This blog has been designed to share interesting materials with my secondary EFL students (14-17) but you are welcome if you also find it useful to improve your English.

Tuesday 13 February 2018

8 sites to improve your oral skills

If you want to improve your listening skills, here are some sites that will help you in the process:

  1. YouTubeThis popular site will let you choose videos of any genre and about any topic you may be interested in: tutorials, movies, documentaries, movies, etc. If you can understand most of what is being said, no problem, you may slow the video down to make it easier to understand or check the most difficult words. If your level is lower and you need subtitles, you can either choose videos with subtitles or add your own using this YouTube tool.
  2. Speech Notes is a speech recognition text editor. You can read or tell your own texts for the

    computer to convert them into text. It will let you know when your speech is easy or difficult to understand.
  3. Natural Readers is a complementary service. You can write or paste any text that will be read aloud to you with the accent and voice you choose. This will let you know how to read or pronounce some difficult words or expressions.
  4. British Council Listening Skills Practice. This site has a good number of videos and audios with a number of activities to follow. The texts have been designed for students of English and are quite easy for a foreign student.
  5. Lyricstraining is the best site for those who love music. There are lots of different activities at different levels about the latest songs. First you select your level (beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert) and then you choose the song you are going to complete the lyrics of. The higher your level, the more words that are missing and you will have to supply.
  6. Podcasts in English has a large number of podcasts at different levels and about different topics. Although the worksheets and other extras are only for subscribers, you can find many interesting audio files about a lot of topics.
  7. Audio Lingua is also a site for podcasts. You can find them in a number of languages and you can search them by your level (A1-A2-B1-B2-C1-C2), language, key word, and length. You can even download the podcasts. You can submit podcasts for other learners of your own language. If you have a website or blog, these podcasts can be embbed in it.
  8. BBC Learning English. This popular site has a good number of interesting features and sections. My recommendation is 6-Minute English, a series that contains short audio files about hot topics. You can listen to the podcasts and the site also contains the transcripts and the key vocabulary you will hear.

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