November, 2016 | EnglishFiles.com

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen – a text reconstruction listening comprehension exercise

Earlier we already brought you two exercises based on Leonard Cohen’s classic song Hallelujah: an easier and a slightly more difficult one. In both cases only some of the words were missing.

This current task is more complex since no words are given here – you have to reconstruct the full lyrics with minimal help: you get to see how many letters each word has. But other than that, you’re on your own, just like when you try to write down the lyrics of any other song.

It’s probably a good idea to do at least one of the previous versions (easier – less easy) and then wait a day or two just so that you don’t exactly remember all the words because then it’s no longer a listening comprehension task but simply a memory test. But of course you can also jump right in:

There will be some more tasks based on this song, including a reading comprehension text and vocabulary exercises too.

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen – an open cloze listening comprehension exercise

Here’s another exercise based on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – this one is also a listening comprehension task, but a bit more difficult than the previous version because here you have to find the words on your own as there is no list to choose from (this is called an open cloze test).

You can try an easier version of the same song here – you only have to choose the words from a list in this exercise.

Earlier we featured two other Leonard Cohen songs, Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat – make sure you check out those exercises too.

More tasks will follow based on this song.

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen: a listening comprehension exercise

Leonard Cohen, one of the greatest musicians of all time, passed away on November 7 this year. We celebrate his musical legacy with a concert recording of his masterpiece, Hallelujah.

This classic is considered to be the most covered song ever, having inspired well over 200 covers so far. The song has many different versions and almost every performer changes the lyrics to a certain extent, adding or removing verses. Leonard Cohen himself played it quite differently over the years, including the variation in the final verse to suit the concert venue – in the case of this video, London; this was a highly anticipated and appreciated feature of the night everywhere. You can hear the crowd cheering loudly in the background for this line.

This exercise is not meant to be very difficult; it’s aimed at intermediate to upper-intermediate level students (between B1 and B2 levels on the CEFR scale).

Fairly soon you’ll find exercises here based on the vocabulary of this song, together with more listening comprehension tasks.

Earlier we featured two other Leonard Cohen songs, Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat – make sure you check out those exercises too.