seem more comfortable and so students may prefer to give these more time.

While this may be easier in the short run it means that those skills become a lot stronger but their listening gets left in the dirt.

We need to make a conscious effort to give listening skills the attention they deserve!

This article has a list of plenty of listening exercises that you can begin using today and let your student’s listening skills play catch up!

Browse our full archive of ESL teacher resources and worksheets.

Here is the list of activities, exercises, and games that you can start using with your students to improve their listening skills.

Everything has been arranged into different groups to make finding the right activity for the right student even easier. Let’s begin!

Gap Fill (Cloze Testing)

Start by writing out a sentence but omit some of the words. Each student needs a copy of this sentence.

Next, you simply read the sentence (including the missing word) and the students fill in the missing word.

Difficulty can be increased by omitting more words, speaking quicker or changing which words you leave out.

For example, if you have a sentence such as “I like to … cake” it is fairly easy to guess a word like “eat”, there are only so many words that would make sense here.

However, if we instead have a sentence like “I like to eat …” then all of a sudden there are so many more words that could fit there which makes it harder.

Always review the students’ results and use them as feedback for creating the next set of exercises.

Resource tip: Here is a selection of sample gap-fill texts .

Odd Word Out

With this activity, you need to first take a piece of a chosen text. 

You then need to create another version of this text for the students and in this version, you will need to change some of the words.

You then read out loud the text from your copy and the students have to circle which words are different.

This is a great activity as it trains the students to really focus on the sounds and how they match the words.

You can increase the difficulty by either using more difficult text, using a longer piece of text or by increasing the number of incorrect words.

Bonus points if the students can tell you what the correct word should be that you said!

Resource tip: Here you can find some easy stories to use for this exercise.

Choose the Right Picture

This activity is great for building listening skills with simple vocabulary . It’s very easy to set up too!

You first need a selection of pictures, one for each piece of target vocabulary. Each picture needs a corresponding letter. For example, if we have 26 pictures then we can use ‘A’ for the first picture and ‘B’ for the next picture etc.

If this is done with more than one student then put all of these pictures on one or two sheets of paper and make copies for everyone.

You then simply need to say one of the words from your selection and your students need to write the letter for that picture down.

For complete beginners, it’s better to say the target words in isolation but you can increase the difficulty by giving them phrases or sentences with the target word “hidden in them”. After a while, you could even include more than one target word to really ramp up the challenge.

Download vocabulary flashcards on classroom objects , body parts and shape names here.

For this exercise, you will first need to have a piece of text with plenty of information. News articles are great for this.

You then either need a recording of the text being spoken or a script so that you can read it yourself.

Students will have to listen to what is being said, understand it and then write down a summary of the most important parts.

This can be quite a difficult task as there are a number of different skills students need to employ but it is extremely useful for comprehension.

In fact, this activity makes up part of the PTE exam so is especially great if you prepare any students for that.

Resource tip: My favourite site for news stories is BBC news .

First, you will need a movie clip with just two characters speaking (around 1-2 minutes).

Next pair two of your students and assign one of the characters to each student.

Your students will get a chance to watch the clip now and they will have to make notes on the dialogue.

Once they have made their notes they will then have to perform the scene themselves.

Now obviously it is unlikely they are going to get it word for word. Instead, you need to focus on them conveying the important parts of the scene. Make sure to tell them this in advance so that they don’t feel too stressed about trying to memorise every single word.

If you want to increase the difficulty then try this without any visual, just allow the students to listen to the scene. This makes it much harder as there is no visual context for what’s happening.

Also, you can choose a film that is less likely to be known by the students to make things even trickier.

Resource tip: You can either curate your movie collection to find some good scenes or even easier just search for them on youtube !

Take a Message

This is an activity which is extremely practical as it’s something that will need to be done in a workplace for example.

Your student will play the part of a secretary. The boss isn’t in right now and so they will need to take a message for later.

For the telephone message, you can ring the student from another room. If this isn’t possible then ring from at least the other side of the room and facing away from each other so that they don’t get any visual clues.

This is similar to the “Summarise” activity but this time the quality of the call will be degraded as it’s coming from a telephone. This is also a conversation so the student will also have a chance to ask you to repeat details or confirm certain things.

This activity is a great chance to teach your students some stock phrases such as “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” as well as teaching them how to spell things using the NATO phonetic alphabet (alfa, bravo, charlie).

Memory Race / Running Dictation

Start by printing out some short pieces of text. You need to stick these around the classroom.

Next, split your students into pairs. Student A is the “fetcher” and student B is the “writer”.

Student B has to stay at their desk with their pen and paper. They are in charge of writing down the information they hear from student A.

Student A has to walk (or run if it’ safe!) to where the paper is. They then have to read and remember as much of it as possible before telling student B the information to write down.

They will need repeated trips to get it all, so it is motivating for them to remember as much as possible.

The first team to get their paper written down (with relatively few mistakes) is the winner!

This game is great for waking your students up and getting them moving about.

Remember to switch over so that everyone gets a turn.

Resource tip: Try using some short stories for this exercise.

Here’s a more detailed instruction on running dictations.

If you haven’t played Simon says before then let me break down the rules to this classic children’s game.

First, the teacher will say “Simon says” followed by a verb phrase, e.g. “Simon says jump”. The students then have to do the actions. 

You can make this competitive by having a student lose a point if they do it wrong, or if they’re the last.

However, if you’d prefer to keep a more relaxed environment (possibly better with younger students) then even just having them copy you will be fun enough as it gets them moving around.

Resource tip: The wikipedia page has a list of the names of this game in other languages so that your students can recognize it immediately!

Treasure Hunt

Another active game to wake up your younger students.

The idea for this game is for the teacher to say a word, e.g. “clock”, the students then have to get to that item as quickly as possible.

In order to make this a little more difficult, you could just say a letter and the students have to run to something that has the same first letter. E.g. if you say “b” then the students could run to the board or to a ball. 

Resource tip: If there aren’t enough things in the classroom then you can print out some vocabulary cards and hide them around the room.

Call & Response

This one is good for training listening memory and can be a lot of fun for kids to be loud!

Simply take a word or short phrase, say it out loud and get them to shout it back to you as loud as they can!

This is very high energy so is great if you catch them falling asleep.

This works even better if you use a song or a chant to bring the energy levels up and make it even more fun!

Again, the length of the phrase can influence the difficulty. You could warm up with single words before making longer phrases later on.

“hello” … “hello”

“I’m happy” … “I’m happy”

“I’m happy to meet you” … “I’m happy to meet you”

Resource tip: Here’s a long list of great call and response ideas .

“Drinking” Game

This is based on the classic drinking game where every time someone says a designated word you have to drink.

Now we can’t exactly do the same here (unless you have a very particular kind of student!) so we will have to replace the drinking alcohol with some other kind of activity.

You could take a sip of water or coffee instead or you could act out some kind of activity, e.g. every time somebody says the word “fall” you have to clap your hands.

Once you have the rules set out you then need the audio. For this, you can either find your own audio material on youtube etc or you can simply read it yourself.

Bear in mind that if you do read it yourself then your attention will be split between reading and focussing on the student’s ability.

Resource tip: Here is a list of useful podcasts you can use for this exercise.

Transcription

This one is a little less fun but ideal for more serious students.

Simply take a piece of text, and read parts at a time with the student writing or typing what you are saying.

For this, I start slow by saying one word at a time with a gap in between each. After a while move up to doing two words with a gap in between and keep increasing the number of words.

The idea is to eventually get to a point where the student can transcribe entire sentences.

Once you have finished with a sentence then go through and mark it.

This is a good time to talk about logic in sentences.

For example, if they wrote down “Yesterday, I went to the peck and had a picnic.” then we could talk about why “peck” is not such a good choice here. We are expecting a noun and specifically a place.

Once we have gone through the type of word that should go there then they are more likely to end up with the right word “park”.

Resource tip: The Guardian is constantly updated with relevant news articles.

Meeting Minutes

In this exercise, you are roleplaying a meeting. 

The teacher’s role is to speak on a particular topic for 5 minutes or so and the students have to listen and create minutes of the “meeting”.

The purpose of this exercise is for students to scan for the most important information and make a note of it.

The minutes they create can be basic bullet points as long as they have correct and relevant information. You can also give them a few minutes to tidy up their notes at the end.

This exercise is great because it is very relevant to utilizing listening skills in a real-world environment so the students will benefit greatly from this.

To mix things up you could also get one of the other students to speak in the meeting and have everyone else create minutes from them.

Resource tip: This page has plenty of roleplays and activities for meetings .

As I’ve said before, this is an area that can be easily neglected especially if your students aren’t doing much in the way of self-study.

Make sure to revisit their listening skills often to keep everything even.

Find great ESL speaking activities for your students here.

Also, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with as many of these as possible so that you are able to mix things up and keep your classes interesting and fun for your students.

Head over to our list of ESL listening worksheets.

3 thoughts on “12 Great ESL Listening Activities & Games”

Avatar

Terrific information found right here! Thank you for sharing.

Avatar

Very good article, easy to understand

Avatar

Very good article, easy to understand :)

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

reading listening activities

  • Teaching Tips

17 Engaging ESL Listening Activities for Your Next Class

Ben Bartee

  • November 19, 2020
  • No Comments

OUR TOP PARTNER COURSES

reading listening activities

120hr + Full Tutor Support

10% off with ESL102021

teachaway logo

120hr Online TEFL Course

Best Online Option!

reading listening activities

120hr Digital TEFL Course

15% Discount!

reading listening activities

120hr Online TEFL Class

Most Reputable!

This post may contain affiliate links (at no extra cost to you). Please read  our disclosure  for more information.

If you ask any ESL teacher who has worked in the field, they will probably tell you that a huge portion of their classroom time is spent on developing the listening skills of their students.

Because of the unique phonics of the English language (especially compared to Asian and African languages), listening is often a particularly difficult skill for non-native English learners to acquire – one that requires extra attention from the instructor.

As an ESL teacher, you will often find that a student may have a remarkable writing and reading ability but poor listening and speaking skills due to the relative difficulty of the latter.

As such, your employer will likely expect you to include a large variety and volume of ESL listening activities regularly in your lesson plans. Let this article be your guide for mastering lesson plans that have an emphasis on listening!  

How to Use ESL Listening Activities

Any comprehensive ESL lesson, regardless of the age or level of students, should include at least some listening.

ESL listening activities are useful for:

  • Instilling fluency and confidence in conversation skills.
  • Building social bonds between the teacher and students and between learners and their peers.
  • Preparing for standardized English exams, many of which contain sections that specifically test listening skills.
  • Breaking the monotony of long lessons with interactive listening activities.

When to Use ESL Listening Activities

Listening activities can have a place at any point in the lesson – as a warm-up to generate excitement for the upcoming lesson, in the middle of a lesson, or at the conclusion of a lesson to wrap things up.

Most ESL textbooks and course materials include plenty of focus on listening and speaking, so you’ll have lots of opportunities to include listening work in your lesson plans.

Setup for ESL Listening Activities

Some activities require more setup than others. In classic, simple examples such as “Simon Says,” no setup or extra materials are required.

For others, a microphone, sound system, multimedia player, or other technological implements are needed.

You will need ESL flashcards and a “sticky ball” for one of the listening activities with younger learners discussed here.

Also, to play the Bingo activity here, you will need access to the internet and a printer .

ESL Listening Activities For Young Learners

As a time-tested staple of ESL classrooms around the world, young learners go crazy for Simon Says. Even better for teachers in a pinch for time, Simon Says requires virtually no preparation and the rules are extremely easy to understand, even for the youngest learners.

To play, first explain to your students (with the help of a translator, if need be) the rules:  the students must follow your commands to perform basic physical actions like “touch your nose” or “stand on one foot” – provided that you preface your command with “Simon says.”

Students who either fail to perform a command preceded by “Simon says” or who perform a command not preceded by “Simon says” are out. The last student standing wins.

In addition to promoting active listening skills, Simon Says is a blast for young students as they struggle to keep up in their minds with the appropriate action.

Ramp up the intensity as needed by speeding up the activity or devising more difficult tasks for the students.

Telephone is another classic listening activity that carries the added benefit of requiring no prior preparation.

To play, select a vocabulary term or phrase either from the lesson at hand or from a previous lesson. Whisper the term into the ear of the first student. He or she, in turn, whispers the term into the ear of a nearby student and so on until the term has been passed through the whole class.

It’s downright amazing – and often entertaining for the students — how thoroughly even single-syllable words can be butchered in the course of the telephone game.

Increase the enthusiasm by breaking the class up into teams to compete in a telephone relay race.

Bonus : After playing the telephone game, — if you believe such a lesson is necessary/appropriate — take the time for a quick social mini-lesson. Explain in simple terms the dangers of spreading unsubstantiated gossip as fact, which is perfectly illustrated in an easy-to-understand example here.

Sticky Ball With Flashcards

Combining visual cues with listening is a great way to keep young students’ attention and to accommodate your students who learn better visually than aurally. Some studies indicate that visual aids increase the effectiveness of a lesson by up to 400% for students who have a visual learning style!

There are several options to work with flashcards in listening activities, but the most effective may be the “sticky ball” game.

For setup, you need a set of flashcards with relevant vocabulary and a “sticky ball” that is capable of sticking to surfaces (many language schools and primary schools have these materials already).

Place the flashcards against the whiteboard at the front of the class. Divide the students into teams. A pair of students at a time (one from each team) steps up to the “throwing line” a couple of meters from the whiteboard.

When you say a vocabulary term, the listening students throw their balls at the correct image. If they hit the appropriate flashcard, they are awarded a point for their team.

