Listening can be a challenge even for experienced ESL students. Scoring high on a grammar quiz may be a piece of cake, but it’s not always easy to make out every word a native speaker says - especially when that speaker is talking at normal speed, without pauses between words. Even so, listening is a crucial component of modern ESL teaching, right up there with grammar, speaking, and writing. If you want to teach your class effectively, you need to teach them listening.
The question of how, exactly to approach that, though, isn’t always clear. Some teachers sit at the front of the classroom and speak in slow, measured tones, as the students write out every word they say. Others bring in CDs or play online videos, and ask the students to transcribe as many words as they can catch. Still others encourage their students to speak naturally with each other, and write down what their partners say. Many teachers try to combine all these approaches, so students will get the most varied listening exposure possible.
Whatever your approach - or set of approaches - to listening exercises, BusyTeacher.org has worksheets just for you. Our 2,950 listening worksheets will provide your class with all kinds of opportunities to work with spoken English in all its forms, and gain exposure to a variety of regional accents, speaking speeds, and topics. By the time you’ve gone through a few of these worksheets with your class, you’ll start to see distinct improvement in many of your students’ listening skills.
The exercises offered on our listening worksheets come in a wide range of formats - from exercises in which students transcribe interviews with celebrities, to ones in which they listen to popular songs or even read-aloud poems. Some are targeted at lower-level students, and just ask the listeners to fill in the missing words from a short sample of dialogue. Others are targeted at higher-level students, and encourage them to write or talk about their reactions to the themes and ideas presented in a longer conversation.
No matter which level or style of exercise you use, you can be sure that it’s already been tested and found to work in a classroom like yours. That’s because every worksheet on BusyTeacher.org has been created by ESL teachers just like you, and used in real classrooms all over the world. As a matter of fact, if you’ve created a worksheet that’s worked well in your own classroom, our community would love for you to share it - just click the “Submit a worksheet” button at the bottom of this page, and send it our way!
As you browse down this page, you’ll notice that all the worksheets are visible in a small thumbnail view, so you can get a general idea of what each one looks like before you download it. This time-saving twist lets you glance over all our worksheets, and just grab the ones that interest you the most. Plus, every one of our 2,950 listening worksheets is completely free to download, print, and use in your classroom. So scroll on down, print some out, and give them a whirl in your classroom today!
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Here we have an exercise on a song, "Glad you came" that can be adapted for other songs. The song is introduced to students as a common text and the questions that follow it ask students what kinf ...
This is a nice song to work with elementary and pre-intermediate students, preferably adults or teens! You can ask your students to try to guess the words first (on the second paragraph), as they ...
This is a simple "fill in the gaps" exercise made with the song "green eyes" by Coldplay. Students will enjoy listening to this song while trying to find the right word that goes with each sentenc ...
This is a guide for adolescents who are elementary students. It's quite simple to do, they listen to the song and put the words in the correct place. First, I elicited the meanings of the words ad ...
This is a worksheet designed to work with 10 - 12 year -old students while watching the movie. It focuses on rhymes, word families, indoor and outdoor activities, adectives and physical descriptio ...
This is a worksheet for the film 50 dates. It's been designed for 11, 12 year - olds, and explores vocabulary related to holidays activities, use of relative clauses, use of simple present, simple ...
This worksheet offers a gap fill activity, a present simple / present continous activity, an irregular verbs activity, a speaking activity (students imagine her side of the story and come up with ...
This worksheet includes a warm-up speaking activity, a fill-in exercise recycling most of the verb tenses and a post-listening task where students are asked to create a happiness mind map. This s ...
This is a song worksheet designed to check some close sounds distinction as well as some irregular verbs past forms. I enjoyed listening to the song and so did my students who loved doing the vari ...
This listening gap-fill and speaking activity sheet is designed to help students learn and detect some common idioms and expressions as well as giving them some informal English. It works well as ...
This is a simple worksheet about the movie "The Journey to the Center of the Earth", with Brendan Fraser. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that on Youtube. In this activity, students watch the first ...
A relatively simple vocabulary and sentence worksheet but with good discussion questions and the end. The vocabulary exercise helps the student practice noticing slight differences between very si ...
This activity is suitable for teaching comparative, superlative, auxiliaries and contractions. It includes the Topic, Level, Age, and Activity step by step. The worksheet provides exercise with ...
This is a warmer I used with my elementary students (though it can be adjusted for any level). The activities are based on the song "Summer Wine" by Lee Hazlewood (1966). Though adjustable, the pl ...
4 different activities on the song: fill in the gaps with words from a bank, match beginnings and endings of some sentences, cross the word they don't hear and order parts of the song. In the ord ...
This is a great song worksheet to improve students' listening. It can be used from intermediate level. As this song is the soundtrack for the movie Troy, there are some pre-listening questions whi ...
This is a very useful song class activity to improve students' listening. It can be used from intermediate level. There are some wrong words and as the students listen to the song they have to r ...
Worksheet about the documentary named "Supersize Me": questions, select alternatives, complete information. Instructions:
Read all the instructions, if you have questions please ask your teacher ...
This song is full of adjectives and is good for opposites and comparatives. It is good for students with strong listening skills as it's sung very quickly. It could be used with a strong elementar ...
Different activities all around this famous song: fill in the gaps, match parts of sentences, guess the words and cross the words you don't hear. This last exercice was, by far, the most successfu ...
A simple worksheet based on the movie 50 First Dates. It is a questionnaire students have to complete after watching the movie. The questions are simple and all of my students were able to answer ...
Worksheet on the song by Adele. It is a fill in the gap exercise. Students can try to fill in the gaps by completing the definitions they have at the end of the lyrics. They can work in pairs with ...
Even though it's an old song, it's so nice. Students can practice verbs in simple present and present continuous listening to this song. It's a very simple and relaxing activity you can do it as ...
This cover Madonna recorded in 2000 is great to practice the simple past, practice vocabulary, teach expressions and to "open" the students' ears as they have fun trying to sing with the Queen Of ...
This activity will help students of the basic or pre-intermediate level develop their listening skills and also their concentration. Students love songs, so we have to take advantage of it. First, ...
3 5,813ElemPre-Int
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