ELT has the WRONG input.

Students can't understand real people in real life.

If students do a listening, does that make it a listening lesson? Textbooks train students to guess, not to understand. This course shows you how to truly TEACH listening using real-world audio, zero fluff, and NO planning. Trusted by English teachers worldwide. Self-paced and practical.
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We're Leo & Andrew

Founders of Learn YOUR English

We believe the only people textbooks help are the publishers. Not the students, not the teachers, not the schools. So we created a better way. In this course, you'll learn a task-based approach to teaching the skill of listening so you don't have to plan another listening lesson again. And your students will understand real people in real life. We hope you enjoy it.
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Our interview with the amazing Sheila Thorn on Listening

Teacher Talking Time Podcast



👉 ELT provides the wrong input: language as it should be spoken not as it is spoken. 

This is wrong and Sheila Thorn gives us another way. Sheila Thorn is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer whose niche focuses on teaching listening. She founded The Listening Business in 1998 and is the author of countless seminal books that have moved our industry forward. She has recently embarked on a new career as an artist, specialising in portraits of people and animals.

Her latest publication, "Integrating Authentic Listening into the Language Classroom" is a must-read. 

In this episode, Sheila discusses: 

  • ELT having the wrong input 

  • coursebooks as impoverished language

  • learners being scared of real language 

  • how teacher training fails teachers as much as coursebooks fail students

  • the 5 listening goals every learner should have

  • a 3-pronged approach to teaching listening

  • the problem she is trying to solve in ELT

Introduction to the Course

Here's Leo with a sneak peak of the course


This PRACTICAL course will show you a NEW method to teach listening that:

  • is appropriate for any age, level, and topic

  • requires minimal preparation

  • is transferable to any teaching context

  • uses all the skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) and systems (pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar) in every lesson

  • will help your students quickly become more comfortable with natural spoken English

  • will make your students better and more independent learners

  • allows you to move at your own pace and reflect on your teaching practice

  • shows you important concepts of that most courses often DON’T teach - such as connected speech, and how to integrate them into your lesson

  • breaks free from the old way of teaching listening and shows you how to design a lesson in a short period of time