Bingo is an eternal winner with young learners. This activity is a great way to practice listening for vocabulary and phrases while keeping up the focus and enthusiasm of your students.

Preparation is minimal but does require that you visit the link above and print out an appropriate number of bingo cards to distribute to the class.

ESL Listening Activities For Adults

Your adult students are never too old for classic role-play. To prompt the activity, select a scenario that your students will act out in front of the class as a pair, a trio, or a quartet.

You can seamlessly work a role-playing activity into your lesson plan by choosing a scenario related to the current lesson – for example, if the lesson is about the workplace, you might consider an interaction between a boss and an employee.

For added engagement from students, depending on their personalities, you can create ludicrous scenarios that are sure to entertain and educate at the same time.

Podcast Listening

Podcasting is a hip new medium for English-language programming that spans nearly every conceivable topic – if there is a subject of interest to your students, chances are a podcast in English is already up and available for free on the web.

The major advantage to this type of activity is that you can tailor it to suit your students’ interests – for example, if they are a group of software engineers or students of the hard sciences, you might want to find a podcast about artificial intelligence .

The only drawback to this activity is that some of your students are liable to “space out” at points due to the lengthy format. In addition to choosing your topic wisely to avoid this issue, further incentivize active listening by devising a worksheet that asks either general questions about the significance of the material covered or specific questions about what was said when. This will keep your students on their toes.

Following Directions

Learning how to take and follow directions is a critical skill that your students may need if/when they make it to a foreign English-speaking land.

Hone this skill by incorporating a direction-following activity into your lesson plan.

As the teacher, you have a plethora of options for how to conduct this listening activity. You can create a worksheet for handout with landmarks and various roads and offer directions to reach a certain destination.

Alternatively, you can create a more interactive (and elaborate) environment in the classroom by creating a physical roadmap – perhaps by arranging the desks to form “roads” with specific items in the classroom as “landmarks.”

ESL Listening Activities for Beginners

Personal descriptions.

Humans are social creatures; we are wired to look for distinguishing features in our peers whom we interact with. Beginners and younger students will enjoy the opportunity offered in this activity to describe their fellow classmates.

To play this game, call a student volunteer to the front of the class. Ask them to privately communicate the name of a classmate of their choice to be the subject of the activity.

Then, ask the student questions about their subject. What are they wearing? Do they have glasses? What color is their hair?

The rest of the class must then guess who the student is.

You can modify this activity by allowing your students to freely describe their subject without being prompted by your questions as the teacher – however, in this iteration of the activity, you risk losing control and potentially causing embarrassment for one or more participants.

Pick the Word

Understanding – much less participating in — a full-fledged English conversation might be a tall task for beginners, but you can prime their listening skills by having them listen for specific sounds and simple words.

To conduct this activity, read a passage of basic text. Ask them to mark down the number of times they hear a particular word or phrase. Start off with easy targets like “you” or “and,” moving on to more complex/less common words to increase the difficulty as appropriate.

The Counting Game

Numbers are essential for beginners to master. The counting game is a fun way to help your students along in both their understanding of English numbers and their listening skills.

To play, Gather your students in a circle if the physical layout of the classroom allows. Start off with the easiest iteration, requiring your students to say a “buzzword” at every multiple of third. For example, if the word is apple, the students should count off one-by-one: 1, 2, apple, 4, 5, apple, etc. If a student does not say the buzzword at the right time or says it at the wrong time, they are out.

Ratchet up the difficulty as necessary by switching to multiples of 4, 5, 6, etc. This game requires strong focus and attentive listening, especially at more advanced levels.

Unmusical Chairs

In this version of musical chairs with a twist, students listen to a simple conversation while looking for a specific piece of information.

For example, begin by asking them “Where is Sheena going?” In the course of the conversation, Sheena will reveal where she is headed. This is the cue for the students who hear the answer to sit down.

If the seated students can correctly answer the question based on the information provided, they are allowed to continue and the party goes on until a winner is found.

ESL Listening Activities for Intermediate Students

Songs with lyrics worksheet.

Western pop music is popular throughout the world (think Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, One Direction, etc.) You can use this interest to your advantage in the classroom by incorporating some of the best-known English-language pop songs into listening activities.

The web is full of pre-made lyrics worksheets like the one linked above from Maroon 5. Or, if you have the time, you can make your own.

You can encourage active participation by allowing your students to select the songs for upcoming lessons.

Guess the Accent

The ability to differentiate between different English accents is a sign of an advanced understanding of the nuances of the language. Early on in their English education, many students are unable to distinguish between American, British, or Australian accents. It’s even harder for them to tell apart accents that are closely linked, such as Australian vs. New Zealand or American vs. Canadian.

The accent guessing game is engaging, fun, and useful for building a greater appreciation for the many varieties of English spoken throughout the world.

Make it a competition by dividing students up into teams and assigning time limits for each guess, with points awarded for correct answers.

Distinguishing Between Commonly Confused Words

As students move from the beginner to the intermediate level, this is a good stage to develop their “ear” for English by instilling in their minds the distinctions between commonly confused words – for example, affect vs. effect, desert vs. dessert, etc.

For maximum benefit to your students, teach them how to look for meaning in context by listening to sentences or paragraphs with incorrect uses of these words. Ask students to catch your errors and correct them.

ESL Listening Activities for Advanced Students

Mock interview.

For advanced students who are serious about taking their English education to the next level in higher education or hope to land a job related to English-speaking, chances are that they are interested in how to prepare for an interview with a potential school or employer.

Let your students prepare briefly by explaining what kinds of information they will be expected to share in an interview – but not giving them the verbatim questions beforehand.

You can interview students individually or allow students to interview each other. Facilitate the involvement of the whole class by asking the observing students questions about what the candidate said in his or her answers.

There are many variations of this activity, but to recreate the pressure felt in a real-life interview, it’s best to have the students perform theirs in front of the entire class.

In addition to gaining nimble listening skills, this activity will instill confidence leading up to the day that your students have an actual interview.

Although dictations should be used sparingly because they can be less-than-stimulating even for devoted learners, they are a powerful tool for increasing the speed and accuracy of listening skills.

This practice is particularly beneficial for learning to differentiate between commonly used homophones, such as “write” and right” and “read” and “red.”

Listen for the Mistake

Because of the complexity of English grammar, even non-native-English-speaking students who are advanced in their development often have difficulty catching more nuanced mistakes that are commonly (and understandably) made in everyday speech.

To correct these issues, prepare a spoken essay (about a page long or so) that is riddled with subtle mistakes such as subject-verb agreement flaws or tense mistakes. Ask your students to correct you as you move along, highlighting any that they missed and explaining them at the end of the essay.

Through this activity, you can help your students understand what small but important errors they might routinely make in everyday speech that often go uncorrected. 

Where to Start as an ESL Teacher

In terms of devising effective listening activities and skillfully incorporating them into a broader lesson plan, knowing where to start as an ESL teacher — especially a new one — can be hard.

Fortunately, the web is full of great resources to help you maximize your classroom time to deliver high-quality listening instruction to your students.Check our list of free lesson plans . The instruction strategies and tools found here are time-tested to deliver practical and worthwhile ESL listening instruction to your students.

Ben Bartee

WE* MADE A TEFL!

*Made with love by the same people who run ESL Authority!

reading listening activities

  • 120hr Online Course with 11 Modules & 85 Lessons
  • Full Tutor Support - All Questions Answered in 48hrs
  • Fully Accredited and Valid Anywhere
  • Perfect for online and classroom teachers

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

THE ONLY TEFL YOU NEED

  • 120hr with 11 Modules & 85 Lessons
  • Full Tutor Support
  • Immediate Digital Certification

reading listening activities

FOR TEACHERS

  • HIRING GUIDES
  • TEFL COURSES

FOR COMPANIES

  • SUBMIT A COURSE
  • GET IN TOUCH
  • PRIVACY POLICY

EnglishPost.org

  • 12 Examples of While-Listening Activities

While-Listening activities are activities that are completed by the students when they are listening to a passage.

While-listening activities are also called during-listening activities.

Well-designed during-listening activities can help students to:

  • Identify what’s essential in a passage.
  • Perceive the text structure.
  • Keep themselves concentrated throughout the passage.
  • Show their understanding or non-understanding of the passage.

These activities are followed by post-Listening activities and altogether make up the three stages of a listening lesson

Table of Contents

What While-Listening Activities are there?

1. listen and describe, 2. true or false, 3. hidden picture, 4. dictation of short passages, 5. dictogloss , 6: picture dictation, 7. false facts dictation, 8. running dictation, 9. listen and do activities, 10. twelve questions, 11: gap fill, 12: multiple choice, more teaching english articles.

Most While-listening activities focus on these subskills:

Take into consideration these guidelines when using While-listening Tasks

  • Allow students to listen to the passage two or three times
  • Encourage students to focus on global meaning first and let the questions about details after the first listen.

There are many While-Listening activities that you can do, some of the best ones are the following:

“Listen and Describe” involves the teacher sharing a story with the students. However, instead of simply narrating the entire story in one go, the teacher pauses at strategic points in the narrative and prompts the students to write or verbally provide descriptions of the characters, settings, or events in the story.

This step-by-step process to implement this activity:

  • Select a Story: The teacher chooses a compelling and age-appropriate story, which could be a short story, a chapter from a novel, or a teacher-generated narrative.
  • Read Aloud: The teacher begins reading the story aloud to the class. It’s important to use expressive and engaging storytelling techniques to captivate the students’ attention.
  • Pause and Prompt: At predetermined intervals or significant junctures in the story, the teacher pauses and asks students to provide descriptions. These pauses can be based on key plot developments, character introductions, or changes in the story’s setting.
  • Writing or Discussion: Students are given a few minutes to either write down their descriptions individually or discuss their ideas in pairs or small groups.
  • Share and Discuss: After the pause, the teacher invites students to share their descriptions. This can be done through volunteer sharing or by randomly selecting students to contribute. It encourages active participation and diverse perspectives.
  • Resume the Story: Once the students have shared their descriptions and engaged in discussions, the teacher continues reading the story, and the cycle repeats at subsequent pause points.

The teacher tells a story and the students have to determine if the sentences that he has are true or false statements

The teacher gives a picture to the students about any particular subject and one of the students describes a picture and another student has to note down some of the things that their classmate says.

This is an activity that has been discontinued but it helps students to practice skills, they have to listen to the sentences, they have to write them down, and they have to read and say their sentences to their teacher to make sure they got their sentences right.

Dictogloss is a language teaching technique in which students form small groups and summarize a target-language text.

First, the teacher prepares a text that contains examples of the grammatical form to be studied.

The teacher reads the text to the students at normal speed while they take notes. Students then work in small groups group to prepare a summary of their work using the correct grammatical structures, and finally, each group presents their work to the rest of the class.

The teacher describes pictures without showing them to the students and the students have to draw them

The teacher reads some statements which are false facts and students have to correct them silently and then they have to discuss them with a partner.

R unning dictation involves a text stuck out of the view of the students. In pairs, the students decide who will be the runner and who the scribe.

The runner goes to the wall, memorizes a chunk of text, runs back to the scribe, and dictates it. After a minute or two, the scribe and the runner change roles.

The activity is extremely lively, with students running to and fro.

Simon Says is a classic game that works really well as a fun ESL classroom activity.

Tell the students to listen to the instructions you will give them, they can follow your actions too but at some stage, you will try and trick them so they have to be very careful not to get caught out.

Other variations of the game are stand up if and change chairs if

Prepare a diagram or something similar with 12 questions that students need to answer while they listen to an extended passage.

Give students a transcript and ask students to fill in the blanks as they listen to the passage.

By filling in the blanks while listening to the passage, students will actively engage with the (1) spoken content, (2) focus on important details, and (3) sharpen their contextual understanding.

Ask students to read questions before they listen to the passage and then they have to select the correct answer out of 3 or 4 options.

Remember that this is the second part of a listening lesson, we need to learn more about Post-Listening activities so we can be able to say that our work has been finished.

These are some posts that will help you teach reading:

  • Presentation, Practice, and Production
  • The Stages of a Reading Lesson
  • Pre-Reading Activities
  • While-reading Activities
  • Post-Reading Activities

These are some posts that will help you teach listening

  • The 3 Stages of a Listening Lesson 
  • Top-Down and Bottom-up Processing
  • What Types of Listening are There? 
  • 10 Types of Post-Listening Activities
  • Listening for Gist and Detail

Manuel Campos, English Professor

I am Jose Manuel, English professor and creator of EnglishPost.org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English

Related Posts

A Guide  to the Victorian Period Literature

A Guide to the Victorian Period Literature

Types of Cohesive Devices

Types of Cohesive Devices

6 Fluency Activities for the ESL Classroom

6 Fluency Activities for the ESL Classroom

 English Listening Lesson on  Reading Activities

 listen a minute.com.

   More 60-Second Listenings

   PDF | Word | Quiz 1 | Quiz 2 | Help my site

THE LESSON ON READING ACTIVITIES

Try the online quiz, reading, listening, and activities on grammar, spelling and vocabulary for this lesson on Reading Activities . Click on the links above or see the activities below this article:

reading listening activities

THE ACTIVITIES

Listening gap fill.

Do _______________________ activities in class? What are reading activities? Does your teacher explain that you are going to do a reading activity? Reading activities are important. They _______________________ a text. There are many kinds of reading activities. These can include doing a vocabulary _______________________ words, looking at pictures, doing a quiz. Anything that helps you understand a _______________________. I’m a teacher. _______________________ students like these activities. I’d really like to know how much they help. Reading activities _______________________ time _______________________. Maybe if you read the reading three times, _______________________ better, without doing reading activities.

