Audio stories in English online. Audiobooks in English for all levels: why, what and how to listen and read? You can also select a book by category

Greetings, my dear readers.

I always say that learning should be interesting for children. Would you like me to share another method that I actively practice with my daughter? These are audio fairy tales for children in English.
Therefore, today I will share with you the ten best audio recordings, supported by supporting texts in English (at the end of the article you will find a link to download audio files for fairy tales).

But first I want to give you some tips on how best to structure your learning process.

• Choose a fairy tale.
  Yes, obvious and incredible, but still)). The choice of audio text can be said to be the most important element of effective learning. Look for what your baby has most likely already heard in Russian. In this case, it is simply vital to look for records from . And it’s even better with a translation (like mine here).
• Immediately - in Russian.
  First tell this fairy tale to your child in Russian. He needs to understand what he will listen about, who the main characters are.
• Learn the words.
  For example, if in “Little Red Riding Hood” the most common words are “wolf”, “grandmother” and body parts of that same grandmother, then learn them. Take some time to master this vocabulary.
• Let's listen.
  Only after you have become familiar with the text in Russian and have expanded your vocabulary - only now can you listen.
• Consolidation.
  And you thought everything, listened and forgot! No no no! Do additional tasks, ask questions.

Do it in Russian - your baby is not ready to “climb Everest” yet. When he answers, help him translate his answers. For example:

-Who pretended to be Little Red Riding Hood?
-Wolf.
-How do you say wolf in English?
-Wolf!

Got the idea?

I recently became acquainted with an excellent online English learning service. LinguaLeo , my daughter and I registered there and sometimes use it - she really likes it there. I also recommend it to you and your children. Moreover, you can find a huge amount of free materials there. Most recently, the developers released a paid course - « For the little ones» - for those who are just starting to learn English. Being well acquainted with the excellent approach of the founders of the service to teaching English, I am sure that this product is made at the highest level (you can watch a video about it). If anyone has already purchased such a course, I would be glad to hear feedback about it in the comments ( ed. from 05.2016 - we have already tried the course - I recommend it to everyone).

You and your child can listen to one recording until you get tired of it. Now the Internet is full of sites where you can listen to audiobooks online, and even for free. But today I have selected for you the ten highest quality audio fairy tales. They are perfect for both 4-5 year olds and older children. And of course, dear adults, they will certainly suit you too. Don't even doubt it! It will not only be effective, but also extremely exciting!

2. Snow White.
A favorite story for many girls. The vocabulary is still very simple. And there are songs that can be easily remembered, and in general the whole fairy tale is structured in the form. 3 in 1, so to speak!

3. Lily the flower fairy .
A very sweet and kind story about a fairy. The words are a little more complex, with some phrasal verbs, and overall there is more use of spoken language.

4. The ugly duckling.
Another well-known story. Slow enough pronunciation for the child to understand every word.

5. The butterfly.
A story about how a moth was looking for a girlfriend. The vocabulary is more complex than in previous stories. And you'll have to figure out the names right away.

If you want to not only listen, but also hold full-length books in your hands, here are my recommendations:

These fairy tales will be excellent helpers on the way to learning English for children of different ages, even starting from 2-3 years old. This is a whole series that is better to buy right away, especially since the publisher’s price is more than reasonable. Suitable for beginners:

The story about the caterpillar Alina

Continuation of the story about the caterpillar Alina

Three piglets

Teremok

turnip

You can also purchase this wonderful guide with 5 famous Russian fairy tales in English. In addition to fairy tales, there is a dictionary and interesting tasks!

6. The goat and the Master.
A cautionary tale about being kind to those who help you.

7. Old Sultan.
A very interesting story about a dog loyal to its owner and a wolf. Very simple vocabulary, peppered with a small number of phrasal verbs. What you need for learning.

10. The six swans.
If it’s difficult to understand by the title, then by the content it immediately becomes clear that this is a popular fairy tale about how a sister saved her enchanted brothers from evil witchcraft. Quite large in volume - so don’t load your kids with it without preparation!

Dear parents and teachers, I have another news for you! If you want to give your child an original gift, then personal tale may become so! I discovered this exclusive offer on the Internet quite recently and, to be honest, I’m itching to buy it; I’ve already bought it for my beloved nephew :-). They and their mother are delighted! What do you think about such a gift?

