The Sound of Silence — a listening comprehension exercise

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One of the greatest songs ever written, no doubt. This is a live concert version, recorded in 1981 during the famous Concert in the Park, a free event held in Central Park in New York.

Listen to the song and fill the gaps in the lyrics. You can also get a letter hint if you can’t find a word. Feel free to stop playback any time you need.

The difficulty of this task is probably slightly higher than B2 level (upper-intermediate) because the vocabulary is fairly advanced and the imagery of the lyrics is probably not that easy to comprehend.

We have another listening comprehension exercise based on a Simon & Garfunkel song: The Boxer, which is also very famous.

There will be more exercises built around The Sound of Silence, including vocabulary and reading comprehension tasks as well as various difficulty level listening exercises, so please check back.

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Simon & Garfunkel: The Boxer – a listening comprehension exercise

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Once again, a classic: the famous duo of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first performed this song in 1969 and it has been popular ever since. The lyrics are not simple: you’ll find some advanced vocabulary items, some of which you might be unfamiliar with.

In this exercise version, only some easier words are left out, and if you still have difficulties, you can ask for hints.

Later you will find more tasks here based on this song, including vocabulary exercises and a pretty difficult text reconstruction task.