As a pilot you must be able to hear and understand numbers. The listening activities below will help you practise listening to many kinds of numbers in everyday situations (time, telephone numbers, dates, heights, weights, volumes). This will develop your overall ability to recognise any numbers.

Dates, times and ordinal numbers 12th, 20th

Heights, weights and volumes

Decimal numbers

Practice listening to numbers and writing them down. 

Short dialogues focused on listening to numbers

Clock times

Listen to the ICAO phonetic alphabet. Record yourself saying it

In a dictation, you will listen and write down/say what you hear. You should listen as many times as you need to. Dictation can really help you in many ways. You will improve your:

1. Pronunciation - listen and repeat

2. Ability to  hear individual sounds in English

3. Ability to hear word stress, sentence stress and intonation

4. Writing skills - note taking, punctuation, spelling and editing skills

5. Grammatical accuracy 

6. Short term memory (essential for readback of ATC instructions)

Dictations on many common topics: numbers, letters, places

Elementary level: Practice listening and writing down what you hear. Many different everyday topics

Elementary level: Very simple dictation exercise on general travel with vocabulary focus

Intermediate level: Practice listening and writing down what you hear. Many different everyday topics

200 dictation exercises. American accent. Slow delivery. They get harder and longer as you go.

Longer dictations where you can practice writing as you listen and then check your spelling and punctuation. Helps you to increase your general vocabulary

Practice listening and writing. Increase your everyday vocabulary. There are many topics and different levels of difficulty.

Watch these videos below to become more familiar with the layout of an aircraft cockpit and the checklists you will use to startup and shutdown your airplane. They will also help you develop your vocabulary associated with cockpit instruments and parts of an airplane as well as your listening skills.

Preflight inspection of a C172. North American accent. He speaks very quickly, but there are subtitles, so put them on! Length: 14'18''

Preflight and start-up checklist of Cessna 152. Includes ATIS and ATC calls and explanations. Very clear audio with North American accent and subtitles. 28’57’’ minutes

Start-up of a Cessna 172 on a simulator for the flow – from memory not a checklist. Very clear audio with subtitles. North American male 18’33’’. It’s OK, but not great. He comments on the frame rate – I might have to trim this video.

Basic startup and then basic shut down of a C172R. Clear audio. North American accent (5 Minutes). 

Startup checklist of a C172. North American accent (2'25 minutes).

Listening to North American pilot training students and flying in a C172 (hundreds of videos)

Watch and listen to preflight briefings (North American woman)

As a student pilot, you need to know many words associated with parts of an airplane. The listening and reading exercises below help you to develop this vocabulary. Make sure you look in the 'Vocabulary' section as well. There are MANY other activities to help you develop vocabulary.

Listening, reading and vocabulary exercise on the parts of aircraft (Part 1)

Listening, reading and vocabulary exercise on the parts of aircraft (Part 2)

Listening, reading and activities on grammar, spelling and vocabulary for this lesson on Airplanes)

Talking on the radio to air traffic control and other pilots is difficult at first. Listen and watch the resources below to get more exposure to radio calls with air traffic controllers and build your confidence and phraseology vocabulary.

Air Traffic Control Basics: Radio Call Structure

Listen to hundreds of real ATC-pilot conversations in routine and non routine situations

A video tutorial on the basics of Talking to Air Traffic Control. North American accent with subtitles

Video made from within the cockpit with the real ATC calls when transiting busy airspace in England near Gatwick airport. English accents. 

Video made from within the cockpit with the real ATC calls when doing touch and goes and ground movements at different controlled aerodromes and entering the circuit area from the training area. American accents. 

Video taken from the cockpit that records all of the ATC radio calls on a 150 mile cross country flight. Russian accent pilot and North American ATC and other pilots in the area. Great to get a sense of what it sounds like on a cross country with all the calls. 

Video shows you how you can create your own study cards for radio calls to practice with and become more confident. 

For those who want a real challenge…Aviation Listeners Approach - listen to authentic different arrivals in an Airport with a downloadable exercises – this is very difficult and you need to buy the answers or keep listening to hear them!

The activities below help you to develop listening skills in everyday situations as well as travel related situations. You need a range of everyday language to be able to communicate in the many different contexts you will experience while you study overseas. 

