Listening and watching news

Here's another news clip with questions from my favourite student news show in Australia.  

This week the story is about asthma.  Asthma is something lots of people suffer from in Istanbul so I thought it might be interesting.  What is more, as the weather is warmer now there is probably lots of dust, pollen and higher pollution levels which can cause asthma attacks for these people.

Click here for video

Click here for questions
 

You Tube has some great videos for listening practice!

What I really like about this story is that foreign university students in London set up the project.  

And the result was so simple, but it completely changed the lives of people in Rwanda, Africa.  

Watch the video and see how much you can generally understand - you don't need to focus on every word as the pictures are very helpful.
 

Listening for details

In class we focus on listening to understand the general story, and listening for specific information.
Sometimes it helps to listen very carefully to every word and try to write down what you hear.  So this is what you are going to do in these activities.

Activity A - First of all play the recording below to listen to these sentences, and decide which you hear first - a or b.  You may need to listen several times to check you have the correct answer. 

1. a)  She's made it.                                  b)  She made it.
2. a)  He'd started it.                                  b)  He started it.
3. a)  You're taught it.                                b)  You taught it.
4. a)  I've lost it.                                         b)  I lost it.
5. a)  We'll watch it.                                   b)  We watch it.
6. a)  I won't buy it.                                    b)  I want to buy it.
Activity B - Now play the recording below to listen to some different sentences, and write down what you can hear.  You will hear each sentence twice.  However, you may need to listen several times to help you write down all the words.
Click here to check all your answers.

If you think this helps your listening, why don't you record some speaking from the TV or internet videos (news programs are good) and try to write down everything.  It doesn't matter if you don't understand every word because you can still guess the general meaning.  It will also help you to learn new words.