CORRECT THE SPELLING

Do you like doing reading activities in class? What are reading activities? Does your teacher xpilaen that you are going to do a reading activity? Reading activities are important. They reppaer you to read a text. There are many kinds of reading activities. These can cliduen doing a vocabulary activity on tiidulffc words, looking at usctpire , doing a quiz. Anything that helps you understand a reading aagesps is luesfu . I’m a teacher. I often wdeonr whether students like these activities. I’d really like to know how much they help. Reading activities seem to take more time than the ucatla reading. Maybe if you read the reading three times, you’d understand it better, ttwihuo doing reading activities.

UNJUMBLE THE WORDS

Do like you in activities reading doing class? What are reading activities? Does your teacher explain that you are going to do a reading activity? Reading activities are important. a you text to They read prepare . There are many kinds of reading activities. These can include doing difficult on activity vocabulary a words , looking at pictures, doing a quiz. Anything that helps you useful understand a reading passage is . I’m a teacher. I often like whether these students wonder activities. I’d really they like know much help to how . Reading activities seem to take more time than the actual reading. times three reading the read you if Maybe , you’d understand it better, without doing reading activities.

DISCUSSION (Write your own questions)

Student reading activities survey.

Write five GOOD questions about reading_activities in the table. Do this in pairs. Each student must write the questions on his / her own paper.

When you have finished, interview other students. Write down their answers.

  • Now return to your original partner and share and talk about what you found out. Change partners often.
  • Make mini-presentations to other groups on your findings.

Write about reading_activities for 10 minutes. Show your partner your paper. Correct each other’s work.

______________________________________________________________________________

1. VOCABULARY EXTENSION: Choose several of the words from the text. Use a dictionary or Google’s search field (or another search engine) to build up more associations / collocations of each word.

2. INTERNET INFO: Search the Internet and find more information about reading_activities. Talk about what you discover with your partner(s) in the next lesson.

3. MAGAZINE ARTICLE: Write a magazine article about reading_activities. Read what you wrote to your classmates in the next lesson. Give each other feedback on your articles.

4. READING ACTIVITIES POSTER Make a poster about reading_activities. Show it to your classmates in the next lesson. Give each other feedback on your posters.

5. MY READING ACTIVITIES LESSON: Make your own English lesson on reading_activities. Make sure there is a good mix of things to do. Find some good online activities. Teach the class / another group when you have finished.

6. ONLINE SHARING: Use your blog, wiki, Facebook page, MySpace page, Twitter stream, Del-icio-us / StumbleUpon account, or any other social media tool to get opinions on reading_activities. Share your findings with the class.

Check your answers in the article at the top of this page.

Follow this site and my other sites on Facebook.

Copyright © 2008-2023 by Sean Banville | Privacy Policy | Links

  • 7 Targeted Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults
  • Active Listening >>

Feature image for the Article '7 Unique Active Listening games, exercise and activities for Adults. Three women and one man, in casual attire, sitting in a corporate training room holding slips of paper and a drawing board for team building activity.

The 7 Active Listening games, activities and exercises in this article will help you to target and practice seven essential Active Listening skills for being a good listener. They’re not simply warm-up activities! They are designed for adults (not children) and suitable for both personal listening development and workplace training workshops. Step-by-step instructions are provided.

Index of Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults

Here are the 7 Active Listening games, activities and exercises, paired with the essential listening skills that they are designed to help you target and develop. Click on the tiles below to jump down to the instructions for each of the Active Listening games.

It’s How They Say It

Recognising and Interpreting Non-Verbal Cues

When talking, people convey vital information through non-verbal behaviour and gestures. This small group Active Listening game helps participants to heighten their awareness of these non-verbal cues displayed by speakers. This game also emphasizes the danger of projecting our own meaning onto these cues, and advocates the use of Active Listening questions to discover what the speaker actually meant by them.

  • Designed for training workshops
  • Active Listening Games Resource: 11 Conversation topics
  • Active Listening Games Resource: List of 11 non-verbal cues

Tell Me What You See

Asking Questions To Seek Information and Clarify Understanding

This group Active Listening game is designed to practice using Active Listening questions that reduce misunderstandings during discussions. It also promotes collaboration.

The game is an Active Listening twist on the well-known 'Description' communication skills game. Breaking into pairs, group participants take turns asking Active Listening questions about a simple drawing that they cannot see in order to draw it as accurately as possible. Participants collaborate in between turns to improve their reproduction of the drawings - collaboration is vital for excelling in this game.

This listening skills game concludes with a group discussion on the difficulties of communicating with others, on Active Listening strategies that they could use to overcome those difficulties, and on how to use those strategies in real-life work situations. 

  • Active Listening Games Resource: Two printable simple drawings

Just Listen

Listening Without interrupting

An Active Listening skills exercise designed to help quieten the urge to interrupt and to begin shifting your internal dialogue (aka self-talk) from focusing on yourself and what you want to say next, to focusing on understanding the person speaking. This exercise is done with another person. So, you will need to enlist a volunteer.

  • Designed for personal listening development and adaptable for training workshops
  • Active Listening Games Resource: 14 Conversation starters

Listen First, Speak Second

Having the Mindset of a Listener

A solo Active Listening skills exercise to develop the habit of entering discussions with the mindset of ‘listening first to understand the speaker.’ Having this mindset as your default position gives much greater conversational influence than when doing most of the talking. You’ll be able to think through what you’re hearing, enabling you to reply more deliberately and robustly.

  • Solo Active Listening skills exercise

A Mile in Their Shoes

Developing Cognitive Empathy with Your Discussion Partner

An Active Listening skills activity for pairs (or done with a volunteer). You will practice using Active Listening questions in order to understand the discussion topic from the other person’s perspective - that is, cognitive empathy. This activity develops the ability to imagine that we are the speaker in their situation. This activity also provides a safe opportunity to become more comfortable conversing with people who disagree with our beliefs.

Uncovering Core Beliefs

This group listening skills activity enables participants to practise using ‘The 3 Whys’ Active Listening technique. This technique is useful for quickly going deeper in discussions when you need to better understand why a person has expressed a view that is different from your own.

  • Designed for training workshops and adaptable for personal listening development
  • Active Listening Games Resource: 10 Thought-Provoking Conversation Starters

The Emotion-Whisperer

Utilising Emotional Intelligence

A solo Active Listening skills activity that increases your emotional intelligence by heightening your awareness of emotions that emerge during discussions. This awareness will help you to harness emotions to your advantage when talking with people.

  • Solo Active Listening skills activity

Structure of the Active Listening Games, Exercises & Activities

All of the Active Listening games, activities, and exercises for adults are formatted as self-contained instruction sheets consisting of:

  • An 'In Brief' summary of the Active Listening games.
  • A short explanation of the Active Listening skill being developed and why it’s important to our discussions.
  • Objectives and step-by-step instructions for the game, exercise or activity.
  • Follow-up discussion/debrief prompts.
  • Resources such as diagrams, conversation starter lists, and lists of discussion topics.

The exercises, activities and games utilise well-recognised habit-forming techniques that have greatly improved my own personal ability to listen actively.

Four activities are original. Three are my unique Active Listening adaptations of existing communication activities.

All the Very Best & Acceptable Use

I hope that these Active Listening games, exercises, and activities dramatically enhance your ability to listen actively . Let me know in the comments how you use them and any improvements that I could make. Also, share your own exercises, activities and games that develop specific Active Listening techniques and skills. I might be able to add them to the article.

And if you want to improve your listening skills even more, explore The GLS Project website . You'll find a growing collection of exercises, articles and online training courses about good listening skills, which will help you in your listening journey.

So, enjoy! And let’s make listening fashionable.

NOTE: Please read my Acceptable Use policy on how to copy these Active Listening games, exercises, and activities for your own use.

Active Listening Games for Adults

1. game - it’s how they say it.

Approximate Time Needed

Setup - 5 minutes

Game - 10 minutes

Follow-up Discussion - 10 minutes

This is a small group Active Listening game for adults. The participants are divided into groups of 5. [1]

Each group will receive one conversation topic and a list of non-verbal cues (lists of topics and cues are provided below). Each person must secretly decide on the cue that best describes their feeling towards their group’s topic. 

In turn, each participant is to imagine that they are in a discussion about the group‘s topic and do a 5-15 second mime of their chosen non-verbal cue in order to express how they feel about the topic. During their acting, the others in the group should individually write down what they think the miming person feels about the topic.

Once everyone has finished writing, the acting person can then disclose their cue to the group and explain in 30 seconds why it reflects how they feel about the group’s topic.

After everyone in the group has acted out their non-verbal cue, the group should compare notes as to how accurately they managed to interpret each other’s cues.

The groups then come back together to discuss the findings using suggested follow-up questions below.

The objectives of this Active Listening game are to:

  • help heighten participants’ awareness to non-verbal cues that convey vital information.
  • emphasise that assumptions about the meaning of non-verbal cues will almost always be wrong to some extent
  • emphasise the importance of asking Active Listening questions about the speaker’s non-verbal cues to understand their true meaning rather than assuming we know what they mean. 
  • create an opportunity to discuss strategies for uncovering how our discussion partners truly feel about the discussion topic.

Why Is This Active Listening Game Important?

We need to actively listen with both our ears and our eyes. “Any message a person tries to get across usually has two components: the content of the message and the feeling or attitude underlying this content.” [2] That is, it's not what they say. It's how they say it.

Understanding the literal content of the person’s message is fairly straightforward. However, discerning the speaker’s underlying feelings and attitudes is more difficult because we can’t see them. They are hidden inside the speaker.

Occasionally, a speaker will say how they feel. Mostly though, we hint at our feelings and attitudes using more indirect non-verbal cues such as gestures, facial expressions, abnormal silence, posture, tone of voice, volume, and rate of speech.

Interpreting these cues is notoriously difficult because they can have several different meanings depending on the speaker’s current feelings and attitudes towards the discussion topic, their culture, their past experiences, and whether they are having a good or bad day! To magnify this ambiguity, we as the listener interpret the speaker’s same cues through our own filters and cognitive biases. 

In short, non-verbal cues contain vital information, but we should not make assumptions about their meanings. 

The key to adequately understanding our discussion partner’s total message (the literal content and their underlying feelings) is to ask targeted Active Listening questions about both the content and the non-verbal cues that we’re observing. [3]

For this game, use the list of conversation topics and the list of non-verbal cues in the ‘Resources’ section below. Write the topics on separate pieces of paper. Each group will receive one topic. Make multiple copies of the list of non-verbal cues. Each group will receive a copy of this list.

Have paper and pens available for the participants. They will need to make notes.

  • Split the participants into groups of 5.
  • Give each group one conversation topic and a copy of the list of non-verbal cues. Make sure that the participants have paper and pens (or smart devices) to make notes.
  • Allow 10 minutes for participants to do the following within their groups.
  • Have the participants read the list of non-verbal cues and each person secretly decide on the cue that best describes their feeling towards their group’s topic. It’s okay if participants choose the same cue.
  • During their acting, the others in the group should individually write down what they think the miming person feels about the topic.
  • Once everyone has finished writing, the acting person can then disclose their cue to the group and take 30 seconds to explain why it reflects how they feel about the group’s topic.
  • Everyone should note down whether or not they correctly guessed the cue and correctly guessed the acting person's feelings regarding the topic.
  • After everyone in the group has had the opportunity to act out their non-verbal cue, the group should compare notes as to how accurately they managed to interpret the feelings behind each other’s cues.

Follow-up Discussion

Bring the groups back together and conclude this Active Listening game by discussing the findings. Here are some possible discussion questions to ask:

  • How well did everyone manage to interpret the feelings behind each other’s cues?
  • Were there different interpretations for the same cue? What were some of the differences?
  • What thoughts do you have about interpreting non-verbal cues?
  • Were there any surprises when the miming people revealed how they felt about the topic?
  • What could we do to better understand non-verbal cues that we observe?
  • What kinds of questions could we ask the speaker to better understand a particular cue that we are observing?
  • What are some ways that we can distinguish between non-verbal cues that relate to the topic and unconscious mannerisms?
  • Follow-up question: Reflecting on that situation, what could you have done to better understand that cue?
  • Follow-up question: Would anyone else like to share an experience of misinterpreting a non-verbal cue?
  • Any other thoughts about this Active Listening game?

Resource - List of 11 Conversation Topics

Here are some conversation topics that the participants will have a wide range of feelings and attitudes towards. Give each group one of these topics, or use your own topics:

  • Climate change isn’t real
  • Humans are better at creation than destruction
  • Country and Western music is divinely inspired
  • Artificial intelligence is great
  • Activism and violence 
  • Art is essential for society
  • Social media is a necessary part of daily life
  • We need to use poison-bait aerial drops for pest control
  • We need to colonise other planets
  • Human nature is essentially bad

Resource - List of 11 Non-Verbal Cues

Give each group a copy of this list. Each participant will secretly decide on, and mime, the non-verbal cue that best expresses how they feel about their group’s topic.

  • Leaning back in a chair
  • Leaning forward in a chair
  • An animated or subdued gesture that conveys an emotion. For example, happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, indifference, boredom, nervousness, confusion, feeling of guilt.
  • A facial expression that conveys an  emotion.
  • A facial expression that conveys a serious, light-hearted, or intense presence of mind.
  • Resting chin in hands
  • Tapping fingers on the table
  • Looking at your watch
  • Gazing around the room

This Active Listening game for adults is adapted from the communication skills game called “You Don’t Say” in the article titled ‘39 Communication Games and Activities for Kids, Teens, and Students’ by Kelly Miller. https://positivepsychology.com/communication-activities-adults-students/

Rogers, C., Farson, R. E., "Active Listening", Gordon Training Inc., www.gordontraining.com/free-workplace-articles/active-listening/ , Extract from 1957 article.

  • 3 For more information on utilising both verbal and non-verbal content, see The GLS Project article, ‘Non-Verbal Cues Help Avoid Misunderstandings. Here’s How – Step 2’, www.goodlisteningskills.org/step2-listen-for-total-meaning/
  • 4 This game was originally published along with other Active Listening games in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

2. Game - Tell Me What You See

Game - 14 minutes

Follow-up Discussion - 15 minutes

This is a small group Active Listening game for adults. Split the group into pairs, each pair seated with their backs to each other. Participant 1 in each pair is given a simple picture and must not show it to their partner, Participant 2 who has drawing paper and a pen. Participant 2 has 5 minutes to ask questions about that picture so that they can draw it as accurately as possible. Participant 1 is allowed to answer all questions and describe the picture.

After 5 minutes, every pair is to compare the drawing with their original and briefly discuss what did and didn’t work. Then they will swap roles for another 5 minutes with a new picture.

Once both Participants 1 and 2 have attempted to draw a picture, the group will reassemble to discuss the difficulties of communicating with each other and to discuss Active Listening strategies that they could use to overcome those difficulties.

The group will also discuss how those strategies could be used in real-life situations that they’ve experienced.

Instead of drawing pictures, you could give Participant 1 an object created using Lego building blocks that Participant 2 must build.

  • develop the active listening skills of (1) asking questions to seek information and clarify understanding , and (2) listening attentively to the answers. These skills help reduce misunderstandings when communicating with others, such as in a work environment or project team.
  • promote collaboration. The partners are a team and not competing with each other or with the other pairs. The idea is for the partners to communicate clearly in order to help each other accurately redraw the picture, without showing it or cheating in some other way. Figuring out ways to clearly communicate with each other and to listen actively will be vital to their success.

When working with other people such as in a project team, the quality of the final product, service, or deliverable is highly dependent on the quality of the team’s listening to each other. 

Poor listening results in misunderstandings.

Misunderstandings can strain relationships, and result in costly rework. Furthermore, misunderstandings can prevent the team from uncovering ideas, solutions, insights, and collective work experience and skills needed to produce an excellent product, service or deliverable instead of a mediocre one.

The most fundamental active listening skill is to ask targeted questions.

Preparation

For this game you will need the following:

  • A blank A4 sheet of paper for every participant to draw on.
  • Pens for drawing.
  • Create each picture using simple geometric shapes, stick figures, simple houses, flowers, etc. Put the shapes at different positions and angles. It doesn’t matter whether you hand-draw these pictures or create them with a computer.  
  • See the Resource section below for downloadable examples.
  • Don’t make the pictures too detailed. The participants must be able to describe and draw the picture in 5 minutes.
  • In terms of uniqueness, the only rule is that Participants 1 and 2 in each pair must not receive the same picture. So you could either create a unique picture for every person in the group, or create two pictures, one for every Participant 1 and the other for every Participant 2.
  • Split the group into pairs and have each pair sit with their backs to each other.
  • Give Participant 1 a simple picture. Ensure that Participant 2 does not see it.
  • Give Participant 2 a blank sheet of paper and a pen for drawing.
  • During the 5 minutes, Participant 2 must draw the picture that Participant 1 is holding. They can ask any questions they like, and Participant 1 is to describe the picture as prompted by those questions. The goal is to collaborate and help each other, not to compete.
  • The only rule is that Participant 2 must not see the picture (or a photo of the picture). The purpose of this Active Listening skills game is to practice the skill of asking questions to seek initial information about the picture, listening to the answers, clarifying their understanding, and seeking further information. So, there is no benefit in cheating.
  • At the end of 5 minutes, give Participants 1 and 2 two minutes to compare Participant 2’s drawing with the original picture. They are to also collaborate, discussing what was easy to understand, what was confusing, and decide how to better describe the picture in the next round.
  • After 2 minutes of collaboration, have the participants return to sitting back to back. 
  • Swap roles. Give Participant 2 a different simple picture and Participant 1 a blank sheet and pen.
  • Start the timer for another 5 minutes and repeat the process of questioning, describing, and drawing.
  • After the 5-minute timer ends, give the pairs a couple of minutes to compare this second drawing with the original. Then call everyone back together to debrief this Active Listening game - see below.

Finish the Active Listening game with a group discussion. Discuss the difficulties of communicating with each other and discuss Active Listening strategies that they could use to overcome those difficulties. Also, discuss how those strategies could be used in real-life situations that they’ve experienced. 

Here are some possible discussion questions:

  • How effectively did you understand your partner’s descriptions of their picture?
  • What difficulties did you encounter?
  • Follow-up question: What could you have done to overcome any differences in understanding?
  • Follow-up question: What kinds of clarifying questions did you ask?
  • Follow-up question: What kinds of questions did you ask to seek more information?
  • Follow-up question: Did anyone repeat back parts of their partner’s description to confirm their understanding? How effective was this technique?
  • Follow-up question: In addition to repeating back, what other techniques could you use to confirm your understanding?
  • Follow-up question: What benefits did you get from it?
  • Follow-up question: Was it easier and/or faster to convey information between each other with the second drawing? Why? 
  • Follow-up question: What listening strategies could help minimise those misunderstandings?

Additional optional questions:

  • Were you distracted by the other pairs and if so how? How did you cope with the distraction?
  • How much were you influenced by the other pairs? Was their influence helpful or misleading? 

Resource - Printable A4 Simple Pictures

For this Active Listening game, you can create your own simple pictures, or use the pictures below. Click each image to download an A4 PDF version of the picture.

Resource for Active Listening Game 7 called "Tell Me What You See." This is simple picture #1, which participants must draw from a verbal description. The image is comprised of concentric triangles, concentric squares, a spiral, a star, a heart, and a circle. Click the image to download an A4 pdf version of the image.

  • 1 This Active Listening game is adapted from the well-used 'Description' communication skills game.
  • 2 This game was originally published along with other Active Listening games in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

Active Listening Exercises for Adults

3. exercise - just listen.

Exercise - 10 minutes

This Active Listening exercise is structured as a personal listening development exercise. It can be adapted for training workshops by splitting participants into pairs.

You will need a volunteer for this exercise.

Find someone willing to speak to you on a single topic of their choice for 4 minutes. Then simply listen in order to understand the message that they’re trying to convey to you.  

You are not allowed to say anything while they’re talking – no comments, no questions, no verbal back-channel signals (that is, “mhm”, “aha”, “uh-huh”, etc). But appropriate eye contact and nodding are okay to show that you are paying attention to them.

Just listen in silence and try to understand the speaker. 

At the end of 4 minutes you may speak. Paraphrase in your own words the main points that you think you heard the speaker say - they should remain quiet while you're paraphrasing.  Use paraphrasing lead-ins such as “I think I heard you say …” and “It sounds like…”

Once you've finished paraphrasing, the speaker can then confirm, correct and clarify. And you may ask follow-up questions if desired.

Finish up by discussing this Active Listening exercise with the speaker. 

The objectives of this Active Listening exercise are to help you:

  • quieten those urges to interrupt in order to jump in with your comments.
  • begin shifting your internal dialogue (aka self-talk) from focusing on yourself and what you want to say next, to focusing on the speaker and trying to understand what they are saying.

Why Is This Active Listening Exercise Important?

It is torturously tempting to do the talking, or to let our minds drift off somewhere far away. 

Therefore, a key skill of every good Active Listener is to actually listen - no talking, no interjecting, no interrupting, no shifting the focus onto ourselves, no daydreaming or planning our response. Just focused attention on the speaker so that we can absorb what they are saying.

  • Invite a trusted person to help you with this exercise (e.g. a family member, a friend, or a work colleague). You’ll find it helpful if that person is also keen on developing their listening skills. Say something like, “Hey, I’m keen on developing good listening skills. I need someone to help me with a listening exercise. Can you help? It will take no more than 25 minutes.”
  • Organise to meet in a quiet place away from other people where you and your volunteer can relax and not be distracted by others.
  • Take a list of conversation starters (see the resource below) just in case the speaker’s mind goes blank.
  • Meet at your agreed ‘quiet place’.
  • Limit the whole exercise to 25 minutes.
  • Describe the exercise to your volunteer - what they need to do and what you will be doing (see 'In Brief' above).
  • Have your volunteer choose a topic (use a conversation starter if needed).
  • Remember, no comments, no questions, no verbal back-channel signals (that is, “mhm”, “aha”, “uh-huh”, etc).
  • Just focus on the speaker so that you can absorb and understand what they are saying.
  • “What aspects of the speaker's message most interest them?”
  • “What aspects most interest me?”
  • “What is the main theme(s) of their message?”
  • “What are the key takeaways from the speaker’s message?”
  • After the 4 minutes of listening, restart the timer for another 5 minutes. 
  • Briefly share what you think you heard the speaker say (i.e. paraphrase their message). Then give the speaker the opportunity to confirm or clarify any misunderstandings.
  • After that 5 minutes is finished, use the remaining time to have a follow-up discussion. Use the discussion points below.

Finish this Active Listening exercise by discussing the following:

  • Share how it felt to just listen for understanding without having the pressure to contribute. 
  • Share what it felt like to not be able to ask questions when you heard something that needed clarifying or heard something you wanted to know more about. What kinds of questions might you have asked?
  • Discuss what happened to your internal dialogue.
  • Did you actually need to plan your response? Why? Why not?
  • Discuss how the speaker felt to have your full attention.
  • Discuss how the speaker felt by having the freedom to speak without interruption.
  • Discuss anything else that impacted you both.
  • Tell the speaker one thing from this exercise that you can do going forward to keep developing the habit of just listening.
  • Discuss any other thoughts about this Active Listening exercise.

Resource - 14 Conversation Starters

Your volunteer can use one of these conversation starters if they can't think up their own topic. [1]

  • Who is your longest friend? Where did you meet them? What do you appreciate about them?
  • What were you really into when you were a kid? Why did it capture you? Discuss.
  • What three words best describe you? Why?
  • What would be your perfect weekend? Talk your way through that perfect weekend.
  • If you opened a business, what kind of business would it be? What draws you to that idea?
  • What is the strangest dream you have ever had?
  • Describe a controversial opinion that you have.
  • Who in your life brings you the most joy? How?
  • Who had the biggest impact on the person you have become? How has your life changed because of them?
  • What are some things you want to accomplish before you die? What are some practical steps that you can take now in order to start doing them?
  • Describe a book that’s had an impact on your life. What was the impact and how is it affecting you today?
  • If you could call up anyone in the world and have a one hour conversation, who would you call? What would you talk about?
  • Imagine that time freezes for everyone but you for one day. What do you do?
  • If your mind was an island, what would it look like? Walk me around that ‘island’. 
  • 1 Special thanks to C. B. Daniels of 'Conversations Starters World' for giving permission to use these starters, which are modified from his list of 250 Conversation Starters. Head over to www.conversationstartersworld.com for 1000s more on all sorts of topics.
  • 2 This exercise was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project, www.goodlisteningskills.org .

And as a bonus for subscribing, you get this Active Listening exercise 'Just Listen' as a PDF

Active Listening Exercise - Just Listen

Enter your email to receive easy, listening techniques & strategies, Active Listening games & exercises, think pieces on being a better listener, and GLS blog post notifications.

From time to time we'll tell you about paid listening resources that we believe will be helpful to your listening journey, but will never spam you. We hate it with a passion! View our Privacy Policy & Terms of Use .

Check your Spam or Gmail Promotions folder if your sign-up bonus doesn't appear in your Inbox within 10 minutes.

Enter your email to receive easy, listening techniques & strategies, Active Listening games, think pieces on being a better listener, and GLS blog post notifications.

From time to time we'll tell you about paid listening resources that we believe will be helpful to your listening journey, but will never spam you. We hate it with a passion! View our Privacy Policy   & Terms of Use .

4. Exercise - Listen First, Speak Second

Debrief - 3 minutes

This is a solo Active Listening exercise.

You will utilise a well-recognised habit-formation strategy - the process of ‘imagination’ and ‘reflection.' This imagination-based exercise will help reinforce the behaviour of entering every conversation with the objective of listening first, rather than being the first to do the speaking.

Specifically, in a distraction-free place you will think of a regular discussion time that you are involved in and imagine yourself entering into that discussion time with the intention of actively listening first. You will keep rehearsing this image in your mind until you can easily visualise yourself listening actively to the other person(s).

Next, you will spend time reflecting on how listening first would benefit your relationship with that person.

Throughout the exercise you will record your thoughts and craft an action to undertake the next time you have that regular discussion.

The objective of this Active Listening exercise is to help you develop the mindset of entering into every discussion firstly wearing your ‘listener’ hat, so as to focus on understanding the other person’s perspective. Then, once you adequately understand them, you can switch into the role of ‘speaker’ in order to share your perspective.

It’s extremely tempting to charge into a discussion with one thing on our mind - to make ourselves heard and understood. When we do this, listening can become a bit of an afterthought.

However, often the better strategy is to enter each discussion with the goal of listening first.

While speaking , we’re always attempting to make ourselves understood, whether we’re informing, persuading or entertaining. 

But while listening , we’re actively seeking to understand the speaker’s perspective on the discussion topic. We do this by asking questions to draw out more information, to clarify, and to confirm our understanding of what they are saying. This is called Active Listening . [1]

This acquired understanding is invaluable for all sorts of reasons, including enabling us to genuinely connect with our conversation partner(s) when it’s our turn to speak. Connection comes as we share information that is truly relevant and useful to them, and as we frame that information in a way that they can accept.

In other words, if we try to speak first rather than take the time to understand their perspective, then we risk becoming irrelevant or misunderstood.