Practice listening to travel announcements at train stations and airports. There are lots of numbers to listen for. Has downloadable worksheets, transcripts and answers)

Practice listening about checking in to a flight at an airport – simple with some vocabulary

This site has many different listening and vocabulary lessons about getting ready to travel

Listening test with a quiz. Focus on everyday listening and numbers/details

Being able to understand ATIS announcement is crucial when taking off and coming into land. Practise listening to ATIS announcements and writing down the information you hear. 

58 ATIS announcements from all over the world

12 ATIS announcements from all over the world

You will interact with a wide range of people during your practical flight training. For all of these interactions you will need vocabulary and strategies to build and maintain relationships with your instructors, lecturers, fellow students, administration staff, accommodation officers and many more others. The activities below will help you to develop the confidence to speak with anyone!

Practice listening to and repeating 50 common English expressions you can use in everyday situations

Exercises to practice social English in many situations such as introducing yourself, talking about family members, talking about colleagues and friends, saying goodbye, talking about politics

Audio Lessons that will lead to speaking skills. Starting a conversation with a specific lesson, functions and notes.

Video lesson on a Quick and easy way to make people understand you with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Video lesson on 2 essential skills for great conversation with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Learn new words to keep a conversation going

Practice using wh- questions to make your conversations more interesting

Video lesson on using Tag Questions to show interest with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Audio lessons that will lead to speaking skills. Practise Asking for information on a telephone call in a business context with a notes and vocabulary and listening exercises.

Exercises to practice speaking on the telephone

Video lesson on asking for permission politely in English with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Video lesson on ending a conversation politely with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Video lesson on saying “no” in English politely with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Video lesson on How to say No in a very direct way (not politely) with a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Video lesson on How to deal with problems. This is in a business context, but you can apply the strategies and language to your training. There is a quiz to improve English conversational skills

Practice expressing and justifying your opinions

Practice understanding what kind of question you are being asked and how to answer it 

Examples of short conversations that are full of useful language with a downloadable material. You can practice these alone or with a friend

Listen to and repeat 100 common phrases and sentence patterns

Practise listening to and copying every day conversation on 75 different topics

Professional pilots rate clear pronunciation as one of the most important skills when speaking and being understood on the radio. Make sure that your pronunciation is constantly improving with the help of the resources below.

Practise and record yourself pronouncing Aviation Radiotelephony numbers

Practise listening for word stress, sentence stress, and end-of-sentence intonation.

Practise and record yourself pronouncing Aviation Vocabulary Units of Measurement (airspeed, pressure, distance, headings, temperature, weight)

Practise and record yourself pronouncing the Aviation Weather vocabulary

Practise listening for word stress and then say the words.

Listen to the words and phrases, record your own version, and compare your recording with the original to practise your intonation

Listen to the words and phrases, record your own version, and compare your recording with the original to practice Intonation: Polite versus Rude

Listen to the different words related to health and decide which syllable stress pattern they follow

Practise identifying word stress

Listen to how stressed words and intonation can change the meaning (this exercise is advanced level students)

Listen to the different words and decide which syllable stress pattern they follow.

Do a word Stress Quiz

Practice the syllable stress of verb-noun pairs

Many different, fun activities to practice listening to and saying the different sounds in English

An interactive game that improves English pronunciation and recognition of vowels sounds

An interactive game that improves English pronunciation and recognition of consonant sounds

Listen to and repeat the individual sounds of American English.

Listen to and repeat the individual sounds of British English.

Practise spelling words from a phonetic transcription

Exercises to practice pronunciation including listening and saying English names, countries, regions

You will need enough grammar to make your speaking and writing clear. Use the resources below to practice many different aspects of English grammar.

Aviation grammar of major structures presented with fun videos – there are no tasks, just the information about many different grammatical constructions

Practise how to ask questions in English (low level) with practice tests

Practise forming questions in English (exercise 1)

Practise forming questions in English (exercise 2)

Practise forming questions in English (exercise 3)

Practise many activities for the different types of questions in English

Practice choosing the correct question for the answer

Practice choosing the correct answer for a question word

Practice joining clauses and sentences with many worsheets on conjunctions

Practice prepositions with many worksheets and activities at all levels

Practice verb forms with over 145 activities at all levels

Practice of past simple tense, to make and to do, to get, prepositions and the most common phrasal verbs with 20 phrasal verb quizzes

Intermediate level exercises on many different aspects of grammar

Practice irregular verbs past simple and past participle and hear them spoken

Practice linking phrases together to help you express your opinions and link ideas within sentences when writing and speaking

Advanced dictation and grammar practice - these activities are difficult, but you can slow the audio down. The answers are provided

Practice paraphrasing (1) in your writing - these tasks are difficult

Practise paraphrasing (2) in your writing - these tasks are difficult

Download the free apps below to practise your speaking and pronunciation where ever you go and when ever you want.

