Meeting a new classmate
Listen to Aiko and Kofi talk for the first time. Find out where they are from and what they do.
12 questions · 8 min
Listening Practice
Listen to conversations, announcements and talks, then answer questions to check your understanding.
30 lessons
Ordering in a café
Listen to Ravi order a drink and some food in a small café.
12 questions · 8 min
A voicemail from a friend
Listen to Sofia's phone message to her friend Jamal about their plans for the weekend.
11 questions · 8 min
Asking for directions in town
Listen to Lena ask a man in the street how to get to a place in town.
11 questions · 8 min
An announcement for shoppers
Listen to an announcement for shoppers in a busy supermarket.
12 questions · 8 min
Booking a hotel room by phone
Listen to Tomás phone a small hotel by the sea to book a room for a weekend trip.
13 questions · 10 min
The weather for the weekend
Listen to a radio weather forecast for Saturday, Sunday and the start of next week.
12 questions · 10 min
Talking about weekend plans
Listen to two friends, Mina and Jamal, talk about what they are doing this weekend.
13 questions · 10 min
Welcome to the museum tour
Listen to a guide talk to a group of visitors at a city museum.
13 questions · 10 min
Taking something back to a shop
Listen to Ana take a jacket back to a clothes shop and decide what to do.
12 questions · 10 min
A podcast about learning to cook
A podcast guest talks about his first steps in the kitchen and the advice that helped him most.
13 questions · 12 min
Planning a team day
Three colleagues discuss several ideas for a day out with their team and agree who will do what.
13 questions · 12 min
A radio interview with a volunteer
A local radio presenter talks to a volunteer about a monthly event in her town.
13 questions · 12 min
At the library help desk
A student and a university librarian talk about an essay he is writing.
13 questions · 12 min
A travel vlog: a day out by the lake
A travel video maker records short updates for her viewers during a day trip from the city.
13 questions · 12 min
A panel discussion on working from home
A radio presenter and two guests with different experiences discuss what working from home has changed for employees and teams.
14 questions · 15 min
A lecture extract on the science of sleep
Part of a first-year university lecture about sleep.
14 questions · 15 min
A radio report on a city bike scheme
A local radio reporter visits Harbourton to find out what people think of its green public bikes.
14 questions · 15 min
Negotiating a furniture order
A client and a furniture maker discuss price, delivery and conditions for a large order on the phone.
14 questions · 15 min
Two critics discuss a documentary
Two film podcast presenters share their views of a new documentary about young musicians.
14 questions · 15 min
A lecture extract on the urban heat island
A university lecturer explains why cities are warmer than the countryside, weighs up possible remedies and asks who suffers most.
13 questions · 20 min
A podcast about photographs and memory
A presenter and two guests discuss whether recording everything on a phone weakens what we actually remember.
13 questions · 20 min
An interview with a restoration ecologist
A restoration ecologist explains why bringing a drained marsh back to life meant removing things rather than planting them.
14 questions · 20 min
A radio feature about a town's sound map
A radio reporter follows a retired electrician who records everyday sounds to keep a record of how his harbour town sounds.
14 questions · 20 min
A seminar on automated job screening
A professor and two students debate whether automated tools can sort job applications fairly, and what safeguards an organisation would need.
13 questions · 25 min
A lecture on what maps leave out
A university lecturer argues that every map is a set of choices and that the blank spaces tell us as much as the drawn lines.
13 questions · 30 min
A panel debate on faithful translation
Two translators with opposite instincts argue, wittily and without much mercy, about whether a translation should stay faithful or read fluently.
14 questions · 30 min
An interview with a novelist about a second book
A radio interviewer questions a novelist whose first book was a surprise success, and his dry answers reveal more than he says outright.
14 questions · 30 min
A lecture on how railways standardised the clock
A historian explains how railway timetables forced towns to give up local sun time, and what that change quietly cost.
14 questions · 30 min
A panel on restoring old buildings honestly
A conservator and an architect disagree over whether a heavily repaired building is still the original, and how visible repairs should be.
14 questions · 30 min
Original scripts read by open-source text-to-speech voices. Levels are suggestions.