Using English for Academic Purposes

Andy Gillett put together the EUfAP site about 11 years ago, and it's been very successful since. It provides listening instruction, not just material or exercises.

One Stop English Listening

Here's heaps of material here. I'll try to categorize and describe some of it when I get a chance. It prompts your to register, which is free, but many of the materials appear to be available even without registration.

English Accent Coach

This website is being put together by Ron Thomson out of Brock U. It's currently in Beta, and will be changing a bit in the next few weeks, but it looks quite useful for helping learning hear the distinction between sounds. It's also likely good for TESL students learning about phonology and pronunciation.


It's a game-like interface that plays syllables or words containing target phonemes that have to then be identified. The sound quality is high and the the pronunciations are varied but natural. I would strongly recommend using earphones rather than speakers.

English-language Learning: Listening to Academic Lectures

This came from a Ryerson site, suggested by Irene Kosmas. 

English-language Learning: Listening to Academic Lectures appears to be a Canadian site. It begins with a significant overview of listening strategies. Then there are five lectures to work on. Each with a series of steps and exercises to work through. All have downloadable transcripts, MP3 audio files, and downloadable video files (all together in one large (over 100MB) zip file, which needs to be expanded) for flexible delivery. Although there is a copyright notice, all materials on the site are expressly free to download. The media also has click-to-listen links, but they wouldn't play on my MacBook. 

The speaker, at least in the first lecture, is competent, but rather dull. He reader from cue cards, and the video/audio quality is degraded by darkness and a constant buzz.

These are longer lectures, the first being 23 minutes: definitely for higher-level learners.

Focus on English

This is linked to from a Ryerson site, suggested by Irene Kosmas.

Focus on English is a set of basic situational-functional conversations. Topics include emotions, fashion, health, and shopping, and the conversations are very short. Perhaps suitable for levels 1-4 with most in the 2-3 range. Transcripts are sometimes available. The files all use the RealAudio format, so they're streamed--you can't download them. It looks like they don't want you to copy their stuff.

Human Evolution

This TED talk is very relevant to the level 6 reading chapter "the thread of life". The explanation is clear and the delivery is simple, if rather dull. The conclusions, however, disagree with the chapter's claim that we didn't mix with Neanderthals.

Breaking News English

I'll come back and add some details later, but here's a bunch of free listening activities around news items.