Download audio files for fairy tales from depositfiles

Well, are you ready to try this method with your kids?

And I’m ready to help you with this!

Listening to audiobooks is a good method of learning English, which helps to combine business with pleasure. At the same time, you develop listening skills (listening to English speech), expand your vocabulary, and get acquainted with the masterpieces of world literature.

People who narrate audiobooks tend to be speakers with pleasant, correct pronunciation.

How can you work with audiobooks?

You can listen to audiobooks in English: on the road, in the morning, before bed, while cleaning the house, preparing lunch, or you can set aside special time for this.

There are people who argue that you should definitely follow the text, so you will remember more words and their correct pronunciation. Others prefer to just listen, making the argument that when you come to an English-speaking country and go to a store/pub/museum, you will not be able to look into the script to understand what they are saying to you. Likewise, when listening to audio recordings, you need to try to understand the meaning without looking anywhere. It seems to me that you can look at the text. This won't hurt at the beginning level, especially if the speaker reads quickly and you can't catch whole sentences.

Some They don’t try to translate absolutely every word from an audiobook and study one book for a long time, listening to it many times. In order to transfer words and expressions of the English language from passive to active, they do the following: read aloud, recording their speech on audio media, in order to compare their pronunciation with the pronunciation of the speaker. There are also those who try to manually record everything that the announcer says.

I advise learn English with interest. Therefore, if you really like the book and you want to learn it yourself and know every word, then your desire to sit with it for hours is understandable. At the same time, remember that women need to listen and repeat after the female narrator, men need to listen to the pronunciation of male readers, and do not forget about age! However, you still shouldn’t stop at one book or reader. The more you listen to English, the more diverse the genres and narrators, the better you will perceive English by ear.

Where can I find audiobooks in English?

Today there are several good foreign sites that provide free audiobooks in English for downloading:

- one of the best collections of audiobooks.

- short audio stories.

– volunteers (native speakers) read books and send files to the site. Absolutely free audiobooks with good sound quality and texts.

– classic audiobooks.

– free audiobooks and videos for learning and self-development.

– an interesting resource, free modern audiobooks, often read by the authors themselves, mostly with musical accompaniment. You can read reviews from those who have already listened to the books.

About four years ago the site was a magical place where you could easily download audiobooks in English. But, unfortunately, now you can only download anything from there for free in terrible quality. The cost of full-length audiobooks is $5-8

You can choose a book:

• by category – fiction/for children/non-fiction,
• according to the narrator - woman/man,
• according to the English option - American/British,
• according to additional parameters - no murders, no swearing, not adapted, not marked “for adults only”,
• after listening to the excerpt.

Of course, there are Russian-language sites that offer downloads of audiobooks in English, but, unfortunately, there are not many books there and they are repeated, and sometimes instead of audiobooks there are either VOA (Voice of America) broadcasts, or, much less often, BBC.

What to remember?

Perhaps the most important thing is to regularly study with audiobooks in English. Don't stop just because you've downloaded a couple of books. Set aside a specific time for listening and practice every day. Remember that listening to audio books in English a little but often is better than listening a lot but rarely. Have fun! I wish you success!

Greetings my most wonderful readers.

You have no idea how frustrating it sometimes is for me to hear that students do not pay enough attention to developing their listening comprehension skills. Of course, this is not so important when applying. What about in life?

But still, I am sure that most of you are among those who do not neglect this part of training. And for you I have an incredibly interesting topic - audiobooks in English for beginners. Files for downloading several of them and tips for working are below.

What to listen to?

Well, I have books for you from private collections that I'm sure you'll love. You can download your mp3 and start listening now.

In the archive you will find 4 folders with my favorite works: "Alice in Wonderland", "Aladdin", "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "The Princess Diaries". All except Alice are given with texts.

You've probably heard more than once about English language courses using the method of Ilona Davydova.. Now you can listen to her quality courses in audio format for a very affordable price. For example, here is one of the disks ( Spoken everyday English. Course 1. Disc 1. In the city ), a fragment of which you can listen to right now (link to listen below). You can buy these useful courses (or other audio and electronic literature) on the website Litres . There I often listen to and read books myself when I am on the road or doing household chores. Very comfortably!

