Listening Practice

• IELTS Made Easier – my own podcast, specifically aimed at helping you develop in all areas of the IELTS test
• British Council Listening Lessons
• British Council Word on the Street
• British Council Learn English Audio Zone
• British Council Video Zone also has lots of IELTS-related videos!
• BBC Learning English – not just for listening!
• BBC 6-minute English – many IELTS-related topics and questions
• Exam English – lots of Listening test practice for IELTS
• Elllo.org – a free graded Listening Library
• Breaking News English – get the news graded for your level
• News in Levels – listen to the news in different levels
• Listen a minute – useful for the 2-minute long turn perhaps?
• ESL-lab – graded listening with follow-up exercises (American accent)
• Dreamreader – is a nice site for extra reading with listening and quizzes.
• VOA (Voice of America) – this site has lots of IELTS-related Listenings at different levels with follow-up activities, like this one about Green Roofs
• Scientific American A useful podcast with 1-minute IELTS-style articles
• If you need a break and want to listen to some music, why not try LyricsTraining for a nice change? It lets you listen to the lyrics of your favourite songs and fill in the gaps! So then you can sing along in English! Great for getting used to fast, connected speech.
• How to understand native speakers (YouTube video)
• High Level Listening – Advanced, American English with tapescripts on everyday topics
• BBC Radio 4 Podcast – Costing the Earth
• TED talks – Get the list of the best TED talks for IELTS in my Listening Course
• I really love these bite-sized Academic English mini-lectures on YouTube by Mike Gibson. All of the topics are very IELTS-focused.

Other useful apps and websites

• Youglish Use YouTube to hear specific words in their natural context so that you develop a ‘listening ear’ and get used to fast speech
• Forvo lets you hear people with different accents pronouncing a word of your choice e.g. ‘women’ = /ˈwɪmɪn/
• Ororo.tv lets you watch TV with subtitles AND a translator as you watch
• TubeQuizard is a fabulous place to do exercises based on well-chosen YouTube videos.
• Ignite – 5-minute talks on a variety of topic to help you get used to fast speech.
• Nik Peachey’s blog will keep you up-to-date with anything new and fabulous. For example here he talks about tools like ListenNotes (a podcast search engine), AccentRosie (an app that sends you messages) TeachVid (using YouTube videos) ReadAloud (a chrome extension that reads out the webpage) Playpost (an app that reads blogs out for you!)
• Richard Byrne’s amazing Practical Ed Tech has tech tutorials are aimed at teachers, but there’s so much that students can gain from his tips.
• FutureLearn has many free IELTS courses produced by the British Council