Ecoutez Bien does not just provide tens of exercises, complete with scripts, answers, cultural information and suggested techniques for all students to practise and improve their skills. It has a whole control panel for you, the teacher, where you can check your students’ results, their complete answers, change their passwords and choose units for each class or even every student you teach. The creators of Ecoutez Bien are teachers who understand your needs.
There are currently 25 VCE units and we are constantly adding new units and updating the existing ones. Current units are: leisure activities, transport, housing, payment, work, music, history, travelling, the changing world 1, food, body and health, everyday conversations, French-speaking countries, general topics, the changing world 2, New Caledonia, family and youth, health and research, social issues and lifestyles, French icons, technology and ecology, Australia, art in the French-speaking world, science in everyday life and a slightly different unit titled detailed study. There are many IB units based around the 5 prescribed themes: Identities, Experiences, Human Ingenuity, Social Organization and Sharing the Planet.
For more details about each unit, email us.
In short: free units and teacher access!
Free units: Individual students get 10 units, students who are part of a class get all (25+) units.
Teacher access: Manage your classes by choosing which units your students do, change their password when needed, see their results, analyse their full answers. It’s more motivating for students when they have your support.
We’ve broken techniques down into bottom up techniques, top down techniques and general exam strategies. We encourage students to trial them all separately, depending on the difficulty of the exercise. Research shows that the more successful students are the more resourceful ones (ie the ones who have access to the biggest range of techniques).
Texts cover a variety of text types that lend themselves to aural comprehension, not just conversation and dialogue but also news report, advertisements, speeches, reading a letter, interviewing someone and more.
Questions are worded so that students need to understand specific details, overall message, main idea(s) and the speakers’ intention. They also require the students to infer meaning such as opinions, feelings or attitudes.
In the simpler exercises questions are multi choice in English then in French. Later on students are required to answer short answers in French or in English. These can require students to answer with a full sentence, a few words, in a table, to reorder words
Because students need to mark their own answers, they need to make a decision regarding the answer they provided and start thinking like an assessor.
More successful students have a better awareness of listening techniques. They have practised them regularly and are able to switch from one technique to another when needed.
Students who undertake regular practise are more confident with their listening ability. Confidence is a huge factor in determining students’ success.
Absolutely! Pre-existing knowledge, including cultural elements such as customs and traditions, are essential for students to interpret what they’ve heard. It’s a bit simplified but we can say that vocabulary and grammar helps them recognise words, while cultural knowledge helps them make sense of the words in their context.
Ecoutez Bien is a website, not software so there is no installation process. Schools purchase a subscription for each student. A licence is personal and cannot be transfered to another student.
The website runs on all computers and modern browsers including iPad.
Congratulations! You and your students are on their way to using the best listening website around!
First-of-all you need to register for a teacher account. Once we have verified the information, you will be able to use all the functionalities.
You will then be able to enrol your students and order a subscription for you class from within the website. There are two types of school licences: 1 year or 2 years.
As soon as possible! Year 12 is a very short year so starting in Year 11 is very beneficial. This is why we have given you a big discount on the 2-year subscription!
A 1 year subscription runs for 365 days.