Real English

The Real English website has impromptu video interviews with a wide range of people, many of whom are simply folks on the street. They are often tagged and grouped around certain grammar points. Many also have exercises and pre-listening vocabulary lists.

Unfortunately, many of the interviews are quite fragmented with a very simple question-answer format and little followup or connection between the questions. (e.g., Q: What did you do yesterday. A: We shopped. Q: What do you hope to achieve before you die?...)

English Central

English Central is mainly a collection of existing videos, rather than a producer of content. They do, however, add some significant value.  First, they rank the videos for different English proficiency levels. Then, they add subtitles and provide an easy to use viewer. Next, they encourage students to record themselves speaking the lines from the video and use speech recognition software to indicate whether these have been spoken correctly or not. They also have vocabulary lists.

Overall, I think the main value is in the ranked, subtitled videos. The pronunciation check is not likely to be very effective and the glosses for the vocabulary vary a good deal in terms of how easy/accurate they are. Nevertheless, there is a large amount of material available, and it's worth checking out.

Learning English with the CBC

[If you have trouble with the videos, try a different browser.]
CBC Ottawa has started putting together some self-study listening lessons. It looks like it might be useful, but right now, the videos don't seem to be working. I've tested it on both Windows and Mac. Keep checking back and let me know if something starts working.

From TESL Canada

TESL Canada is collecting materials. Right now there are some monologues and dialogues designed by Brock University student Martin Woodyard. They include illustrations, a transcripts, and MP3s. For each transcript, the CLB level is indicated at the far right of the link, (e.g., Transcript-LateMono(for MP3 1-2-3-4)-L-4 is CLB 4). Permission is granted for classroom copying, but copyright remains with the creators.

Other non-listening resources are available here.

British Council Elementary Podcasts

The British Council has been doing elementary podcasts since 2008, so there's a lot of material there. The first two seasons' podcasts are about half an hour each, broken into multiple sections, while the third season had shortened them down to about 10 minutes each. Most of them are covered by a creative commons license, which allows you to freely reproduce them. Each has materials attached.

As you would expect, the accents are mostly British. The speaking can get a bit fast, but the content and the activities are aimed at quite low levels.

Premier Skills English

Premier Skills English is a collaborative project between the British Council and the Barclays Premier League. They have heaps of lesson plans and materials based around football, including interviews with some of the top players.

To make your own MP3

This is great for teachers and students. Just load the website, click to record, and share. Couldn't be easier.