Great sites for online audiobooks

Of course, now it’s not always so necessary to download audiobooks. You can simply listen to them online. I have for you my personal top sites that you can use to improve your audio perception.

1. http://www.loyalbooks.com- one of the best foreign sites that have collected an excellent collection of a wide variety of books. From adventure stories to science fiction and romance novels. Whatever you want, you will see on the pages of this site.
2. http://www.storynory.com/- a very interesting site where you can listen not only to well-known stories, but also little-known stories of people from all over the world.
3. http://www.librivox.org- a site created exclusively by volunteers who share entries out of the kindness of their hearts. Moreover, among the catalog you can see those that are not so easy to find.

Why do this?

Let's be honest, you can't expect your foreign language to improve solely on knowledge. So, listening not only gives you new vocabulary, but also improves your perception of oral speech, thereby making it more diverse, lively and interesting.

How to use it?

Of course, you can’t just take an audio recording and dump it on your head. Need to see her prepare. I have some tips for you that I hope will help you.

• Choose according to your level.

This learning option will be incredibly useful for learning a language. Already possessing basic knowledge, you can confidently listen to adapted recordings and study from them. Moreover, at the initial stage, I not only recommend, but insist on listening to adapted recordings.

• No need to look for translated records.

Yes, it would be much easier to download the recording with translation. But in this case, you slow yourself down, because you will concentrate less on the speech and wait more for the subsequent translation.

• Choose for the soul.

Now you can download your favorite works for free. Choose the ones you already like. Or those that you have been dreaming of reading for a long time. You won't believe it, but you'll understand O most of the text, if the book is incredibly interesting to you.

Well, have you already chosen the first books you will listen to? Share in the comments which ones. Maybe I’ll take something to note as well.

And remember, my dears, that with me you can improve your English step by step. Subscribe to my blog's newsletter and receive regular portions of useful information.

Until we meet again, my dears.

Stage 1 (Elementary): This is the beginner level. Audiobooks at this level are distinguished by simple vocabulary and elementary grammar.

Stage 2 (Beginner): audiobooks are also simple from a lexical and grammatical point of view, easily understood by beginners learning the language.

Stage 3 (Pre-Intermediate): audiobooks of “average difficulty”, there are no particular difficulties yet, but in terms of grammar, a very wide range of grammatical tenses is already used here.

Stage 4 (Intermediate): audiobooks at this level are already approaching natural works of fiction in their lexical and grammatical complexity.

Stage 5 (Upper-Intermediate): audiobooks at the fifth level are almost authentic works of fiction with minor adaptations of overly complex and not widely used grammatical structures, as well as minor lexical corrections.

Texts are provided for all audiobooks, which is designed to make listening easier in case of difficulties.

Elementary Beginner Pre-Intermediate Intermediate Upper-Intermediate

Tim Vicary “The Elephant Man”.
He is not beautiful. His mother does not want him, children run away from him. People laugh at him, and call him ‘The Elephant Man’.

Mark Twain “Huckleberry Finn”.
Who wants to live in a house, wear clean clothes, be good, and go to school every day? Not young Huckleberry Finn, that’s for sure. So Huck runs away, and is soon floating down the great Mississippi River on a raft. With him is Jim, a black slave who is also running away. But life is not always easy for the two friends. And there’s 300 dollars waiting for anyone who catches poor Jim. . .

Rudyard Kipling “Jungle Book”.
In the jungle of Southern India the Seeonee Wolf-Pack has a new cub. He is not a wolf – he is Mowgli, a human child, but he knows nothing of the world of men. He lives and hunts with his brothers the wolves. Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther are his friends and teachers. And Shere Khan, the man-eating tiger, is his enemy.

O. Henry “New Yorkers Short Stories”.
A housewife, a tramp, a lawyer, a waitress, an actress – ordinary people living ordinary lives in New York at the beginning of this century. The city has changed greatly since that time, but its people are much the same. Some are rich, some are poor, some are happy, some are sad, some have found love, some are looking for love.

Daniel Defoe “Robinson Crusoe”.
I often walked along the shore, and one day I saw something in the sand. I went over to look at it more carefully. . . It was a footprint – the footprint of a man!’. In 1659 Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on a small island off the coast of South America. After fifteen years alone, he suddenly learns that there is another person on the island. But will this man be a friend – or an enemy?

