One of our Spanish Teacher Community members asked for Spanish listening comprehension resources:
“I am looking for authentic listening activities for both lower level and intermediate level students. Ideally, I would love some listening activities which come with comprehension or expansion questions. Also, for the purposes of differentiation, I would like the script, so that some kids could read/listen, and others could challenge themselves by just listening.”
-Paula, Speaking Latino Spanish Teacher Community Member
To answer her question, we asked other colleagues and several responded that authentic audio resources are almost non-existent or too difficult to understand for beginner students. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing available for students to practice listening comprehension.
10 Spanish Listening Comprehension Resources
Here is a suggested list of resources to help students with their Spanish listening comprehension:
1. Spanish Songs Cloze Activities by Speaking Latino – Contemporary songs are always a hit among students and cloze (fill-in-the-blank) activities are the perfect way to practice listening comprehension. Depending on the student level, there are different versions of the same cloze activity: for beginner students two choices are given for them to circle which is the correct one; for intermediate students there is a word bank; and for advanced students there’s a version with no prompts provided.
2. Veinte Mundos Magazine – This is my personal favorite! Includes interesting articles from the Spanish-speaking world. Each article includes the audio version, a short support video, and exercises. Their catalog of articles keeps growing with new additions periodically.
3. Spanish Listening – I believe that this is the closest resource that can be labeled as “authentic”. Video clips by native speakers with transcripts. They have a great filter to search by level and topics.
4. Spanish Resources (Listening) – This site includes resources for listening, reading, speaking, and writing divided by teaching topics. Just click on any of the skill tabs to filter the content.
5. Esaudio.net – Scroll down and look for their list of free listening comprehension exercises divided by level.
6. Yabla – A paid service with authentic videos in Spanish with captions. The videos include listening comprehension games that students can complete while watching them. Their catalog is divided by levels.
7. Audio Lingua – A catalog of audio clips in 13 languages (including Spanish). Audio transcript not included.
8. Video ELE – Videos with transcripts divided by level and topics. All videos include a set of practice exercises.
9. Podcasts in Spanish – Excellent selection of audios with transcripts, worksheets, and vocabulary tasks. You can access all the audios for free, but if you like to use the support materials you need to become a paid member.
10. Radio Ambulante by NPR – Podcast with current event news with transcripts in Spanish and English for intermediate and advanced students.
