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Space Oddity by David Bowie — a listening comprehension exercise

This is one of the most famous songs ever recorded. Space Oddity by David Bowie features practically on every Top Songs list and is also found on Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

This listening comprehension exercise is at B2 level since the rhythm of the song is fairly slow and Bowie sings clearly enough to understand. The vocabulary is not very difficult, either, but you can alway ask for hints if you get stuck.

Listen to the song and enter the words you hear; feel free to stop the video whenever you like.

No Ordinary Love by Sade — a listening comprehension exercise

This is probably not even B2 level as the vocabulary of the song is not difficult at all and Sade is quite easy to understand too.

Listen to the song and enter the words you hear; feel free to stop the video whenever you like.

The River — the background story: a reading comprehension exercise

A few days ago we published a listening comprehension task on the song The River by Bruce Springsteen. The reading comprehension task below tells the background story of this song.

You have to put the sentence parts in the correct order to create the text.

The difficulty of this exercise is around B2 level (upper-intermediate).

Text source (with modifications).

John Lennon: Jealous Guy — a listening comprehension exercise

An easier exercise this time — Jealous Guy by John Lennon. Watch the video, listen carefully to try and understand the lyrics, then write the words you hear in the box under the video player, where it says ‘Guess’.

Two words have been added to help you a bit; also, the asterisks show how many letters the words have. When you enter a correct word, it will be added everywhere it appears in the lyrics so you don’t have to type it multiple times.

The difficulty of this exercise is probably a bit higher than B2 level (upper-intermediate) because you have to find all the words, but on the other hand the vocabulary of the song is not very advanced.

You will find more exercises based on this song later here.

Bruce Springsteen: The River — a listening comprehension exercise

This is a listening comprehension task based on the famous Bruce Springsteen song The River.

The difficulty of this exercise is about B2 level (upper-intermediate) or maybe slightly higher.

Your task is to listen to the song and fill the gaps in the lyrics. You can also ask for hints and stop the playback at any time.

We have a few more exercises based on this song:

You can expect even more exercises on The River by Bruce Springsteen, so check back soon.

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A literary quiz

books in library This is for those interested in advanced level vocabulary and literature. All the words in this quiz are at least C1 level but most of them are even higher and belong to a special register – literature. Still, they are useful to know but be careful when you want to use them in everyday conversation so as not to seem posh. However, if you use them in writing (in the right context!) they should improve the quality of your text.

So, go ahead and see how many of them you get right – don’t worry, we won’t call you nescient if you make too many mistakes.