11 English Story Listening Sites
Stories provide a fun and interesting way to learn English.
Fortunately, there are some amazing resources online where you can listen to all kinds of tales.
In this post, you will find 11 of the best online resources to use when you want to listen to English stories.
Contents
- 1. Storynory
- 2. Digitalbook.io
- 3. StoryCorps
- 4. Stories to Grow By
- 5. Open Culture
- 6. Easy Stories in English
- 7. ENGLISH CRUNCH
- 8. English Easy Practice
- 9. DailyDictation
- 10. LearnEnglish Kids: Short stories
- 11. FluentU
- How to Learn by Listening to English Stories
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
1. Storynory
Price: £2.99 (approximately US$3.70)
Storynory is an amazing website that offers free audio stories. Their stories are divided by genre (type): fairy tales, classics, myths and legends, poems, original stories and more.
Every audio recording is accompanied by a transcript (written version of the audio) that you can review. Some stories even offer related educational material for further practice.
The site was originally created for kids, but it is also great for adults learning English because all of the materials are level-appropriate.
- Thousands of learner friendly videos (especially beginners)
- Handpicked, organized, and annotated by FluentU's experts
- Integrated into courses for beginners
2. Digitalbook.io
Price: Free
Available on: Website
Digitalbook.io is a site that offers tons of free audiobooks for English learners to download or listen to directly on the site.
The website provides a synopsis (summary) of each story and the corresponding English level (easy, intermediate and difficult), so you know exactly what to expect.
3. StoryCorps
Price: Free
- Interactive subtitles: click any word to see detailed examples and explanations
- Slow down or loop the tricky parts
- Show or hide subtitles
- Review words with our powerful learning engine
StoryCorps is a project created by an organization that interviews Americans from all backgrounds for their stories.
You can listen to different people talking about their lives, which exposes you to a wide range of accents and vocabulary. You can find stories based on themes (topics) such as the military and African-American history.
Typically, these stories range from a few minutes to 12 minutes long. That means they are short enough to listen to in one sitting (in a short time without stopping). Many of the stories are accompanied by beautiful animation, photos and other great-looking visuals.
4. Stories to Grow By
Price: Free
Available on: iOS
This site was originally created for kids, which means that the stories’ English level is simple and appropriate for ESL learners.
Stories to Grow By offers free audiobooks of classic fairy tales and fables (stories that have a lesson). Each recording also comes with transcripts.
- Learn words in the context of sentences
- Swipe left or right to see more examples from other videos
- Go beyond just a superficial understanding
The stories are usually around 15 minutes long and do not require any preparation ahead of time.
5. Open Culture
Price: Free
Available on: Website
Open Culture has an enormous (very big) list of free audiobooks divided into three categories: fiction & literature, poetry and nonfiction.
Each list is sorted according to their authors’ names. The content includes longer books, shorter stories, fables and more.
The list tells you exactly how each audiobook is available—through iTunes, Spotify, streaming, .mp3 download, etc. Some of these great stories are even read aloud by their original author.
6. Easy Stories in English
Price: Free
Start building sentences.
- FluentU builds you up, so you can build sentences on your own
- Start with multiple-choice questions and advance through sentence building to producing your own output
- Go from understanding to speaking in a natural progression.
Available on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Easy Stories in English is another site created specifically for ESL learners. The stories are divided into four different levels, so you can easily find what you need.
Transcripts of the stories are available, and the site has shorter stories and longer books. The stories are divided into chapters, so each recording is no longer than 15 minutes.
7. ENGLISH CRUNCH
Price: Free
Available on: YouTube
The video stories on this channel can be as short as five minutes or as long as 40 minutes. Most of the videos have a difficulty rating from Levels 1 to 5 (the easiest to the most difficult), making it easier to pick the ones that suit your preferences.
- Images, examples, video examples, and tips
- Covering all the tricky edge cases, eg.: phrases, idioms, collocations, and separable verbs
- No reliance on volunteers or open source dictionaries
- 100,000+ hours spent by FluentU's team to create and maintain
I like that you can listen and read along with the text in the videos and that the videos come with beautiful illustrations (drawings).
8. English Easy Practice
Price: Free
Available on: Website | YouTube
Similar to ENGLISH CRUNCH, English Easy Practice videos are accompanied by text and stunning (surprising in a good way) visuals.
English Easy Practice goes a little further and adds English lessons to some of the stories. For example, you can listen and learn about the English tenses at the same time.
The videos are divided into chapters, so you can easily jump to the sections you want to concentrate or focus on.
I started FluentU to build a new kind of language app. Want to learn more about how FluentU got started?
9. DailyDictation
Price: Free
Available on: Website
Dictation is the act of saying things out loud so that they will be written down. The process of writing down dictation is known as transcription , which is what you will be doing on this website.
If you click “Listen & Type” on any story, you will be asked to type what you hear. In case the audio is too fast or too slow, you can adjust the speed by clicking the box that says “1x” and choosing the number you want under “Audio speed.”
You can also click “Listen & Read” and (as the name implies) listen to the audio while you read the words shown on the screen.
10. LearnEnglish Kids: Short stories
Price: Free
Available on: Website
This resource is brought to you by the British Council, one of the leading organizations in promoting (supporting) English language education around the world.
Before you listen to the audio content, the website recommends that you complete the “Preparation” tasks first. After that, you can play the game right below the story, download the files under “Documents” or answer the question(s) under “Discussion.”
If you end up liking LearnEnglish’s content, you can also tune in (listen) to their podcasts aimed at learners at the A2 (upper beginner) and B1 (lower intermediate) levels.
11. FluentU
Price: See pricing page here
The FluentU language learning program has a diverse selection of authentic English videos, including a number of narrated and illustrated short stories.
Videos have interactive subtitles that are connected to a contextual dictionary, so you can check the definition of each word as the video is playing. You’ll see what the word means in that specific context, so you won’t be confused about which meaning of a word is being used. If you want to study a word more, you can turn it into a flashcard, which you can study later with personalized quizzes.
Videos are organized by level, topic and format to make it easier to find short stories to watch, or any other content you want to see.
How to Learn by Listening to English Stories
There are plenty of ways you can get more out of your English listening time.
For starters, you can listen to the same story multiple times. Repetition is a great way to understand and memorize important English words and concepts.
Try focusing on the main idea of the story first. See if you can decipher (figure out) what the theme or main plot of the story is about.
Then, when you listen a second time, practice listening for specific details. One way to do this is to complete fill-in-the-blank exercises while you listen. This activity will train your ear to catch specific words being said.
If you are someone who prefers writing things down, take notes while you listen to the story. Jot down (write down) things that you think are important to the story or words that you did not understand and plan to look up in your dictionary later.
Also, keeping a vocabulary journal can be extremely helpful when you are learning a language. When you have a journal of new words, you can refer back to them if you need more practice. It also gives you a physical way to assess your progress during your listening time.
Lastly, after you have listened to the story a few times, download the transcript (if it is available) and read it. You can either do this on your own or read along while you listen to the audio recording of the story again. This will ensure that you understand exactly what you are hearing and will clear up any words or phrases you do not know how to spell.
To make a long story short, you now have all the resources you need to go out and listen to some fantastic English stories!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
