Listening practice

Useful learning websites and contacts

There are many excellent websites that provide information, activities and books to help improve you or your child’s hearing and speech. Most of them are free. You can find a number of the best sites below:

• For children 2 years + (English)
• For teens and adults (English)
• Commercial websites (English)
• For Traditional Chinese language speakers

For children 2 years +

The following websites provide free pictures, songs, craft activities with easy to follow instructions and templates that can be printed.

Some ideas on how to use the site:

• Many of the activities are divided into routines, categories, rhymes, songs, fairy tales that can be incorporated into teaching. Create props that you can use to teach your child nursery rhymes, work with your child in making the craft activity. Remember, the finished product doesn’t have to be perfect. What’s important is that you all have fun in this shared experience and give your child the language and listening experience.
• Base your language around the actions, objects and use of the activity. Talk to your child about what you are doing while you are doing it eg; "the glue is all sticky, it feels sticky on my finger. Now your brushing the glue on the paper".
• Ask your child to match the card to the sound. Make it easy to start with by having a choice of two pictures. As your child becomes more confident, increase the choice to four. The most difficult task is to identify the sound without picture.
• Talk about pictures that represent routines in your home such as brushing teeth, having a drink, getting dressed. Ask your child to match the picture to a real object such as a tooth brush picture with the their real tooth brush while you talk about brushing your teeth, squeezing the toothpaste, rinsing your mouth.

www2.scholastic.com/browse/activities.jsp (from Preschool – Grade 8)
Lots of easy and fun activities to do together with your child divided into Preschool, K-2, Grades 3-5, Grades 7 & 8 levels.

The instructions include;

• A list of what you need to make and create the activity
• How to make it
• Learning benefits

www.dltk-teach.com/books/index.htm (ages 2 - 4 years)
An enormous number of easy to follow crafts, colouring pages and other activities categorised into nursery rhymes, children’s favourite songs, fairy tales and related topics of interest to children

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies (suitable for 4+ years)
A wide variety of stories and related activities that are printable with clear instructions as well as a wide range of games. All stories have written text and audio.

www.freekidcrafts.com/free_kid_craft_ideas_.html
A wide variety of children’s rhymes and speech sounds including words, craft activities, printable templates to colour and recipes. There are also links to other free sites.

www.a1freesoundeffects.com
Your child can discover hundreds of sounds associated with routines such as meals, bath time, getting dressed, environmental sounds, animal, school, playground sounds.

www.clipartguide.com
Hundreds of pictures associated with daily routines such as meals, bath time, getting dressed, environmental sounds, animal, school, playground sounds.

Songs

www.kididdles.com/lyrics
A fantastic site with lots of songs and favourite children’s rhymes, many accompanied by with words and music. Many also have a related activity sheet you can print.

Tip for best use: Once your child is familiar with the words and tune of the songs try a listening challenge where you play the song and ask them to identify it.

www.enchantedlearning.com – (2 years + - USD$20 one year subscription)
For 2 -3 year olds there is an extensive range of pictures on each speech sound including vowels and consonants. Plus lots of great craft activities. For children 4 years+ an extensive range of pictures and information on a wide variety of school related and child interest topics.

Tip for best use: The pictures and craft activities offer great help in teaching your child the sounds of speech. Focus on pictures that relate to your home environment that you can associate with the real object. Let your child join in with making the craft activities. Remember there is a lot of great language in preparing, making and cleaning up after the activity is complete.

Teens and Adults

www.manythings.org/pp/ (American accent)
American English pronunciation practice offers listening exercises for minimal pair practice and quizzes - great tools for distinguishing between similar sounding words - using songs, poems and tongue twisters. Each section includes detailed instructions. Listen and practice each phrase slowly, and then practice them quickly.

Stories

www.storylineonline.net
Children’s stories read online with subtitles. You can turn the subtitles off to increase the difficulty by choosing “captions off”. Each story is also accompanied by related activities.

www.storylineonline.net (American accent)
Book stories read by a variety of ‘actors’ with American accents.Subtitles accompany each page that can be switched off. There are related activities provided for each story.

Tip for best use: Book tracking – listen to the story through headphones and have a friend or partner ‘pause’ and you repeat what you have heard, do this with the subtitles off.

www.esl-lab.com (American accent)
A series of short audio stories with scripts on a wide variety of topics require you to answer questions. .You are given a score and told where you answered correctly and incorrectly. Includes pre-listening exercises; listening exercises and vocabulary activities. This site is divided into 'easy' 'medium' and 'difficult' content.

Conversations

www.dailyes1.com
Short conversation starters (audio and written) that you can study and then try to apply in everyday situations.

Music

www.lyrics.astraweb.com
Written lyrics to your favourite song.

If you are not sure of the lyrics to songs or tunes you like, download them and you can learn them at your leisure without the initial distraction of the music.

Commercial sites

www.babyeinstein.com (0-24 months)
Baby Einstein offers a wide range products to help babies and toddlers develop using a combination of real world objects, music, art, language, poetry and nature. It provides a a wonderful opportunity to introduce your baby to the world around them in playful and enriching ways.

Products are categories by age and theme, with ages; 0+, 3+months, 6+months, 9+months, 12+months, 18+months.

Useful websites and contacts for parents - Traditional Chinese

http://book.dangdang.com/children/ (Simplified Mandarin)
Buy children's picture story books online and save at 30% or more. This website is in simplified Mandarin.

http://www.amazon.cn/ and http://www.books.com.tw/ (Simplified Mandarin)
Both these sites offer picture story books, cognition, novels, craft and art, science and other topics of interest to children at 20-30% discount if ordered online

http://www.hsin-yi.org.tw/ (Traditional Mandarin)
Created by major publishing company and children’s book i/mporter, Hsin Yi, the site offer great information on parenting, early education and children's literature