A Key Principle

This Active Listening exercise utilises a well-recognised habit-formation strategy - the process of ‘imagination’ and ‘reflection'. You’ll be using your imagination to rehearse the act of listening. This ‘rehearsal’ process will cognitively reinforce the behaviour of listening first and speaking second. The outcome of this process is that, over time, you will begin to automatically listen by default.

  • Find a place free of distractions and sit down with a notepad and pen.
  • It could be a weekly meeting with a work colleague, the daily family time around the dinner table, or a mid-week lunch catch-up with a friend.
  • Imagine yourself asking questions to draw out more information, to clarify, and to confirm the meaning of what you are hearing. 
  • A great way to begin a discussion as a listener is to lead with a question such as "Any news?" or, "What's the progress since our last catch-up?"
  • Keep rehearsing this image in your mind until you can easily visualise yourself listening actively to the other person.
  • How would your relationship with that person(s) change if you regularly listened first?
  • How would you change if you regularly listened first?
  • Record your thoughts on the notepad. Writing helps with the cognitive reinforcement process.
  • Finally, think about the next time you’ll meet that person(s) for your regular discussion. What is one practical action that you can take at the start of your next discussion in order to listen to them first and allow them to speak?
  • Go have that discussion.

After having that discussion, come back to this Active Listening exercise and debrief the discussion using the following steps:

  • Briefly reflect on what did and didn’t work.
  • Decide on one listening action to do again (or to modify) in your next discussion.
  • Take a couple of minutes to imagine yourself doing that action.
  • Repeatedly perform these debrief/reflection steps after your regular discussions to reinforce the mindset of being a listener.

If you regularly reflect on your listening efforts, you’ll begin to automatically listen more in your real-life discussions. Listening will become your default approach.

  • 1  For more information about how to listen actively, see The GLS Project article, ‘Active Listening How To – 5 Easy Steps to Your Best Conversation Yet’, www.goodlisteningskills.org/active-listening-overview .
  • 2 This exercise was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

Active Listening Activities for Adults

5. activity - a mile in their shoes.

Activity - 30 minutes max

Debrief - 15 minutes max

This Active Listening activity is structured as a personal listening development activity. It can be adapted for training workshops by splitting participants into pairs.

You will need a volunteer for this activity.

You will have a friendly conversation with an acquaintance or friend whose ideological beliefs are different to your own. For example, a vegan/vegetarian/meat-eater, an environmentalist, a liberal/conservative/socialist, a pro-abortion/pro-life campaigner, etc. 

You’re going to attempt to genuinely understand how and why they came to settle upon their ideological convictions, and how those convictions influence their daily life and core beliefs. 

This may put you well outside your comfort zone. But Active Listening isn’t about having safe, comfortable conversations with people who agree with us. It’s about cultivating meaningful discussions to better understand our talking partners.

Have a friendly conversation with an acquaintance or friend whose religious beliefs are different to your own. For example, an Atheist, Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Sikh.

The objectives of this Active Listening activity are to:

  • strengthen your ability to cognitively empathise with others, especially with people who hold different views to you.
  • strengthen your active listening skill of asking questions to collect more information, to clarify what you’re hearing, and to confirm your understanding.
  • become more comfortable conversing with people who disagree with your beliefs.

Why Is This Active Listening Activity Important?

Cognitive empathy is our goal as Active Listeners.

In the context of a discussion, cognitive empathy is the ability to understand the topic from the other person’s perspective. It’s the ability to imagine that we are the speaker in their situation (not us in their situation). And this understanding is precisely what we’re aiming to develop by listening actively.

Note: Cognitive empathy is different from emotional empathy , which is the ability to share (experience) another person’s emotions - this is what most people think of when they hear the term ‘empathy’.

Developing cognitive empathy with our conversation partner benefits our discussions in four major ways:

  • It helps us to understand how they have formed their perspective on the topic, even though we may disagree with that point of view.
  • It reduces the possibility of us misunderstanding them.
  • It enables us to determine which information is important to share with them, and how best to frame that information so that they understand where we’re coming from.
  • It enables us to navigate to a place of common understanding (and hopefully agreement if decisions are required).

It’s easy to develop cognitive empathy. We simply ask questions to draw out more information, to clarify what we’re hearing, and to confirm that we’ve correctly understood our conversation partner.

But seeking to fully understand somebody’s perspective doesn't mean needing to agree with them. It only means keeping an open-mind and withholding judgement long enough to adequately understand the other person’s perspective. [1]

Identify someone who has a belief that is different to your own.  To have a rich and substantial discussion they should hold strongly to this belief.

Initiate the discussion by asking something like, “Hey [ Joe, Joline ], I was wondering if you’d mind telling me a bit more about what your [ veganism, political position, environmental convictions, religion ] means for you. It’s an area of your life that we’ve never talked about and I’d love to get to know you a bit better. Would that be okay?”

A conversation of this kind can be quite absorbing. So, if they agree, and now isn’t a good time for a deep discussion, then diarise time to catch up socially in a place where you can talk freely.

When you meet up, break the ice by asking “So tell me... what does it mean to you to be a [ vegan, vegetarian, environmental activist, liberal, socialist, pro-abortion campaigner, pro-life campaigner ]? And then listen.

Here are some tips to help make your conversation productive:

  • Maintain respect at all times.
  • Remember that you're not obliged to agree with them. 
  • Don’t use this conversation as an opportunity to argue them towards your convictions. Using ‘empathy’ as a smokescreen for ‘evangelism’ is manipulative and deceitful. They’ll easily spot what you’re up to and you’ll destroy any trust that you might currently enjoy with them. Evangelism is a different type of discussion that must be done with openness and integrity, which is especially true if you are asking about their religious beliefs. Stay focused on getting to know this person better.
  • Temporarily suspend your opinions and feelings about their ideology so that you can clearly hear their opinions and feelings about that ideology.
  • Set aside your preconceived ideas of what they believe and ask questions to discover what they actually believe . For example, Pro-abortionists and Pro-lifers often have incorrect ideas about what each other believes because of what they’ve heard second-hand.
  • Throughout the discussion, just listen. Don’t interrupt or try to share your beliefs. Your goal is to learn about them. Only speak in order to ask genuine questions.
  • “So how did you come to be a [ vegan, vegetarian, environmental activist, liberal, socialist, pro-abortion/pro-life campaigner, etc ]?”
  • “What is it about [ veganism, vegetarianism, environmental activism, liberalism, socialism, the pro-abortion/pro-life stance, etc ] that you find so compelling?’
  • How do you live out your convictions day-to-day?
  • “What do you like about being a [ vegan, vegetarian, environmental activist, liberal, socialist, pro-abortion/pro-life campaigner, etc ]?”
  • “What is the most difficult part of being a [ vegan, vegetarian, environmental activist, liberal, socialist, pro-abortion/pro-life campaigner, etc ]?”
  • “Tell me more.”
  • “Why’s that?”
  • “What does that look like?” or “What might that look like in practice?”
  • "How did you come to that opinion/conclusion?"
  • “Earlier you mentioned [ xyz ]. How does that [ impact on, relate to, affect, compare with ] what you’ve just shared?”
  • “And that means?”
  • For example, ask the following: “Hang on a minute, I heard you say [ their statement word for word ]. I’m stuck. What did you mean by that?”
  • For example, rephrase what they’re telling you: “Are you saying [ r ephrase the speaker’s sentences in your own words ]? Yes?”
  • Also feed back the speaker’s feelings. For example, “You sound [ passionate ]. I guess [ you have been greatly impacted by that ], huh?” 
  • Most of all, just relax and be curious. 
  • Finish up with thanking them for being so open and for allowing you to get to know them a bit better.

After having that conversation, come back to this Active Listening activity. Spend some time alone and reflect on the following questions:

  • What Active Listening techniques went well?
  • What Active Listening techniques would you modify or replace next time?
  • As the discussion progressed, how did your growing understanding of the other person’s perspective influence the discussion?
  • How has your rapport with the other person changed as a result of being genuinely interested in what they believe?

Tip: Journaling your answers can be helpful for clarifying your thoughts.

  • 1 For more information on cognitive empathy, including how it differs from emotional empathy, see The GLS Project article ‘Want to Avoid Poor Discussions? Listen With Empathy,’ www.goodlisteningskills.org/listen-with-empathy
  • 2 This activity was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

6. Activity - The 3 ‘Whys’

Setup - 7 minutes

Activity - 8 minutes

Follow-up Discussion - 10 to 15 minutes

This Active Listening activity is designed for training workshops. It is a group activity for practising the Active Listening technique called ‘The 3 Whys.’

The group is split into pairs. Each pair is given a thought-provoking conversation starter (see ‘Resource’ section below).  One participant will ask their activity partner a conversation starter question and then respond to their answer using ‘The 3 Whys.’ The other participant will take the role of genuinely responding to those ‘Why’ questions. After 4 minutes, the participants will switch roles.

Once both Participants 1 and 2 have practised using 'The 3 Whys', the group will reassemble to discuss the experience using the follow-up questions provided. 

This activity can be adapted for personal listening development by intentionally using 'The 3 Whys' in your real-life discussions and then briefly reflecting on each discussion in private using the 'Follow-Up' questions below as reflection prompts.

The objective of this Active Listening activity is to help group participants practise using ‘The 3 Whys’ Active Listening technique. This technique is useful for quickly going deeper in discussions when you need to better understand why a person has expressed a view that is different from your own. [1]

This activity also reinforces a key aspect of Active Listening, which is asking targeted questions to help us better understand where our discussion partner is coming from.

Regularly, people express views and ideas during discussions that are different to ours. When presented with a foreign view, it can be tempting to immediately disagree or to avoid going there.

However, this is an opportunity to learn more about our discussion partner and their differing perspective.

Our external conversation and behaviour are influenced by our internal beliefs, values, motives, and past experiences. With a little bit of respectful digging using the Active Listening technique called ‘The 3 Whys’, we can quickly uncover their internal/hidden core beliefs and values regarding that topic in order to better understand their external/public response .  [2]

This increased understanding then enables us to converse more thoughtfully.

Technique Description

When a person expresses a view that seems unusual to you, ask “Why?” three times tactfully and genuinely.

Each time you ask the question, don’t bluntly ask “Why?” Soften and modify it in response to what the other person is telling you. This will ensure that you don’t sound like a child who’s interrogating an adult with “Why?! Why?! Why?!” 

To demonstrate, here’s the essence of a real dinner-time discussion about politics:

Person 1: “In the upcoming election are you still planning to vote Labour?” 

Person 2: “Yes I am.”

Person 1: “Why’s that?”

Person 2: “Because I’ve always voted for them.” 

Person 1: “Why do you always vote for them? Is there something specific that you like about them?”

Person 2: “Because they look after the working class.”

Person 1: “Why do you feel like the other main political parties don’t look after the working class?”

Person 2: “Because…[and they opened up with some rather passionate views!]”

How It Works

Conversation starts at the surface level. Typically, we don’t freely share our internal beliefs with others. With each asking of the “Why?” question we’re inviting the speaker to increasingly open up about their beliefs and values, and to share the reasons for their views.

It only takes three iterations to uncover some very personal beliefs. 

Warning: digging deeper can result in lively discussions!

  • Describe the technique to the group.
  • Split the group into pairs.
  • Give each pair a conversation starter question (see the resource list below)
  • Each pair will take turn-about. One participant will take the role of asking the conversation starter and then the 3 ‘Whys.’ The other participant will take the role of genuinely responding to those ‘Why’ questions.
  • After 4 minutes, switch roles.
  • The participant asking the conversation starter and the 3 ‘Why’ questions must not shift the focus of the discussion onto themselves. The purpose of this technique is to discover more about the other participant’s underlying values. It is not a method for creating opportunities to talk about themselves. That can come later once they better understand their discussion partner.
  • The participant replying to the 3 ‘Why’ questions should not be intentionally evasive. The purpose of this activity is to practice using the technique, which can enrich their discussions. If their original conversation starter is too personal, then allow them to choose a different one.
  • After everyone has attempted both roles, reassemble the group.
  • Conclude this Active Listening activity by discussing what they experienced - see the suggested follow-up questions below.
  • With respect to the ‘Asking’ role, what was it like to ask someone “Why” three times? What happened?
  • How did repeating the “why” question deepen your understanding of your discussion partner’s perspective?
  • With respect to the ‘Replying’ role, what was it like to have someone ask you “Why” three times?
  • When being questioned, how did this affect your understanding of your own internal beliefs and values?
  • Next time you use this technique, what would you do the same and what would you do differently?
  • What other thoughts and insights do you have about this technique?

Resource -  10 Thought-Provoking Conversation Starters

  • What activity causes you to feel like you are living life to the fullest?
  • How would you define genius?
  • How much does language affect our thinking?
  • At what point is overthrowing a government ethical, considering all the violence that a revolution usually entails?
  • What would be the most ethical way to give away five million dollars?
  • Should there be limitations on the right to free speech?
  • Should euthanasia be legal?
  • What is the most recent success you’ve had?
  • Who is the most successful person that you know personally?
  •  If you could be the CEO of any company, what company would you choose?

Thanks to Conversation Starters World. [3]

This Active Listening activity is modified from an extremely effective and useful Active Listening technique shared by Nick Read of ‘Training For Change’ during a corporate management short course, "Managing People – Enhancing Your Interpersonal Communications", via The University of Auckland, August 2006, www.training4change.co.nz .  Used with permission.

