Listen and Write

Screenshot 1: Home page of Listen and Write

Description

A website that offers many listening activities taken from audio, video files or youtube. Various types of activities offered with many different levels to suit every learners needs. It is a free listening practice. Hear about current news and improve your listening skills. Easy access and instruction is clear to learners of all level.

Screenshot 2: Different 7 columns in the home page and facebook login button

Steps

1. You can choose from different type of columns in the home page. First is the level column. You can try levels from 1 to 33. So you can do the low level ones to enjoy it or try a slightly harder to test or improve your skills.

2. Next you can choose the column Youtube where many videos from youtube are being suited to listening task. Be it music video or an intellectual TED discussion video. Various types of videos are there for you to pick and choose.

3. Then there is the Groups column where you can get to create or join any group with similar interest that you want. However you will need to log in an account with the website.

4. Besides that, there is also the column Categories where all listening items being put into category to categorised them. There are categories such as interview, learning, news, music, kids, movies, TED and many others. So there are much for you to discover in this column which is still in Beta mode.

5. After that you can try looking at the column Channels where users of the website posted their videos from all sort of sources. It is like a small youtube with many users, channels and video posted.

6. Lastly you can choose the column Language where you will find columns with other languages written on it. Here you can try clicking to listen to videos of other language. However many languages written there have very few and limited videos with some of them having none. The languages are only there for show with no real videos in it.

Advantages

a) It's free!

b) It's fun and easy to do for all types and level of learners.

c) Can do at home. Helps develop autonomous learning.

d) Various type of levels to choose from.

e) Few selections of videos in other languages.

f) Many selections of columns from home page for you to explore. In fact this whole blog will not be enough to fully mention and explore the functions provided in this website.

g) You also have a forum or group where you can interact and communicate with other user. Furthermore, you can upload your own video or audio of listening and turn it into listening activity for the website.

Disadvantages

a) Lack of resources and facilities at places with no internet connection.

b) Facebook login and youtube link function might be distracting for learners as they might be distracted from doing the task given.

c) To try some column function user may need to log in. This can be quite troublesome for visitors who visit to try the website.

d) Lack of video in other languages in some item in the Languages column.

Suggestion to improve

One way to improve such an excellent blog for listening purposes is by uploading and providing more videos in other languages to cater to more language user around the world. Such website with more other language function will become a world-known website to many users.