How it works

Reading English and hearing it are different skills. Real speech runs fast, words join together, and accents vary. The way to get better at it is to listen closely to short pieces and write down exactly what you heard.

The loop

• Pick a video. It opens at the first fragment.
• Play it. The video stops on its own at the end of the fragment.
• Write what you heard. Play it again as many times as you want.
• Check your answer and see which words you missed.
• Move to the next fragment, or show the words if you are stuck.

How your answer is checked

Only the words matter. Capital letters, commas and full stops are ignored, and a contraction counts the same as its full form — I'm and I am are the same answer. What you get back is a word-by-word comparison, so you can see exactly where your ear went wrong rather than just a score.

Where the videos come from

Every video is a real, complete video on YouTube, chosen by us and played from YouTube. We mark out natural pieces of speech in it — a sentence, a clause, a turn in a conversation — and the player stops at the end of each one. Nothing is cut up or re-hosted.

No account

There is nothing to sign up for. Your progress is kept in this browser and nowhere else, so it follows the device rather than you. You can erase it at any time.