Photo by Matthieu A on Unsplash

Understanding the news, a movie, a song is one of the skills that stresses most students. Nothing strange about that, once you’ve heard it, it’s gone, you have to be quick, to make sense of a few or more words to get the meaning of what is said and in many situations, there is no way to rewind.

However, it is a part of all our language exams, so here are a few sites where you can train, practice and improve your listening and understanding skills.

I’ll start with two sites which provide “slower” news, and scripts.

VOA (Voice of America) provides many ways of improving comprehension and learning vocabulary. There’s also a YouTube Channel, Listen and read along based on VOA news with a script you can follow.

Same thing for News in levels.

If you like karaoke, music, singing along or just another way to practice English, try Lyricstraining.

One website I like a lot because, there are many videos and audios, different levels, interesting subjects, and the speakers are not always native speakers, is Elllo.

CNN10 is obviously a reference, international news for students in 10 minutes, quizzes to check your weekly news and scripts.

BBC  provides so many excellent services to help students learn English that I can’t even begin to list them. I encourage you to browse through the BBC Learning English, section especially 6 Minute English and take your time, you can search by level or by programmes.

If you feel comfortable I would advise listening to the BBC Global News, 30 minutes of news and reports.

Last but not least, there’s the Ted.com website, talks about so many subjects that you will necessarily find one that will appeal to you.

There are also zillions of YouTube channels to help you, and here is one: