For Teachers | Free ESL Listening Activities by Level

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Listen in English is a free listening practice site with over 800 hand-crafted lessons designed to work on both mobile and desktop browsers. It is not an app. There is no login required, and no cost — for you or your students. Ads pay for the site. Please don't use ad blockers.

What's New

26/06/20 Two new Listen to a Conversation Lessons for the TOEFL Test added. [ #5 ] and [ #6 ].

26/06/13 Two new lessons from How I Met Your Mother: Post-Breakup Stuff (1) and (2).

26/06/12 A new lesson from The IT Crowd: Recognition at Work. Great for business-focused classes.

26/06/11 TOEFL 2026 Listening: Choose a Response #6 added to the Skills section.

26/06/07 New timed reading: The World Cup - readings 1 to 9 added. Reading #10 coming soon.

26/06/05 The Grammar Index page was updated.

26/06/03 Added a round up and round down practice question to the discussion section of Emily in Paris: Buying Flowers with Camille.

26/06/03 A new lesson from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Enter the Lists.

26/06/02 Edited Timed reading - Street Food: Fish & Chips in order to clarify paragraph 3.

26/06/01 This For Teachers page was added. It includes feedback forms, level alignment, site organization, and lesson activity descriptions.

26/05/30 TOEFL 2026 Listening: Choose a Response #5 added to the Skills section.

26/05/25 Advanced Search updated. Filter lessons by level, accent, category, and topic.

26/05/20 PDFs added to American English File series. (B.1, B.2, B.3, B.4, B.5)

26/05/10 Timed Reading series launched. Read against the clock, then answer comprehension questions. Little Women Street Food Video Game Histroy.

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Levels and CEFR Alignment

All lessons are tagged with a level from 1 to 6. The table below shows how these correspond to standard proficiency frameworks.

LIE	Description	CEFR	IELTS	TOEIC
L1	Near beginner	A1	2-3	200-250
L2	High beginner	A2	3-4	250-350
L3	Low intermediate	B1	4-5	350-500
L4	High intermediate	B2	5-6	500-650
L5	Advanced	C1	6-8	650-850
L6	Near fluent	C2	8+	850+

Not sure where to place your students? Use the [ Level Check ] page, which includes audio examples at each level, or assign one of four [ Listening Placement Tests ].

Content Categories

The site is organized into four main categories. Each suits a different classroom context.

Easy TV (Levels 1-3): Graded content designed specifically for ESL and EFL learners. Slower speech, simpler vocabulary, clear sentence structure. Good for beginners who are not yet ready for authentic native-speaker content.

Easy TV Series

American English File (AEF): An ESL-level series following the lives of Rob (British) and Jenny (American). It covers a range of everyday topics and interactions.
AEF Short Films: ESL-level documentary-style videos on a number of cultural topics. These are some of the easiest videos on the site.
AEF Street Interviews: ESL-level videos in which regular people on the street are interviewed about common topics. The videos are quite easy and accessible.
Top Notch TV: Following the lives of five American coworkers who work at a travel agency. It feels like an American sitcom but it is ESL-level.
Pearson Business Partner: An ESL-level series focused on business situations and language. Each series introduces a new set of characters and includes a diverse set of native and non-native accents.
Friends (easy): The classic TV series Friends. Each clip is short, clear, and slowed down. It is designed to be a bridge between Easy TV and TV & Movies.

TV & Movies (Levels 3-6): Clips from real TV shows and films. Authentic language and content that students already know and enjoy. The Friends (easy) lessons are meant as a bridge between Easy TV and TV & Movies.

Selected TV & Movie Series

Friends: The classic NBC sitcom about six friends living in New York City. Authentic American English with humour that works across cultures and levels.
Friends (easy): The same show, slowed down 15% and clipped short. Designed as a bridge between Easy TV and full-speed authentic content.
Emily in Paris: A young American marketing executive navigates work and life in Paris. The clips on this site focus on business and marketing situations and language.
Wednesday: The Addams Family spinoff following Wednesday Addams at a supernatural boarding school. The clips on this site focus on common adolescent situations and Gen Z vocab.
The Pitt: A medical drama set in a Pittsburgh emergency room. The clips focus on medical situations and language. Ideal for English classes for doctors and nurses.
Modern Family: A sitcom following three very different but related families. The language tends to be idiomatic, the pronunciation is very natural, so it can be unclear.
The Office: An American workplace mockumentary with very sarcastic American humor. The clips focus on workplace dynamics, business situations, and business language.
The Intern: A film about a 70-year-old retiree who becomes an intern at a New York fashion startup. The clips focus on business and marketing situations and language.
Notting Hill: A British romantic comedy about a London bookshop owner who falls for a famous American actress. The themes are relationship-focused. The clips provide a natural contrast between British and American English.
Harry Potter: The British film adaptations of J.K. Rowling's novels. The accents and vocabulary are British. The clips work well as a point of comparison for students reading the novel.
Frozen: Disney's animated musical set in a Scandinavian-inspired kingdom. The clips feature clear, well-paced American English and work well at the lower end of the TV & Movies level range.
K-Pop Demon Hunters: A 2025 animated musical action film. The clips feature American English with modern slang, pop culture references, and themes about acceptance and fitting in. Good for younger learners.

Language Skills (Levels 1-4): Focused practice activities including TOEFL 2026 listening preparation, speech reductions (gonna, wanna), Listen & Draw, and timed reading. Useful for test preparation classes or skill-focused lessons.

Skills Categories

TOEFL Listening: Structured listening tasks modelled on the TOEFL 2026 format — Choose a Response, Conversations, Announcements, and Academic Talks.
TOEFL Speaking: Practice tasks based on the TOEFL 2026 speaking section - Listen & Repeat and Take an Interview. They include images for the Listen & Repeat and sample answers for the Take an Interview.
Listen & Draw: Students listen to a description and draw what they hear. An authentic TPR type of activity focused on listening accuracy. Good for beginners and for classes that need a change of pace.
Reductions: Focused practice on reduced speech forms — gonna, wanna, coulda, and others. Useful for closing the gap between classroom English and real spoken English.
Timed Reading: Short passages with a built-in timer and comprehension questions. Students read against the clock and track their own speed. A good progress check for students or a good addition to test preparation.

Academic (Levels 3-6): Documentary-style video and audio lessons with science and nature content as well as evergreen news focused content. Well suited to academic preparation and higher-level classes.

Academic Categories

BBC News Headlines: Audio lessons built around real BBC Global News podcast episodes, published three times a week. The Listen & Repeat and Fill in the Missing Letters activities are modelled on the new TOEFL format, though the topics are current news rather than academic content.
News Stories: Evergreen news-based lessons on topics that remain relevant beyond the news cycle — society, health, technology, and global issues.
Nature Videos: Lessons based on documentary-style nature and wildlife videos. Clear narration, rich descriptive vocabulary, and content that works across cultures.
Science & Tech: Videos covering science, technology, and innovation topics. Good for students with academic or professional goals in STEM fields.
Culture & Language: Videos that explore holidays, language, and society. Accessible to a wide range of levels and interests.
Processes: Videos that explain how things work — natural processes, systems, and mechanisms. Useful for academic writing and process description practice.
Academic (TOEFL): Longer academic-style listening passages at TOEFL difficulty. Suitable for students preparing for university-level English or standardised tests. The TOEFL style practice belongs to the old TOEFL format.

You can browse all lessons by level, accent, category, and topic using the [ Advanced Search ] page.

What Each Lesson Includes

Every lesson follows a consistent structure that works well as a self-contained classroom activity, online class, or homework assignment:

Vocabulary: Key words and phrases from the clip, with context-specific definitions. Designed to be read before watching.

Background: A brief scene-setting section that gives students only what they need to understand the clip.

Comprehension Questions: True/false and multiple-choice questions. These are not test questions. They are only meant to check comprehension. If the listener understands the clip, they should be easy.

Script: A full transcript of the clip. Students are encouraged to read and listen simultaneously — a technique with strong research support for listening development.

Discussion Questions: Open questions that move from literal comprehension to personal response and critical thinking. Ready to use as a conversation warm-up or speaking activity.

Language Activities: Depending on the lesson, these include Listen & Repeat pronunciation practice, vocabulary review, grammar cloze, and a guided summary writing section.

Language Activities

Listen & Repeat: Short audio clips of individual lines from the script, designed to train listening accuracy at the word and phrase level. It also works as a pronunciation activity — helping students reproduce the stress, rhythm, and connected speech patterns of natural English.
Sentence Building: Students are given the content words of a sentence describing the video in order and must reconstruct a full grammatical sentence. The challenge is supplying the function words (at, the, is, to), inflections (-ing, -s, -ly), and grammatical structures (be -ing, have p.p, more...than) while staying true to what happened in the clip. A great way for students to produce and immediately self-correct.
Grammar: A cloze activity targeting specific grammar points (modals, comparisons, tense) drawn from the clip. Designed to accompany focused grammar instruction with focused in-context examples.
Vocab Review: Sentences taken verbatim from the script, with target words replaced by synonyms. Students see the word used in context alongside its meaning in English — building vocabulary through L2 association rather than translation.
Dialogue Practice: Students read the full script aloud in pairs, then hide key target language items and read it again from memory. A fluency activity that reinforces the lesson's language focus in the exact conversational context where it appeared.
Details: Questions about highly specific visual and spoken details from the video. It can be used as a fun competitive activity between teams in group classes. (Mainly in: Wednesday, About Time, Notting Hill, La La Land, Passengers)
Compare the Book: Students compare clips from the movie to passages from the book. It can generate natural discussion through comparison and help develop critical thinking skills. (Only in: Charlotte's Web, the Hobbit, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner)

Suggested Classroom Workflows

As a self-study homework assignment (flipped classroom): Assign a lesson before class. Students watch the video, answer the questions, and read the transcript at home. Use the Discussion Questions to open the following class. This works well as a flipped classroom model — students do the receptive work independently, and class time is used for speaking, discussion, and language focus.

As an in-class listening activity: Start with interest-generating questions. Scaffold with background and vocabulary. Play the clip and have students work in pairs to answer the comprehension questions. Then move into either the discussion questions or language activities. Most lessons have too many activities to be done all in one class. But each lesson has enough activities to meet different student needs (grammar, pronunciation, fluency-building) and keep classes from getting too repetitive.

As a weekly routine: The BBC Headlines lessons are published three times a week and follow an identical format every time. Once students know the format, they can work through a lesson independently. Good for building a consistent listening habit.

For TOEFL preparation: The TOEFL 2026 series includes structured listening tasks modelled on the actual test format — conversations, announcements, and academic talks — with answer checking built in.

A Note on Design

The site requires no login, no account, and no student registration. There is nothing to install. Students open a URL and start the lesson. This is a deliberate choice — the fewer steps between a student and the content, the better.

If you have questions about using the site in your class, or suggestions for content that would be useful, you can reach me at listeninenglishinfo@gmail.com. I read every email.

- Michael Toole (Site designer and content creator)