  • 2 Understanding a person's core beliefs and values helps us to understand the topic from the other person’s perspective. This is cognitive empathy, which is the goal of Active Listening. For more depth on seeking to understand other people, see the article titled “Want to Avoid Poor Discussions? Listen With Empathy,” www.goodlisteningskills.org/listen-with-empathy
  • 3 Special thanks to C. B. Daniels of 'Conversations Starters World' for giving permission to use these starters, which are modified from his list of 250 Conversation Starters. Head over to  www.conversationstartersworld.com for 1000s more on all sorts of topics.
  • 4 This activity was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

7. Activity - The Emotion-Whisperer

Activity - 15 minutes

Ongoing Application - 2 to 3 minutes per discussion

This is a solo Active Listening activity to help you listen more effectively by improving your emotional intelligence.

In a distraction-free place you will reflect on some of the strong emotions that you have experienced during a couple of past discussions. Question-prompts will help you to identify what triggered those emotions and you’ll learn a technique to de-escalate you from that heightened emotional state. Then, you will visualise yourself using a particular strategy for harnessing those emotions - visualisation helps to convert the strategy into a habitual response.

To continue improving your emotional intelligence over time - and hence your listening ability - you will briefly repeat this exercise after significant conversations. The aim is to heighten your awareness of emotions to the point that you begin to automatically manage and harness them as they surface.

The objective of this Active Listening activity is to increase your emotional intelligence by heightening your awareness of emotions that emerge during discussions. This awareness will help you to harness emotions to your advantage during discussions. 

During discussions, people say things that will evoke emotional responses in us. We can’t stop these emotions from appearing. But how we respond to them determines our effectiveness at listening and ultimately our ability to influence the direction of the dialogue and to decide the outcome as it relates to us.

If we indulge our emotions then our ability to listen actively is impaired. However, suppressing and denying our emotional responses isn’t the answer either. Instead, we retain our effectiveness, influence and self-determination by increasing our emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is firstly being aware of our own emotions and those of the speaker. Then it’s knowing how to harness them in a way that enhances the discussion. 

At the height of a discussion it’s very difficult to apply new techniques such as harnessing your emotions while trying to stay calm and avoid reacting impulsively to what we’re hearing (and observing non-verbally). It’s a cognitive limitation of the way our brains are wired.

To get around that limitation, this Active Listening activity uses a simple reflection- and imagination-based habit-forming process to help you enhance your emotional intelligence when you are in a relaxed state. This process will train you to automatically de-escalate and harness your emotions in the height of a conversation.

  • As you work through this exercise record your thoughts on the notepad. Writing helps with the cognitive reinforcement process.
  • Here are some possible emotional reactions: confusion, a knot in your stomach, anger, indignation, offense, injustice, caution or wariness, joy, enthusiasm, a nebulous feeling that you ‘couldn’t quite define.’
  • “Why did I react in such an [ irritable, annoyed, frustrated ] manner?”
  • “What did they say that triggered that emotion?”
  • “Was it triggered by any of their non-verbal gestures or expressions?”

Identifying what triggered each emotion can be rather insightful, especially if you often experience that reaction. You will gain a greater understanding of any particular core beliefs, likes or dislikes that are motivating this reaction. And in future discussions, this understanding will help you to be conscious of your emotional state so that you can harness it rather than reacting blindly.

  • Visualise yourself resisting saying anything spontaneous that might damage your relationship with your discussion partner.
  • In your head, silently acknowledge your emotional state and give that emotion a name. For example, “Gee! His/her flippant response makes me so angry right now.” “Blimey, that news scares me!” “I feel like I want to cry.” Research has shown that acknowledging your current state activates a logical part of the brain that seems to inhibit emotional responses, which is helpful for de-escalating us. [1]
  • Take slow deep breaths through your nose until you can let go of that emotion and can start thinking how to respond productively.
  • Emotion - Offense. Possible imagined response: “Interesting! That’s provocative. How did you come to that view?”
  • Emotion - Confusion. Possible imagined response: “How does your idea solve our situation? Tell me more.”
  • Emotion - Knot in your stomach. Possible imagined response: “Based on what you’ve shared, your proposal [ concerns, intrigues, perplexes ] me. What are you planning in order to mitigate [ xyz ]?”
  • Emotion - 'Nebulous' and indescribable. Possible imagined response: explore the situation. Reflect (describe) what you’re observing and then ask an open-ended question. For example, “Everyone seems very quiet. What are your thoughts regarding [ the design of our new widget ]?”

Ongoing Application

Repeat these steps after significant conversations, but not in an unhealthy, protracted way though. Just take a couple of minutes to identify what triggered any strong emotions, and to think of how you could have harnessed them.

Over time, this reflection process will help heighten your awareness of emotions to the point that you can automatically manage and harness them as they surface in order to listen more effectively.

  • 1 Goulston, Mark, “Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone”, New York: American Management Association, 2010.
  • 2 This Active Listening activity is also a good emotional intelligence activity.
  • 3 This activity was originally published in the article '7 Unique Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults' by Andrew G. Ward, at www.goodlisteningskills.org , © 2020. To further improve your listening skills, visit The GLS Project,  www.goodlisteningskills.org .

Related Posts

Want to avoid poor discussions listen with empathy, non-verbal cues help avoid misunderstandings. here’s how – step 2, follow-up questions are the secret to meaningful conversations – step 3, active listening how to – 5 easy steps to your best conversation yet, about the author.

Hello, I’m Andrew Ward and I’m the Kiwi guy writing most of the stuff on this website. You can read more about my story here .

Your Sign-up Bonus

Build Connection & Rapport

Listen to Truly Understand

Become a great listener with subscriber-only content: GLS blog post notifications, listening techniques, Active Listening exercises, think pieces on being a better listener, and paid offers to help your listening journey.

Subscribe FOR FREE And get a bonus

Printable step-by-step instructions (including resources)

for Active Listening Game 2 or 3

To subscribe click on the bonus you want 

Active Listening Game - Tell Me What You See

Ideal For Pairs & Groups

Active Listening Exercise - Just Listen

Ideal For Individuals

By signing up you agree to our terms

Welcome Aboard!

You're now subscribed to The GLS Project

Your sign-up bonus has been sent to your inbox.

(If your download doesn't appear within 10 minutes please

check your Spam folder and Gmail Promotions folder.)

Step-by-Step Instructions

Great Choice

Enter your email below to get started.

Then watch your inbox for subscriber-only content and your sign-up bonus:

PDF instructions for Active Listening Exercise 3

"Just Listen"

Bonus Step-by-Step Instructions

PDF instructions for Active Listening Game 2

"Tell Me What You See"

English reading and listening practice

Online listening and reading practice for english.

Improve your English listening and reading skills with Lingolia!

Below you can find a variety of English texts and listening tracks from level A2-B2. Many feature words and phrases from our themed vocabulary section.

Test your understanding via the comprehension questions and check any new vocabulary in the transcripts.

Reading Comprehension

Improve your English reading skills with our collection of texts and accompanying comprehension questions.

Listening Comprehension

Improve your English listening skills with our collection of audio tracks accompanied by comprehension questions and transcripts.

How good is your English?

Find out with Lingolia’s free grammar test

Take the test!

Maybe later

Intermediate

  • Academic Listening

Life Stories

  • Language Games
  • English Idioms
  • Basic English Quizzes
  • English Culture Videos
  • Vocabulary Lessons
  • ESL Vocabulary Quizzes
  • Live Broadcasts
  • Who's Randall?
  • Terms of Use
  • Speaking Events
  • License ESL-Lab Content
  • First-Time Users
  • Audio/Video Help
  • Self-Study Guide
  • ESL Study Handouts
  • Randall's ESL Blog
  • Randall’s Favorites
  • Tips for Teachers
  • Recommended Products
  • Contact Randall
  • DailyESL.com
  • Trainyouraccent.com
  • EZslang.com

Boosting Your English Listening Skills

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab has been providing online English listening comprehension activities for ESL and EFL learners since 1998. Visit Randall’s other Web sites at DailyESL.com , EZslang.com , and Trainyouraccent.com for more language practice.

General ESL Listening Quizzes

Activities focus on everyday English comprehension skills at three levels based on content, voices, vocabulary, and natural speed. A combination of adult, teenage, and children’s voices are included.

Easy

Listening for high-beginning ESL students.

Medium

For intermediate-level ESL learners.

Difficult

For advanced-level ESL learners.

Explore More English Listening Activities

Randall has created a variety of other ESL listening activities to improve your comprehension, speaking, vocabulary, and cultural awareness.

mini-1

English Interviews

Watch interviews with native speakers on a variety of topics and practice your English skills.

mini-2

High-Intermediate to advanced discussion activities using AI technologies to create dynamic voices and accents.

mini-feat-3

Culture Videos

Short culture videos covering a wide range of topics that introduce learners to many parts of everyday topics.

agendaweb.org

Grammar exercises

Vocabulary exercises

Verbs exercises

Listening exercises

Reading - exercises

Videos - lessons

Songs - nursery-rhymes

Stories - fairy-tales

Phonetic - exercises

Worksheets - handouts

Listening activities

 comprehension exercises.

  • Listening - beginners
  • Listening practice 1 - levels
  • Series - exercises by level
  • Listening tests - levels new
  • Listening practice 2 - levels
  • Listening - quizzes : levels
  • Activities: levels A1 / B1 / C1
  • Easy listening activities
  • Basic to advanced lessons
  • Listening activities - intermediate
  • Audio activities by level
  • Listening skills practice - videos
  • Audio + video - comprehension
  • Listening exercises - levels
  • Dictations by levels

         DIALOGUES - PODCAST

  • Podcast / mp3 download
  • Practical English conversations

           AUDIO BOOKS

  • Audio books: mp3/pdf download
  • Audio books : audio + text  
  • Books: video - audio - transcript

leonardo english logo

10 Activities to Improve Your English Listening [Self-Study Guide #1]

Published on, november 11, 2022, january 6, 2023, this article may contain affiliate links.

reading listening activities

Listening materials in coursebooks are not authentic, but “real” listening materials can be too difficult. So, what is the best way to practise real listening? This guide will help you out with ten great ideas for listening activities that you can do on your own!

10 Activities to Improve Your English Listening [Self-Study Guide #1]

Table of contents

Note: This is the first of a series of guides covering self-study activities. You may also be interested in the other guides on writing , reading , speaking , grammar , vocabulary and pronunciation .

You want to practise English listening skills, but there’s a problem. “Real” listening, such as watching the news on CNN, seems too difficult. 

But “easy” listening materials, like the ones you find in English textbooks, are artificial and boring.

The worst ones are the courses for tourists that you listen to in your car!

So what is the best approach?

How to approach listening practice

First of all, forget the textbooks. At intermediate level, moving towards advanced level, you want to use authentic materials.

However, although you should forget about those school textbooks, there are some good tips that you can learn from English teachers .

In English class (if the teacher is good), you always listen more than once. Generally, you listen once to get the main idea and a second time to pick up all the details.

You can listen as many times as you like - if there is something new to learn, it’s not a waste of time. The more times you listen, the more you understand. This builds fluency.

The second tip is not to “just listen”. Teachers always give you an activity to do. This focuses your mind and gives you a goal to work towards.

But what kind of activities can you do if you are studying by yourself? Good news! We have ten ideas for you to do just that!

These activities are part of a series of guides to help English learners with short activities to practise speaking, writing, reading, listening, grammar and vocabulary.

Easy activities

Activity 1 - quiz time.

Listen, and try a quiz. It’s an old-school method, but why not take advantage of the plenty of websites out there with free quizzes for English learners.

Here is an example of a site that has ten free quizzes at various levels .

But how do you know which level you are? What is A1, B2, C1 etc.?

These are called the CEFR levels and you can test yourself with a simple online test, such as this one . Or you could estimate your level in an instant with this self-assessment grid . Note that you may be level B2, for example, overall, but be B1 in listening.

Here are some more websites that offer free quizzes:

ELLLO Listening | esl-lounge Student English listening skills practice | LearnEnglish Teens - British Council Listening Quizzes | ESL Quizzes | EnglishClub General Listening Quizzes - Intermediate - Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab

You will find that some of the activities on these sites mirror the other activities I have recommended (dictation/cloze/news reports).

Remember, look for quizzes that are suited to your level, and look for sites that feature more authentic materials.

Skills: Listening Tools: Various sites Time: 5-10 minutes Skill Level: Easy

Medium-level activities

Activity 2 - podcast activities.

At Leonardo English, we love podcasts! Our podcast, English Learning for Curious Minds , has been designed with intermediate to advanced English learners. It’s authentic, but spoken at a slightly slower speed and with slightly “graded language”. It also features a full transcript of every episode and vocabulary definitions.

We also have plenty of other podcasts to recommend.

So, we know that podcasts are great for listening practice, but what are some activities you can do with them? Here are three simple ones:

  • Listen to the podcast without taking notes, then write down a summary of everything you remember. Listen again and check your accuracy.
  • As with the first activity, listen without taking notes, but this time record your summary with a microphone.
  • Listen to the podcast and write down your reaction to it in 50-100 words. Did you like it? Would you recommend it? Did you agree with the opinions expressed? Then post your reaction on social media, with a link to the podcast.

Looking for more ideas? Here is a podcast on using podcasts to learn English !

Skills: Listening, writing, speaking, fluency Tools: Podcast Time: 10-20 minutes Skill Level: Medium

Activity 3 - The idiom hunter

Our members at Leonardo English always express interest in learning idioms, expressions and phrasal verbs. Let’s see a great example of how you can give yourself an activity to do this while listening.

Choose a podcast where the transcript is available, and listen to it once without the transcript. While listening, write down any idioms that you hear.

Next, listen again with the transcript and write down any further idioms that you find. They could be idioms that you already know, or new ones!

Or, instead of idioms, you could ‘hunt’ phrasal verbs .

