[sms04n]

Hello, so I'm teaching two FCE preparation courses. My students are the worse at the listening portion. Does anyone have any good ideas to help improve their listening skills? I use a lot of news articles from breakingnewsenglish.com I play both the British and American version. Thanks in advance!

[wi11iam]

You could try playing them DVDs. If you play them on a laptop and use VLC player you can slow down the speed of the video. If you slow it down to much the speech sounds unnatural. But if you slow it down a little, it might give them more of a chance of understanding. Also, use the subtitles. If they can read the text and listen to it at the same time, this will help them. I've used this with some of my students and their listening improved quite a bit!

[sms04n]

Thank you! I don't have that but I've tried some tv programmes using subtitles. Do you know any websites for dictation?