Train your pronunciation and speaking skills. Just listen, repeat & compare

This Pronunciation App helps you study, practise and play with pronunciation

This app helps you to practice English pronunciation

Practise reading, listening and writing by talking with a chatbot for 10 minutes each day

This app will help you listen to English and speak English more fluently. There are many lessons divided into many levels from elementary to intermediate and advanced.

This app has more than 7000 American conversation audio files in most of the categories. It will help you improve your conversational American English.

When you are talking to your instructors, lecturers and fellow student pilots, you will often need to calrify, check and confirm information such as lesson times, places to meet. Use the activities below to help you learn phrases used to do these things and develop your confidence in knowing how to ask if you are not sure.

Read and practise saying phrases for confirming information (confirming = making sure you have understood something correctly

Listen to and read a lesson on how to ask for clarification. There are lots of different phrases to practise.

Listen and repeat phrases used to check for understanding and ask for clarification in English

Read a dialogue and answer questions to learn how to confirm and clarify information

As a pilot, you must have an extensive range of words associated with airplane flight instruments, the external parts of an airplane and airplane maintenance. Practise these interactive flashcards below to help you learn the words you need.

Descriptions of cockpit instruments. Point the cursor to the picture for descriptions. 

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the flight instruments in a cockpit 

229 words that you will learn on while doing your Private Pilot Licence interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

20 aircraft/flight technology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation

26 aircraft/flight technology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation    

207 aircraft maintenance flashcard questions – these are very difficult 

100 words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

62 words interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

This is like a dictionary of aviation words and acronyms from A-Z 

When you start your practical lessons, you will need some vocabulary to describe the features around an airport. Use these exercises and word lists below to develop this vocab.

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the main parts of an airport  

25 airport words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

11 airport and runway words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

Meteorology is a major topic in your Private Pilot theory syllabus. Use the resources below to learn some of the key vocabulary associated with this subject.

Exercises to practice environment and weather words 

73 meteorology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation    

215 meteorology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation

32 meteorology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

97 meteorology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

93 weather words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

43 meteorology words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

Navigation is a major topic in both your theory and practical lessons. Get a head start on learning some of the terms, phrases and words associated with navigation by using the resources below.

24 navigation words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

39 navigation words interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

42 navigation words interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

37 flight planning and navigation words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

You will fly over many geographical features that you may need to describe. Try out the activities below to develop your vocabulary of general and specific geography vocabulary.

114 words for general geographical features interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

31 words for navigation interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

925 words for general geographical features interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

31 words for map reading interactive flashcards with pronunciation

40 words for general geographical features interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

59 world geography words interactive flashcards with pronunciation 

41 physical geography words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

You need to know a wide range of general science vocabulary in order to understand the texts in your theory syllabus. Use the resources below to improve your vocabulary.

101 scientific words you should know 

General science knowledge quiz 

31 words – measurements and mathematics. Interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

Understanding the dynamics of flight relies on a sound understanding of physics. You need to have a wide range of vocabulary to read texts, listen to lectures and talk to your flying instructor in your pre-flight briefings. Use the word lists and quizzes below to help you develop your physics vocabulary.

72 physics words interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

39 physics words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

69 physics words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

150 words and quiz questions on physics 

74 physics words interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

69 words on speed/velocity interactive flashcards with pronunciation   

17 words on electrical circuits interactive flashcards with pronunciation  

Aviation is filled with dates, numbers and technical information shown in diagrams. Practise this vocabulary with the exercises below.

Exercises to practise vocabulary to describe trends, data, charts and tables and maths calculations. All exercises are presented as conversations 

Many different types of exercises to practice dates, numbers and time 

The words in all of the lists below are academic words that are common to many different academic contexts. They make up about 10% of all academic texts that you will read and listen to, so it is worthwhile slowly learning them. Start with Sublist 1 - these are the most common and work down to Sublist 10. All of the sublists come with interactive activities that will help you practise and learn the words.