You could even ‘hunt’ verb tenses. Have you recently learned the present perfect continuous tense ? Write down any examples that you hear, and analyse how they are used.

To make it more challenging, try this activity with a TED talk .

Skills: Listening, vocabulary, grammar Tools: Podcast or TED talk Time: 5-15 minutes Skill Level: Medium

Activity 4 - Clozing time

A great activity for focusing on details and new vocabulary is the cloze activity. Despite the funky name, a cloze is simply a fill-in-the-blanks activity.

Teachers love to give these in class when practising listening, but how can you make your own? It’s simple. All you need is a bit of imagination.

Again, find a short audio clip with a transcript. We’re looking for a very short clip of around one minute, or simply the first minute of a longer clip.

Read through the transcript and identify words or grammar examples that you wish to learn or practice. Copy and paste the transcript into a Word document and replace the identified items with blanks.

Then, put the activity aside for around a week, so that you ‘forget’ the answers. Finally, listen and fill in the blanks.

If you still remember the answers from when you made the worksheet, that’s fine. You’ve still learned something!

Skills: Listening, writing, listening for details Tools: Podcasts, TED talks Time: 5 minutes Skill Level: Medium

Activity 5 - News in two languages

Just like the last activity, this technique uses ‘ scaffolding ’ to help you slowly improve understanding of native speech. It’s great for learners who like the news.

The method is simple: watch the news in your own language, and then watch it in English.

I recommend just watching the first five minutes of the news (the main stories of the day). Why? Because they are likely to be the same on all the news channels.

When you watch the news first in your own language, you will already know the main ideas of the news in English. For example, if there was an earthquake in Japan, we know to listen for the word ‘earthquake’. Now, we can focus on the details and vocabulary - even without listening twice.

You can create a more formal activity, by writing a table with the news stories in your own language. Then, tick the stories that are covered in English. Were they covered in a similar style? What vocabulary did you pick up?

Skills: Listening, vocabulary, fluency Tools: New on TV or Internet Time: 5-15 minutes Skill Level: Medium

Activity 6 - Set your own questions

In an English class, your teacher might give you a worksheet when you practise listening. However, when you study by yourself, you need to be your own teacher!

Let’s work with this concept and turn it into an activity: 

  • Choose a formal listening activity, such as a podcast, a TED Talk or a documentary. It can be any length.
  • Listen to the introduction; perhaps the first minute.
  • From the introduction, try to predict what will be covered in the rest of the audio clip.
  • Next, set yourself some questions. For example, if you are listening to a documentary about Leonardo da Vinci: What made him famous? When did he paint the Mona Lisa? How did he die? Was he rich? Try to write some questions on the main ideas and some on the details.
  • Listen, and see if you can answer your questions.

Congratulations! You’ve just become your own teacher!

Skills: Listening, fluency Tools: Podcasts, TED talks, YouTube, Netflix Time: 20 minutes Skill Level: Medium

Hard or challenging activities

Activity 7 - the dictator.

Do you feel that you make a lot of ‘small mistakes’ in your English? Perhaps you confuse your prepositions or get ‘been’ and ‘being’ mixed up? If so, then dictation practice could be very helpful.

A dictation is simply an exercise where you listen and try to write down exactly what is said, line by line.

It helps you to focus on the small details. Did he say ‘fed up of’ or ‘fed up on’? Did she say ‘have’ or ‘had’? It helps to form a link between listening and grammatical accuracy.

How do you do it? Simple! Find a short audio clip in clear English with one speaker where a transcript is available. A short clip is best, or just the first one or two minutes of a longer clip. Play the audio a sentence (or part of a sentence) at a time and write down exactly what you hear. Then, check your dictation against the transcript.

It might be difficult at first, but keep going and you will improve!

Skills: Listening, writing, grammar, fluency Tools: Podcasts, TED talks Time: 10 minutes Skill Level: Hard

Activity 8 - The song lyric challenge

Songs can be very tricky. Sometimes, the lyrics aren’t clear - trust me, nobody can understand the lyrics to this song , not even one word! Sometimes, the lyrics have no meaning and sometimes the lyrics are full of confusing slang.

But don’t be too quick to ignore songs as a way to practise English, especially if you are moving from intermediate to advanced level.

Yes, pop songs are full of slang, but is that a bad thing? Slang is just a way of being expressive in English. For the same reason, song lyrics are full of idioms and phrasal verbs too.

Look at these lyrics from an old Rick Astley song :

Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you

There are three phrasal verbs (give something up, let someone down, run around), a great example of a contraction (gonna) and an interesting use of the word ‘desert’ (abandon).

The simple challenge with song lyrics is understanding the meaning. And the main advantage is that you will remember the vocabulary and grammatical structures every time you hear the song again!

However, a further challenge is finding a song with interesting lyrics that are easy to hear. I recommend this song as a starting point.

This website has a list of songs that feature various grammar points. This blog has a list of artists whose songs should be easy to understand.

Skills: Listening, writing, vocabulary Tools: Spotify or YouTube Time: 5-10 minutes Skill Level: Hard

Activity 9 - The no subtitle challenge

As your English gets better, it’s frustrating if you still need to rely on subtitles to understand. In fact, you may even feel guilty or foolish for using them!

Don’t worry. The English used in Hollywood movies and American TV shows is often spoken faster than in real life and may also contain more idioms and unusual language. After all, these shows are scripted (even the ‘reality’ shows!)

Instead of beating yourself up about it , why not turn subtitles into a challenge?

See if you can use the subtitles less and less. Do you have a favourite series, like Game of Thrones? Why not watch half of the season with the subtitles on, and then half with the subtitles off? This will give you a chance to get familiar with the actors’ voices first before listening without subtitles.

Or why not watch every other episode with the subtitles off? It’ll be hard at first, but you’ll get used to it.

What if you struggle to understand and you don’t enjoy the show as a result? Choose an old show that you’ve seen before (like Game of Thrones Season 1). That way, you will also slowly remember the story, even if you don’t catch all of the language.

There are also many websites that offer transcripts for TV shows and movies . These can help you.

Skills: Listening Tools: Netflix, YouTube, your favourite streaming service Time: 15 minutes or more Skill Level: Hard

Activity 10 - Advanced translation with BBC Reels

For the last activity, let’s try something a bit more advanced - a translation activity.

For this activity, I recommend using BBC Reels . These are a collection of short videos on a range of interesting topics, such as why some people are always late .

You’ll find that most of these videos are between three to eight minutes and you can switch on subtitles if you like. I recommend choosing shorter videos for this activity.

Your basic challenge is to translate 30 seconds at a time into your own language. The full activity is as follows:

  • Choose a BBC Reel, or a similar short video on a general, but interesting topic.
  • Listen to 30 seconds, then pause the video.
  • Write down your translation in your own language (it should be a few sentences).
  • Continue to the end of the video.
  • From your translation, make short notes in English.
  • The next day (if possible), use the notes and try to imitate the talk aloud in English.
  • Listen again, to hear how your final version compares to the original.

The reason for waiting until the next day is so that you talk from your notes and not your memory.

This may be a hard one, but the more challenging the activity, the more you can learn!

Remember the keys to good listening practice

These ten activities should activate your listening practice and give you some good ideas on how to improve.

There are countless other ways to improve your listening, but remember these key points:

  • Choose authentic materials.
  • Be prepared to listen more than once.
  • Give yourself an activity to do while you listen.

You might also like

24 Unorthodox Ways To Stick To Your English Learning Goals in 2024

24 Unorthodox Ways To Stick To Your English Learning Goals in 2024

What Is the Pareto Principle and How Can You Use It to Learn English More Effectively?

What Is the Pareto Principle and How Can You Use It to Learn English More Effectively?

10 Ways to Learn English with the BBC

10 Ways to Learn English with the BBC

leonardo english instagram

LoveToKnow

8 Reading Activities for High Schoolers That They'll Actually Enjoy

Reading and writing skills are important at any age, but we know it's not always easy to keep older kids engaged. Reading activities for high school have to be really compelling to compete with all the other things vying for teens' attention. These fun literacy activities will have them putting down their phones and picking up their pencils.

Need to Know Literacy is a broad term used to describe skills related to reading and writing. While much of the focus on literacy takes place in elementary school, there's definitely a need for continued development of skills at all grade levels.

Fun Reading Comprehension Activities for High School

There's no denying that a major component of literacy is reading comprehension, or the ability to make sense of the words on a page. The thing is, it's not always an easy thing to teach because it's such a broad topic. Students need to understand different kinds of texts across many aspects of life including work, home, and family.

These activities help you zero in on specific aspects of reading comprehension while keeping kids' attention.

Create a Quiz

Instead of having students take quizzes or tests after reading a novel, we love the idea of allowing the students to create the quiz. A test is meant to see what a student has learned after studying specific materials. This activates a student's ability to remember information, but it doesn't do the job of teaching reading comprehension.

Creating a quiz will make students think more specifically about what information was important and how to examine whether someone else has learned that information. This is a tricky way to teach reading comprehension because they have to work hard to know the material before they can write a quiz about it.

Preparation:

Create a list of short stories appropriate for your class

Instructions :

  • Ask each student to choose a short story from your approved list.
  • After reading the story, challenge students to create a comprehensive quiz about the story. Quizzes can be no less than 10 questions and no more than 20. Questions can cover a variety of topics such as characters, plot, and theme.
  • Once the quiz is complete, have students create an answer key.
  • Assign the selected stories as homework, or read and discuss them as a class. Use the student-created quizzes to gauge individual understanding of the story.

Online Profile of a Villain

We love this creative literacy activity that really lets kids get into the details of characters. The concept is simple; readers must select a book based only on a fake online profile created using its content. There are no cover images, author names, or plot summaries visible. This is fun way to get students focused on understanding characters and reading outside of their comfort zones.

An awesome bonus is that a student will need to consider all context clues if they hope to find a book in their preferred genre. If they end up with a genre they might not choose, they get to see how they feel about it (it might just be a new fave).

Preparation: 

  • Ask each student to think of a book they would recommend to a friend. Supply reading lists if necessary.
  • From the chosen book, each student should then write a character summary of the most villainous character.
  • You'll need to have card stock and markers on hand.

Instructions: 

  • Using the character summary, students should create an online profile of the villain. Remind students that a profile highlights positive qualities so they will need to put a positive spin on any negative traits.
  • Write the completed profile on the piece of card stock. Illustrations and creative text techniques are allowed to enhance this new cover for the selected book as long as they do not include an obvious clue as to the villain's identity.
  • All students should place their completed book covers at the front of the room.
  • Choose an order and have students select a character that they might want to learn more about. The book they select will be the next reading assignment.

World Mapping

Many children's stories and fantasy books have a map of the fictional world included. These maps can provide a fun backdrop for a unique listening and reading comprehension activity. Students will be challenged to hear their partner above all others and interpret their words into an image.

Need to Know Active listening skills are an integral aspect of adolescent literacy and a big component of reading comprehension. Listening not only involves hearing a word but also interpreting its meaning, and that's great practice for understanding and processing what you read.
  • Select two to five "other world" maps illustrated in popular fantasy books, like Winnie the Pooh or Lord of the Rings .
  • Prepare a step-by-step script of directions for drawing each map.
  • You'll need to have blank paper and colored pencils for each pair of students.

Instructions:

  • Separate the class into pairs. Give one person from each pair the script and the other person a blank paper and colored pencils. It's suggested that no two groups have the same world.
  • All pairs should start the activity at the same time. This will create a loud atmosphere full of distractions.
  • To start, the script reader should begin telling his partner the directions in the correct order. The person with the paper will need to listen to his partner, follow the directions, and create a world map.
  • Once all maps are complete, groups with the same script can show a comparison of their world map.
  • Open a discussion about what part of the activity was most difficult and why.

Activities to Connect Literacy and Modern Media

Viral videos, countless social media platforms, and entertainment flood the lives of teenagers today, but reading and writing don't have to compete for attention with them. We love the idea of incorporating all kinds of media into reading activities for high school to entice teens to participate and help them expand their knowledge to real life.

Make Your Own Photo Meme

Our phones are absolutely flooded with photos these days, and Instagram is a fixture at this point. Memes are all about combining words with photos, and coming up with the right words is a big part of literacy. The goal of this activity is to give students some light-hearted practice at writing. Students will be challenged to come up with text on the spot, but the humorous nature of the photos should help keep stress levels low.

  • Print funny images from the internet, leaving space on the paper to write under the image. On the back of the image write a genre such as romance, dystopian, science fiction, comedy, drama, or mystery.
  • Give each student one image and a few minutes to examine it.
  • Instruct students to write a funny sentence or two describing their image as it pertains to the given genre, basically creating their own meme. For example, an image of a kitten wrestling a rabbit with the word "mystery" on the back might prompt a caption like "I'm not kitten. Somebunny got hurt, and we need to find out whodunnit."
  • One by one, ask students to share their meme with the class.
  • After each speech, have the class guess what genre the meme would fit in.

Re-Tweet Poetry

Communicating effectively without a ton of words is a skill that can take some practice. On X (previously known as Twitter), the limited character count of posts challenges writers to get a point across in a concise manner.

Preparation :

Assign a poem to each student. Have the students read the poem before the activity.

  • Familiarize the class with the guidelines for X, namely the maximum character count of 280.
  • Students must first rewrite each stanza of the poem to fit into a single 280-character post while still conveying the tone, mood, and point of the stanza.
  • Once the entire poem has been rewritten as a series of tweets, students should create two hashtags to accompany the posts. The hashtags should relate to either the theme, title, or author of the poem.

Analyze Song Lyrics

Teenagers live by their soundtracks, maybe even more than they did in previous generations. Incorporating this love for music into a lesson about comprehension and writing can be pretty powerful. Students will need to interpret the meaning behind song lyrics, specifically if there is one controversial message that stands out.

