Listening, no kidding

ESL listening lessons by level, from any audio

Listening, no kidding turns a topic, a podcast episode or your own audio file into a levelled listening lesson with comprehension questions, in under a minute. Run it live on the board with students answering on their phones, or assign it to a class. It shares one account and one plan with the Speaking and Writing tools on this site.

Three ways to start a lesson

From a topic: pick a CEFR level and a listening type, and the AI writes the script and records it with multi-speaker audio from more than 30 voice personas, matched for age, gender and accent (British, American, Australian and more). Conversations, interviews, podcasts, speeches and four-speaker roundtables are all supported.

From a real podcast: search Apple Podcasts, choose an episode, mark the time ranges you want, and the clip becomes a lesson. From your own audio: upload a recording you already use and build the activities around it.

Questions levelled from gist to inference

Every lesson comes with comprehension activities in five formats: multiple choice, true/false, gap fill, short answer and matching. Questions are tiered, starting with the gist and moving towards detail and inference, and levelled to the CEFR band you chose, from A1 to C2. Each lesson also gets a summary, learning objectives, a vocabulary list and the grammar structures it contains, so the follow-up is ready too.

Live in class: a QR code, no student accounts

Put the session on the board and students join by scanning a QR code: no accounts, no passwords, no real names collected. You push the questions one at a time, watch the answers arrive in live charts, and reveal the correct answer when you are ready, so a comprehension gap shows up while you can still do something about it. Student data from the session is deleted when it ends.

After class

Export any lesson to PDF, save bookmarks in the audio, organise lessons into classrooms, assign them, and track who has finished and how the group did. Lesson material comes only from sources the platform can use: audio the AI generates for you, your own recordings, podcasts through their own published feeds, and openly licensed material. It won’t strip the audio out of someone else’s video, and the sources page explains why.

Listening next to speaking and writing

A listening lesson is a natural opener for the rest of the class: students hear a conversation, answer the questions, then talk about the same topic themselves. The free speaking resources on this site are built for that second step.

Questions teachers ask

Do my students need accounts?

No. Students join a live session by scanning a QR code. There are no student sign-ups or passwords, and no real names are collected.

Can I use my own audio or a real podcast?

Yes. You can build a lesson from an AI-generated script, from a clip of a real podcast episode found through Apple Podcasts, or from an audio file you upload.

Is it the same account as the Speaking and Writing tools?

Yes. One teacher account and one plan cover Speaking, Listening and Writing, with a free plan to start. See the pricing page for the current plans.