Sublist 1 

Sublist 2  

Sublist 3  

Sublist 4  

Sublist 5  

Sublist 6  

Sublist 7  

Sublist 8  

Sublist 9

Sublist 10 

The word lists and exercises below develop general vocabulary that can be used in everyday situations. See how many of the words you already know.

General English wordlist at an Intermediate level from A-Z   

General vocabulary activities at an Intermediate to Upper Intermediate level 

Practice tests for an Intermediate level of general English 

Learning activities for all skills general 

You need to develop strategies to learn new words. Try out these activities to expand your range of words.

Type in a word to get all of the related words. Click on a word to get its definition and then more related words 

Learn 31 prefixes and suffixes – these are very useful for understanding different words from context 

During your practical training, you will also be reading many texts on the theory topics in your Private Pilot Licence syllabus. You need to develop a lot of reading strategies to help you cope with the vocabulary and the amount that you will need to read. Use the resources below to help you develop your detailed understanding of texts.

Read a text about a famous mathematician and geographer (with questions and answers)

Read a text on how to make estimations (with questions and answers)

Read a text on measuring temperature (with questions and answers)

Read a text on magnetic attraction (with questions and answers)

Read a text on absolute location - latitude and longitude (with questions and answers)

Read a text on atmospheric layers (with questions and answers)

Read a text on convection currents (with questions and answers)

Read a text on converting fractions to decimals (with questions and answers)

Read a text on extreme weather (with questions and answers)

Read a text on the best ways to present data (with questions and answers)

Read a text on converting energy to motion (with questions and answers)

Read a text on where people live in the world (with questions and answers)

21 question quiz about Airport Ground Vehicle Operations with comprehension questions

Short text about an aviation ‘near miss’ with comprehension questions

Short text about airplanes and aviation in the 1920s with a quiz

Short text about airlines cutting flights and routes with questions

Practice of common words that cabin flight crew use

Practice listening and reading this text about airline travel. Learn new vocabulary and answer comprehension questions

Practice reading and listening to taxing around large airports

Reading and vocabulary exercises on the Flight instrument panel

Read the dialogues between an instructor and a student pilot to become more familiar with routine ATC radio calls as well as the language that your instructor might use when talking to you in the cockpit while you taxi to take off.

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the ATC calls to a pilot when leaving the terminal gate (pushback)

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the ATC calls to a pilot when taxing on the ground

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the ATC calls to a pilot when taxiing on the ground towards the runway

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the ATC calls to a pilot when taking off

Written dialogue and comprehension exercises of an instructor talking to a student pilot about the ATC calls to a pilot when landing

Being able to skim a text to get the overall message and scan a text to locate specific information is an essential part of your reading skills. Use the activities below to help you develop these skills.

This helps you increase your reading speed. Copy and paste a text into the box. Click “start prompter” and then choose the speed 1-9 you want to read at and click “forward”.

Practice skimming to find the main idea in a text about planets in the solar system 

Practice skimming to find the main idea in a text about storms (easy level)

Practice skim reading for gist with gist questions  

Practice identifying the main idea of paragraphs - these exercises are at an upper intermediate level

Practice skimming and scanning factual texts - these exercises are advanced level

Practice skimming a text about shopping

Practice different scanning exercises to locate specific information

When reading, you will understand much more if you are able to identify the main idea and then the sentences that support this main idea. Use the activities below to help you develop this skill. This will also help you in your writing.

Watch a video and read short paragraphs to practice how to identify the topic or subject of a text

Learn about how to identify the main idea and supporting ideas in a powerpoint.

Practice identifying the main idea from short, factual paragraphs. Hit 'submit' when you are reading to check your answers

Practice identifying the main idea from short paragraphs about robots and robotic technologies. Hit 'submit' when you are reading to check your answers

Practice identifying the main idea from short paragraphs about the money system. Hit 'submit' when you are reading to check your answers

Watch a video and then read short, factual paragraphs to practice identifying the main idea

Watch a short video on how to identify the main and supporting ideas in a text

Watch a short video and read short paragraphs on how to identify supporting details in a pragraph

Watch a short video lesson on supporting details and then do a quiz to test your understanding.

Watch a short video on how to organise a paragraph with main and supporting ideas in your writing

Do a reading test which tests your ability to identify the main idea and overall purpose in short texts