  • have a clear idea to quickly plan your listening lessons

This Course has Five Modules

Each with tasks, reflection, videos, and more

  • 1

    A Welcome Message from LYE & Complementary Lesson Plan

  • 2

    Module 1: Introduction to the Course

  • 3

    Module 2: Before Listening

    • 2.0 An Introduction to the Module

    • 2.1 Module Aims and Objectives

    • 2.2 Module Resources

    • 2.3 Task 1: Activating Schemata

    • 2.3.1Task 1 Comments & Reflection

    • 2.4 Planning & Identifying Aims and Procedures & Task 2

    • 2.4.1 Task 2 Comments and Reflection

    • 2.5 Stage 2 - Composing Comprehension Questions & Task 3

    • 2.5.1 Task 3 Comments & Reflection

    • 2.6 Sample Task

    • 2.6.1 Reflection Task Comments

    • 2.7 Aims of Writing Comprehension Questions & Task 4

    • 2.7.1 Task 4 Comments & Reflection

    • 2.8 Stage 3 - Ear Training/Accommodation/Calibration & Task 5

    • 2.8.1 Task 5 Comments & Reflection

    • 2.9 Module 2 Summary

    • Test your Understanding: A Review of the Key Points
  • 4

    Module 3: While Listening

    • 3.0 An Introduction to the Module

    • 3.1 Aims & Objectives

    • 3.2 Module Resources 2

    • 3.3 Reasons for Listening

    • 3.4 Task 1

    • 3.4.1 Task 1 Comments and Reflection

    • 3.5 A Focus on Words

    • 3.6 Listening for Decoding

    • 3.7 Final Task for Module 3

    • 3.8 Module 3 Summary

    • Test your Understanding: A Review of the Key Points
  • 5

    Module 4: Post Listening

    • 4.0 An Introduction to the Module

    • 4.1 Module Aims and Objectives

    • 4.2 Module Resources

    • 4.3 Focusing on Pronunciation

    • 4.4 Identifying Thought Groups & Task 1

    • 4.4.1 Task 1 Comments & Reflection

    • 4.5 Identifying Stressed Words & Task 2

    • 4.6.1 Task 2 Comments and Reflection

    • 4.7 Identifying Aspects of Connected Speech & Task 3

    • 4.7.1 Task 3 Comments and Reflection

    • 4.8 Focusing on Speaking & Task 4

    • 4.9.1 Task 4 Comments and Reflection

    • 4.10 Focusing on Vocabulary & Task 5

    • 4.10.1 Task 5 Comments and Reflection

    • 4.11 Focusing on Writing & Task 6

    • 4.11.1 Task 6 Comments and Reflection

    • 4.12 Module 4 Summary

    • Test your Understanding: A Review of the Key Points
  • 6

    Module 5 Summary & Conclusion

    • 5.1 Summary & Conclusion

    • 5.2 Reflection Questions

    • 5.3 References

    • 5.4 Bonus Listening Materials

    • 5.5 Kindly Leave us a Review

Start Learning Now

Learn a new method for any age and proficiency levels to take your listening lessons to the next level

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Course Details & Design Principles

We adopt a bottom-up and reflective approach to CPD

  • Self-Paced Course

    Work through the courses on your time and schedule to learn at a pace that's comfortable for you. Use the concepts in your classrooms and report back what did and didn't work.

  • Thirty Development Hours in 6 Months

    As it's designed, this course is approximately thirty hours. We ask you to reflect, design, and apply what you learn in your own contexts. This is in addition to video, audio, materials and everything else included in the course platform. You have unlimited course access for six months.

  • Bottom-up, Task-based, and Reflection-driven

    For far too long, CPD has been prescriptive in nature and thus not applicable to many teachers' contexts. CPD should give teachers agency and authority to learn new concepts, filter what's necessary, and design & apply that to their own classroom. We use a task-based approach to our programs with many points of reflection to accomplish this.

Design Principles

We design our Teacher Education courses blending a bottom-up and task-based approach. We ask teachers to reflect on their practice, aim to empower them to design materials for their own context, and be informed on SLA research.

Maria Skulskaya

Language Teacher

I took this course in July, and I was glad I did. I was researching Teaching Listening during my Master’s program during which I learned theoretical updates about modern approaches, but I couldn’t apply much when I was back teaching. Your course helped me connect the dots between theory and practice. You are awesome, LYE!

Language Instructor

Lucia Perzhalo

The listening course was great! Super practical and easy to follow. I highly recommend it!

Linda Birosova-McLester

Language Teacher

"Teaching Listening Made Easy" helped me to become a more versatile and textbook-free instructor. The course is a great manual that equips me to design exactly that kind of lesson I need for a particular class. Preparation time reduced substantially and the lessons can be easily reconstructed. Due to the lessons now being dynamic and always engaging, the students love working on their listening skills as they recognize the purposeful management of all tasks leading and supporting them to be the owners of their own growth.
5 star rating

Teaching Listening Made Easy

Emma Maynard

I've come away with a refreshed approach; not only having a broadened theoretical base, but also practical elements on how to apply it. I'm excited to take w...

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I've come away with a refreshed approach; not only having a broadened theoretical base, but also practical elements on how to apply it. I'm excited to take what I've learnt into the classroom and give my students the opportunities to develop transferable skills that they can use at home. This course is not just interesting, but highly useful and practical.

Read Less

Meet Your Instructors on this Course

Co-founder

Leo Gomez

My name is Leo Gomez and I’m the CVO and a founding member of Learn YOUR English. I have devoted my life exclusively to education and a substantial portion of my work in English Language Teaching has involved, teaching, educating, and developing language teachers both in pre- and in-service capacities. I have an MA in TEFL and Corpus Linguistics (University of Birmingham) and a Delta (Cambridge University). My research interests include humanistic education, philosophy of education, psychology of learning, critical pedagogy, task-based learning, podcasting as a tool for development, and learner-centered education. Leo’s 20+ years of teaching experience overseas include 6 countries and a broad spectrum of classes, ranging from general English, exam English, ESP, to teacher education courses; the last 6 years of my teaching have been devoted solely to English for Academic Purposes at universities and colleges in Canada.. As an EAP instructor, I employed my experience with data-driven learning and task-based education to promote agency, awareness, and authenticity in the learning process. Leo has developed a process for growing audiences and building authority, both from his work with universities and colleges and @Teachertalkingtime podcast interviews with leading thinkers, such as Scott Thornbury, Jane Willis, Patsy Lightbown, Susan Hunston, and more. I am excited to have you on this journey with us!

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Free Listening Lesson

Try this lesson out for free

This lesson is designed to exploit a listening text and provide students the chance to engage with all four skills and systems in a meaningful way. It asks students to predict content, listen for meaning and also decode different sounds, deal with vocabulary autonomously, and engage with the topic personally.
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