Ask each student to choose a favorite song and submit it ahead of time. Check lyrics for availability and appropriateness before approving students' song choice.

  • Present each student with a copy of the lyrics for their chosen song.
  • Ask each student to write a literary analysis essay using the chosen song.
  • As an added learning experience, you could ask students to present their song and analysis to the class.

Activities to Focus on Words and Their Meanings

Vocabulary lessons can be incredibly dull and boring when they involve memorizing lists and reciting them back to the teacher. The thing is, being familiar with an extensive vocabulary can help students sound more professional in adult settings. These fun activities can help.

Beach Ball Vocab Lesson

Active lessons are awesome when you need to gain and keep the attention of teenagers. This age group is best suited for an active in-class game because they should be able to keep on task while having fun.

  • Use a permanent marker to create distinct sections on a beach ball, create as few or many as needed.
  • In each section, write a command dealing with the use of a vocabulary word. Some examples would be: change to an adverb, define the word, use it in a sentence, think of a rhyming word, and think of another word with the same root.

How to Play:

  • Instruct students to sit on their desks or have all the desks arranged in a circle before game play.
  • Write a vocabulary word on the white board, call out a student's name, and throw them the ball.
  • The student should then shout the answer to whichever prompt is closest to their left thumb as it pertains to the word on the board.
  • If the student answers correctly, the teacher should choose a new vocab word before the student calls out a classmate's name and throws the ball to that person. If the student answers incorrectly, the same vocab word is used and the ball is thrown to the next player.
  • Continue game play until all vocabulary words have been used or time is up.

Comic Strip Scene

Comic strips offer a place to showcase an entire story in very few words (plus their just really fun). This activity will require students to tap into their creativity and vocabulary skills in rewriting a scene from a play.

  • Scenes from a play
  • Blank paper
  • Colored pencils or markers
  • Assign a scene from a play to each student.
  • Instruct students to create a comic strip inspired by this scene. The purpose of the comic should mirror that of the scene, but the tone should be humorous as that is typically how comic strips are written. The basic idea is to capture the essence of the scene in images and only a few choice words. No text from the scene should be copied in the comic aside from character and location names.
  • Display and discuss the comic strips as a class. What were some of the most effective ways a particular scene was portrayed?

Connect the Dots and Have Fun

The best reading activities for high school involve covering a wide variety of skills related to the use of language. Help high school students prepare for successful adulthood by incorporating different activities that include each of these skills, but don't forget to have fun at the same time.

high school students reading

B1 listening

B1 listening

Are you a learner at B1 English level (intermediate) ? This section offers listening practice to help you understand the main points of clear, standard speech about everyday or job-related topics. Situations include phone calls, meetings and interviews.

Each lesson has a preparation task, an audio recording and two tasks to check your understanding and to practise a variety of listening skills. Make a start today!

Choose a listening lesson

A phone call from a customer

A phone call from a customer

Listen to the phone call from a customer to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about A phone call from a customer
  • Log in or register to post comments

A student discussion

A student discussion

Listen to two students comparing Mars and Earth to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about A student discussion

A team meeting about diversity

A team meeting about diversity

Listen to a team meeting about diversity to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about A team meeting about diversity

A weather forecast

A weather forecast

Listen to a weather forecast and answer the questions to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about A weather forecast

An interview about listening skills

An interview about listening skills

Listen to the English teacher talk about listening to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about An interview about listening skills

An introduction to a lecture

An introduction to a lecture

Listen to the introduction of a psychology lecture to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about An introduction to a lecture

Arriving late to class

Arriving late to class

Listen to the conversation between two students to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about Arriving late to class

At the chemist

At the chemist

Listen to a conversation at a chemist's to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about At the chemist

Chatting about a series

Chatting about a series

Listen to two friends chatting about a television series to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about Chatting about a series

Making a decision

Making a decision

Listen to a meeting in which colleagues make a decision to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about Making a decision

Meeting an old friend

Meeting an old friend

Listen to the conversation between two old friends to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about Meeting an old friend

Work–life balance

Work–life balance

Listen to a radio interview about maintaining a good work–life balance to practise and improve your listening skills.

  • Read more about Work–life balance

Learn to listen with confidence

Our online English classes feature lots of useful learning materials and activities to help you listen and respond with confidence in a safe and inclusive learning environment.

Practise listening to your classmates in live group classes, get listening support from a personal tutor in one-to-one lessons or practise by yourself at your own speed with a self-study course.

Explore courses

Online courses

Footer:Live classes

Group and one-to-one classes with expert teachers.

Footer:Self-study

Learn English in your own time, at your own pace.

Footer:Personalised Tutor

One-to-one sessions focused on a personal plan.

Footer:IELTS preparation

Get the score you need with private and group classes.  

  • Resource Collection
  • State Resources

Community for Adult Educators

Updates are coming to LINCS Courses. You'll see changes to the look, feel, and navigation of the site, but essential parts of your experience will remain the same. Contact us with any questions.

  • Public Groups
  • Micro Groups
  • Recent Activity
  • English Language Acquisition
  • Discussions

Teaching Listening Skills

Hello colleagues, We all know that listening is critical to language acquisition. What instructional routines have you found to be effective to build English learners' listening skills? 

In my teaching, I've often searched YouTube for short videos related to the themes we are focused on.  I've used videos for tasks such as a listening cloze. I also have learners complete an Anticipation Guide before and after viewing and later discuss comprehension questions about the content of the video. In addition, I greatly value using video transcripts for a range of activities in class focused on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. 

A site I've drawn from often is Breaking News English , which is freely available. At this site, teachers can find a great many lessons on a wide range of newsy topics. The site features short news stories written at various levels from high beginning/low intermediate to advanced.  Listening tasks on the site allow the listener to choose how fast or slow they want to listen. The site also features a great many practice activities teachers can choose from for each story.

For teachers who work with beginners, the ESL Literacy Readers site features excellent low-level texts for reading and listening.

What internet sites have you found useful for listening?  Please let us know! You are invited to  pose any questions you may about about teaching listening skills and share your listening instructional routines here in our community. 

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition Group

  • Log in or register to post comments

IMAGES

  1. Listening Activities for Preschool Children

    reading listening activities

  2. How To Improve My Child's Listening Skills

    reading listening activities

  3. Listening Activities to Get Your Students Back into an Attentive Habit

    reading listening activities

  4. 12 Listening Activities for ESL Students

    reading listening activities

  5. Pin on Download

    reading listening activities

  6. Listening to Reading/Listening Center Activities for 58 Trade Books

    reading listening activities

VIDEO

  1. Listening skills activity

  2. Cambridge Starters 4 Reading and Writing Test 2 Part 4

  3. Practice listening and reading through short stories| listen and practice #12#| Level A

  4. Listening Activities

  5. Learn English Vocabulary for B1

  6. Introduction to Listening and Reading Comprehension

COMMENTS

  1. Activities for Learners

    10+ minutes Close filters Listening Learn English with our free online listening, grammar, vocabulary and reading activities. Practise your English and get ready for your Cambridge English exam.

  2. Listening

    Skills Listening Listening Discover your current English level by taking our free online test Discover your level Here you can find activities to practise your listening skills. Listening will help you to improve your understanding of the language and your pronunciation.

  3. Free Listening Center Activities

    In this post I'm sharing FREE Listening to Reading Response Activities for Kindergarten, first and second grade students. These activities make a meaningful no-prep literacy center. Many trends come and go in education, but one literacy activity that has stood the test of time is the Listening Center.

  4. 40 ESL Listening Activities for 7 Learning Styles—from ...

    1. Listen and Draw If you have kinesthetic students who struggle to express themselves in English, Listen and Draw isolates listening from speaking. Simply have your students take out a blank piece of paper and give them instructions on what to draw. For example, you might say the following: Draw a square in the center of your paper.

  5. 7 Listening Activities to Get Your Students Attentive & Ready to Learn

    Listening activities: 7 important ideas for teaching listening skills in the classroom, such as whole body listening, class games, and daily practice ideas. As teachers, we always hope that our students are listening carefully to our lessons and assignment instructions.

  6. Listening to Reading

    June 8, 2021 Sometimes it can be tricky to incorporate listening to reading in your weekly literacy rotations. But we are here today to share some simple Listening to Reading ideas your students are going to love (read to the bottom to grab these ideas in a free printable version). There are many benefits for kids when listening to reading:

  7. How to Teach Listening in the ESL Classroom: 15 Valuable Activities

    During listening activities. While students are watching and/or listening, it's sometimes hard to tell whether they are really still paying attention or just relaxing and daydreaming. (At least if it's a video, they are more likely to stay focused.) So it's a good idea to give them tasks to do while playing the "text." Here are some ...

  8. Free Online Reading and Listening Resources for ESL Learners

    A Digital Workbook for Beginning ESOL. This free online book contains three levels of interactive grammar lessons and reading activities for beginning students of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). The grammar section includes a select set of YouTube videos, and the three original readers include short picture or chapter stories.

  9. Skills

    Skills. Practise your reading, writing, listening and speaking skills at your level. Here you can find practice materials and activities to improve your English speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. Improving your skills will help you use English more effectively so that you can do well in your studies, get ahead at work and ...

  10. 5 ESL Games for Teaching Reading and Listening Skills

    This is a super simple ESL game that focuses on listening, reading comprehension, speaking skills. In many ESL settings, teachers focus very heavily on training their students to answer questions. While this is useful, questions and answers form a symbiotic relationship. This game forces students to think backward and work out the grammar for ...

  11. 12 Great ESL Listening Activities & Games

    12 Great ESL Listening Activities & Games By Jonathan Race / September 16, 2019 Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting.

  12. 17 Engaging ESL Listening Activities for Your Next Class

    Listening activities can have a place at any point in the lesson - as a warm-up to generate excitement for the upcoming lesson, in the middle of a lesson, or at the conclusion of a lesson to wrap things up.

  13. 12 Examples of While-Listening Activities

    What While-Listening Activities are there? 1. Listen and Describe 2. True or False 3. Hidden Picture 4. Dictation of short passages 5. Dictogloss 6: Picture Dictation 7. False Facts Dictation 8. Running Dictation 9. Listen and Do Activities 10. Twelve Questions 11: Gap Fill 12: Multiple Choice More Teaching English Articles

  14. Listen A Minute: English Listening Lesson on Reading Activities

    A FREE 9-page ESL Lesson Listening plan on Reading Activities. A graded article, two online quizzes, a printable worksheet and a 60-second mp3 listening on this topic. English Listening Lesson on ... READING ACTIVITIES POSTER Make a poster about reading_activities. Show it to your classmates in the next lesson. Give each other feedback on your ...

  15. 7 Targeted Active Listening Games, Exercises and Activities for Adults

    1 It's How They Say It Recognising and Interpreting Non-Verbal Cues When talking, people convey vital information through non-verbal behaviour and gestures. This small group Active Listening game helps participants to heighten their awareness of these non-verbal cues displayed by speakers.

  16. English reading and listening practice

    Listening Comprehension Improve your English listening skills with our collection of audio tracks accompanied by comprehension questions and transcripts. Improve your English listening and reading skills with Lingolia! Here you can find a variety of English texts and listening tracks from level A2-B2.

  17. A1 listening

    A1 listening. Are you a learner at A1 English level (elementary)? This section offers listening practice to help you understand familiar words and basic phrases when people speak slowly and clearly. Situations include meeting people, shopping and conversations at work. Each lesson has a preparation task, an audio recording and two tasks to ...

  18. Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab

    Boosting Your English Listening Skills. Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab has been providing online English listening comprehension activities for ESL and EFL learners since 1998. Visit Randall's other Web sites at DailyESL.com, EZslang.com, and Trainyouraccent.com for more language practice.

  19. Listening comprehension exercises esl

    Listening practice 2 - levels. Listening - quizzes: levels. Activities: levels A1 / B1 / C1. Easy listening activities. Basic to advanced lessons. Listening activities - intermediate. Audio activities by level. Listening skills practice - videos. Audio + video - comprehension.

  20. 10 Activities to Improve Your English Listening [Self-Study Guide #1]

    Note: This is the first of a series of guides covering self-study activities. You may also be interested in the other guides on writing, reading, speaking, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. You want to practise English listening skills, but there's a problem. "Real" listening, such as watching the news on CNN, seems too difficult.

  21. The Best ESL Listening Games and Activities.Making English Fun

    1. Telephone Game Overview: The Telephone Game is a classic and engaging activity that tests students' listening and memory skills. It's particularly effective in highlighting how easily information can be misunderstood or changed in communication. Setup: Arrange students in a circle, either sitting or standing.

  22. 8 Reading Activities for High Schoolers That They'll Actually Enjoy

    Activities to Connect Literacy and Modern Media . Viral videos, countless social media platforms, and entertainment flood the lives of teenagers today, but reading and writing don't have to ...

  23. B1 listening

    B1 listening. Are you a learner at B1 English level (intermediate)? This section offers listening practice to help you understand the main points of clear, standard speech about everyday or job-related topics. Situations include phone calls, meetings and interviews. Each lesson has a preparation task, an audio recording and two tasks to check ...

  24. Teaching Listening Skills

    Listening tasks on the site allow the listener to choose how fast or slow they want to listen. The site also features a great many practice activities teachers can choose from for each story. For teachers who work with beginners, the ESL Literacy Readers site features excellent low-level texts for reading and listening.

  25. CLC Children Learning Chinese on Instagram: " Hey Parents! Get ready

    childrenlearningchinese on February 8, 2024: " Hey Parents! Get ready for a thrilling adventure at CLC! Here are the superpowers yo..."