Teaching Tools for ESL Listening

1) Vocaroo.com

Simple and great tool to make recordings. You can directly share the recordings you made via email, Facebook, blog, website, and etc from the website, which seems very convenient. The website also allows me to download the recording in mp3 format, which enables me to edit the recordings later using other programs. When creating a sample listening sample, you can use this website to make a brief recording and then edit the audio file using Audicity. 

1) ESL Daily English - Google App

ESL podcasts with various episodes! You can manage the speed of each episode, and there are tons of great podcasts on various topics. The scripts are also provided along with the audio, and it is incredible that this app is free for everyone. This app could be used to teach listening and grammar at the same time by using the scripts. This app could also be used in role play where students can adapt the topic of the listening sample and the script to make their own. Possibly, students could continue the story after listening to an episode.

3) Audiobooks

ESL students often express their preference on listening to the audio along with reading the passage visually. It is great that there are greater choices of selecting audio books, and perhaps it would be helpful to choose a book from Audiobooks and have the hardcopy of the book to teach integrated skills through both the hardcopy and audio version of the book.

4) Newsy

This website provides news reports on current events, and it was very interesting that the reporter of the news uses quite understandable English. Since a lot of ESL students express difficulties watching the regular news that are broadcasted from CNN or NBC due to their highly advanced word choices, Newsy will provide the most authentic listening samples. With this website, you can create listening comprehension questions which the students can answer after listening/watching the newscast. Continued from this activity, you can also design a more communicate activity where the students can choose a current event and create their own newscast like one from Newsy.