[8:16] English Listening Practice: Learn Through Hobbies to Improve Your Listening Skills

Practice listening easily with just 15 minutes a day! This book features selected 2-minute short passages at a moderate difficulty level, perfect for beginners. Through four stages—"preview listening—catch keywords—understand sentence by sentence—overall retelling"—learners progress step-by-step to understand over 90% of the content. Consistent practice leads to quality improvement and a leap forward in your English listening skills! Below is a collection curated by the qicai website editor, starting from the simplest English listening materials, suitable for junior and senior high school (beginner level).

A lot of people have hobbies. Hobbies are interesting things that people like to do in their spare time. My father has a hobby. He has a model railroad set that he put together. A tiny electric train runs through make-believe villages and travels through tunnels and over mountains.

My father also enjoys sailing. He has a real sailboat that he takes us out on. He is teaching me how to sail.

I like to collect things. I collect comic books, stamps, and coins. I trade comic books with some of my friends, and sometimes I buy comic books at stores. Some of the very old comic books are worth a lot of money.

I have stamps from all over the world. Whenever any of my friends get a letter from a faraway place, they save the stamps for me. I have stamps from England, Japan, Australia, and even Russia. I use a magnifying glass to look at the stamps, and I keep them in a special album.

I don't have too many coins yet, but I have a very old dime from Canada, and I have a coin with a hole in it from Africa. My mother used to collect dolls when she was a little girl. The dolls were costumes from different countries.

My friend John's hobby is painting. He does oil painting. He has even sold some of his paintings. He is a good artist. My friend Linda sews. She has made clothes for herself and some of her friends. Maybe Linda will be a fashion designer when she gets older.

Sometimes people's hobbies lead them into their careers.