Joyce Hannam “The Death of Karen Silkwood”.
This is the story of Karen Silkwood. It begins with her death. Why does her story begin where it should end? Certain people wanted her death to be an ending. Why? What were they afraid of? Karen Silkwood had something to tell us, and she believed that it was important. Why didn't she live to tell us? Will we ever know what really happened? The questions go on and on, but there are no answers. This is a true story. It happened in Oklahoma, USA, where Karen Silkwood lived and worked. . . and died.

Rosemary Border “The Piano”.
One day, a farmer tells a farm boy to take everything out of an old building and throw it away. ‘It’s all rubbish,’ he says. ‘In the middle of all the rubbish, the boy finds a beautiful old piano. He has never played before, but now, when his fingers touch the piano, he begins to play. He closes his eyes and the music comes to him – and the music moves his fingers. When he opens his eyes again, he knows that his life is changed for ever…

Erich Segal “Love Story”.
This is a love story you won’t forget. Oliver Barrett meets Jenny Cavilleri. He plays sports, she plays music. He's rich, and she's poor. They argue, and they fight, and they fall in love. So they get married, and make a home together. They work hard, they enjoy life, they make plans for the future. Then they learn that they don’t have much time left.

Frances Burnett “The Secret Garden”.
Little Mary Lennox is a bad-tempered, disagreeable child. When her parents die in India, she is sent back to England to live with her uncle in a big, lonely, old house. There is nothing to do all day except walk in the gardens – and watch the robin flying over the high walls of the secret garden. . . which has been locked for ten years. And no one has the key.

Jerome K. Jerome “Three Men in a Boat.”
With ideas like this, perhaps it is not a good idea to spend a holiday taking a boat trip up the River Thames. But this is what the three friends – and Montmorency the dog – decide to do. It is the sort of holiday that is fun to remember afterwards, but not so much fun to wake up to early on a cold, wet morning.

Emily Bronte “Wuthering Heights”.
The wind is strong on the Yorkshire moors. There are few trees, and fewer houses, to block its path. There is one house, however, that does not hide from the wind. It stands out from the hill and challenges the wind to do its worst. The house is called Wuthering Heights. When Mr Earnshaw brings a strange, small, dark child back home to Wuthering Heights, it seems he has opened his doors to trouble. He has invited in something that, like the wind, is safer kept out of the house.

The method of learning English by listening to audiobooks is no less effective than other basic methods. Don't put audiobooks on the back burner.

If you have at least minimal knowledge of the language, then by all means, start listening to audiobooks at an entry level.

Audiobooks in English come in different types:

• Books narrated by native speakers – professionals in their field. This is the best and highest quality option for audiobooks. The text, pronunciation, tempo, clear pronunciation, intonation will meet all standards. Undoubtedly, this version of the book for listening will be useful to absolutely everyone. However, there are not so many such books and they are often paid.
• Books narrated by native speakers. These are collections of audio files that are posted on the Internet by ordinary residents of English-speaking countries. Recordings can be of varying quality, since most often people make them at home, and not in recording studios in a team with experts in this field.

  The main problem may be that text is read by people with different accents, so the same text read by different people will be perceived differently.

  But freely available on the Internet, such books are very popular and it is useful to listen to them in order to get used to and learn to understand live English speech. Choose your favorite books and enjoy and benefit from such listening.

• Books narrated by Russian-speaking experts. These are generally good quality audiobooks that can be used for studying without any fear of learning mistakes or anything like that. But it is still worth remembering that no matter how well a Russian person speaks English, he is not a native speaker of this language. At the initial stage, such books are recommended for compulsory listening to everyone who is learning English and wants to achieve results in this difficult task.

  Audio files are recorded in professional recording studios using good equipment, which makes them high quality. All words are pronounced clearly, distinctly, and legibly. The pace is usually a little slower to make it easier for beginners to make out the words and understand the meaning.

• Books voiced by special programs. Such books are not widely distributed, but they are still found on the Internet. The quality of such recordings is quite good, but this is good for robots, since the text is read unemotionally, at the same pace, with the same intonation. Although all words are pronounced according to the transcription in the dictionary, listening to such audio is a very boring experience.

Why is it better to learn English from audiobooks?

