Listening Activity Books - Any Recommendations?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

I’m looking for some listening activity books to replace a crap series that I’ve been using up to now. (It was part of the programme at the school I took over, and now it’s time to upgrade). The crap series I was using is the Active English Today Listening Activity Book by DH Howe. (2nd Edition). I need a progressive level series, with 6 levels, ideally. The books would be used at home by the students for independent study. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

2

This is truly a proplem. I had great difficulty finding good listening materials that were beyond the grade school level. Recently, I started teaching iBT TOEFL. The manuals that were available did not offer enough practice listening and then I discovered that NorthStar, in cooperation with ETS (Pearson/Longman) produces a reasonably good set of practice books authored by John Beaumont. I had my school buy me the Intermediate, Upper Intermediate and Advanced books. I understand that there are other levels but these three gave me thirty lessons that take about 45 minutes to 1 hour each for the listening portion only. Each lesson also has the reading, speaking, integrated tasks and writing portions, as well as the listening portions. I know my school bought the books online and a student has told me that he found them online also but I don’t know where. I would try Page One at Taipei 101. The bookstore row around Chongcheng and Kaifung running south and in that general vicinity downtown will probably turn up the series for you.

3

There’s lots of stuff. There’s an NPR-based listening series, high intermediate to advanced, called … I forgot! Caves has it, it’s dark green. I’ve also used several other books, but don’t like any. they are too easy because the activity illustrations make the audio superfluous, and they have no relationship to real listening – for example, the only accents are UK RP or north america “standard”.

I’ve been using podcasts with some success in my college listening classes. Have you been to What’s Up in Taiwan? They interview local expats and prominent foreigners, and the stuff is often good.

Michael

4

If you are teaching intermediate level students, I would recommend the Listen Up books. These two books are excellent for teaching listening. You can get more information here:

http://www.lynxpublishing.com/listen_up/LuMain.htm

5

Thanks for the comments but I need something for elementary school students as young as 8 years old. Podcasting is going to have to wait for a while… :laughing: