Practice listening easily with 15 minutes a day! This book features carefully selected 2-minute passages of moderate difficulty, suitable for beginners. Through four stages of “pre-listening—catching keywords—understanding sentence by sentence—overall retelling,” learners gradually improve and understand over 90% of the content. With persistent practice, quantitative change leads to qualitative improvement, making your English listening skills soar! Below is a collection organized by the qicai website editor, starting from the simplest English listening materials suitable for junior and senior high school students (beginner level).
Christmas In December, Christmas comes. We get a holiday from school and our parents get a few days off from work. Our family gets ready for Christmas by decorating the house. We decorate inside and out. On the outside of the house, we put up lights that twinkle and glow. We have a wooden Santa Claus and a reindeer set that my father puts up on the roof.adj
1. artificially formal
e.g. that artificial humility that her husband hated
contrived coyness
a stilted letter of acknowledgment
when people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation
Synonym: contrivedhokeystilted
2. contrived by art rather than nature
e.g. artificial flowers
artificial flavoring
an artificial diamond
artificial fibers
artificial sweeteners
Synonym: unreal
3. not arising from natural growth or characterized by vital processes
noun
1. merriment expressed by a brightness or gleam or animation of countenance
e.g. he had a sparkle in his eye
there's a perpetual twinkle in his eyes
Synonym: sparklesparklight
2. a rapid change in brightness
a brief spark or flash
Synonym: scintillationsparkling
noun
1. large gallinaceous bird with fan-shaped tail
widely domesticated for food
Synonym: Meleagris gallopavo
2. an event that fails badly or is totally ineffectual
e.g. the first experiment was a real turkey
the meeting was a dud as far as new business was concerned
Synonym: bombdud
3. flesh of large domesticated fowl usually roasted
4. a person who does something thoughtless or annoying
e.g. some joker is blocking the driveway
Synonym: joker
noun
1. disposing of property by voluntary transfer without receiving value in return
e.g. the alumni followed a program of annual giving
2. the act of giving
Synonym: gift
3. the imparting of news or promises etc.
e.g. he gave us the news and made a great show of the giving
giving his word of honor seemed to come too easily
noun
1. the act of gathering something together
Synonym: collectionassemblingaggregation