In the days of King Alfred, there lived a poor woman, whose cottage was in a remote country village, many miles from London. She had been a widow some years, and had an only child named Jack.
This ear-training exercise is a bit more advanced. Above there is the sound recording and the text of the first two sentences of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Try to make a phonetic transcription of the passage as pronounced by the speaker, Lynne Thompson. Then you can compare your version with mine by clicking on the show link below. My version has stress markings.