Everyone understands that you need maximum practice and various kinds of exercises to learn English successfully. The most difficult thing is communicating and understanding native speakers.

You can thoroughly learn the rules of grammar, have a huge vocabulary, speak monologues well in English, but still not understand native speakers at all. Live English speech cannot be understood unless you practice listening to it.

When you first hear the speech of a native speaker, you immediately feel the difference from the speech of a Russian-speaking person in English. In order to understand the English, you need to listen to them.

Vocabulary expansion

Undoubtedly, when listening to books in English, almost every sentence contains new words or new combinations of already known words. Even if you don’t write down words in a separate notebook or notepad, or look for translations of words in dictionaries, new words will still end up in your passive vocabulary.

Of course, it will be very useful if you immediately transfer such words from passive to active stock, but for this you need to remember it and try to use it in speech in the future, at least until the word moves from short-term memory to long-term memory.

It is not necessary to memorize all the unknown words from an audiobook in English; choose only those that you use in your native speech, with the help of which you are accustomed to expressing your thoughts.

If you don’t feel a word in Russian and are not used to using it in everyday life, then it is unlikely to become useful to you at the initial stage of learning English. Perhaps when you learn a foreign language at a high enough level, you will return to these words.

Studying spoken grammar

English grammar is a very complex aspect, as it has many tenses, phrases, structures, constructions and exceptions to all the rules.

In English lessons, all the rules and cases in which one or another tense should be used are discussed in detail.

But in live speech, we do not always have time to grasp exactly what point of the rule a person was guided by, or used a certain tense or construction.

However, if you listen to similar sentences several times, this will not cause misunderstanding; you will simply have an automatic habit of speaking and hearing exactly this option.

When listening to audiobooks in English, inductive learning occurs, that is, from individual similar sentences you can logically understand the rule.

That is, using specific examples, you can build a general rule.

English speech perception

Many argue that without immersion in a language environment it is impossible to learn the language of its native speakers. But where can one find enough volunteer native English speakers to surround all the willing students?

Of course, those who have the opportunity to travel will be able to plunge into an English-speaking environment at least for a short time. But not everyone can do this.

To simulate such a useful environment in any way, it is necessary to listen to at least recordings made by the British. And this is exactly what audiobooks are. By regularly listening to English speech, you can develop good listening and speech recognition skills in English.

You can study anytime and anywhere

The availability of methods for teaching English using audiobooks is a very attractive advantage. Most people have MP3 players, phones that can play audio files, tablets and other modern devices.

To start listening to audiobooks, you only need access to the Internet to listen online or download the book you like. You can use audiobooks to learn English at any time and place convenient for you.

Some people spend their breaks at work in such a useful way, some listen to books on the way home on public transport, some listen to them as a habit from childhood before going to bed, and for others, audiobooks help them relax and take their mind off problems.

There would be a desire to listen to audiobooks in English, and you can always find the time and place for this.

How to choose the right audiobooks for beginners?

• The main rule that must be followed when choosing an audiobook is that you must like the book!!!

A book should bring you, first of all, pleasure. Perhaps this will be your favorite book, which you have repeatedly re-read in Russian, or a book that friends have long recommended you to read, but you never got around to it.

The main thing is that it arouses your interest and desire to learn its content, its new sound in English.

• The book should correspond to your level of knowledge of the English language.

There are countless debates on the topic: What is better to listen to adapted books or originals? Of course, listening to the originals is very useful. But will a beginner learn English be able to listen and understand Shakespeare in the original and will it bring him as much benefit as the adapted text?..

For beginners, it is still better to choose something that will, as they say, be tough. Therefore, select a book of the required level from the total number of adapted audiobooks and combine pleasant listening with useful ones.

• The book should be of a volume that you can handle.

You shouldn’t choose a book that you will listen to for three years, and at the end you won’t be able to remember where it all began.

If you do not have a lot of free time to listen to audiobooks, then it is better to choose a short story that you will listen to in a few days or a week, but at the same time you will not forget anything and will get good motivation.

The pride of finishing an audiobook will motivate you to listen to another one.

Where can I find audiobooks for beginners in English online?

There are a huge number of audiobooks in English of varying levels and quality on the Internet, so for any such request, any search engine will give you, if not thousands, then at least hundreds or dozens of useful sites with audiobooks.