photo by Astrangegirl
Two days ago Sarah introduced us to another very useful tool for improving English: podcasts. The term ‘podcast’ is a neologism derived by the fusion of two words: ‘broadcasting’ and ‘ipod’. The first word indicates the transmission of audio and video signals over the airwaves from radio or television; the second noun refers to a portable media player (Wikipedia). A podcast is then a multimedia video or audio file which can be freely downloaded on your computer or on your mp3. However, some files are accessible directly online.
I think that podcasts are an excellent way of improving your English; you can train your listening and comprehension skills and you can enrich your vocabulary, pronunciation, and style. They are completely free, so everyone can take advantage of this fantastic tool. Cool!
You can subscribe to podcasts syndication feeds, so that you can receive new and interesting video and audio files as soon as they are available on the Web. In this way, you have always recent material at your disposal.
As Sarah pointed out, another important advantage of podcasts is that they can be used whenever and wherever you want to. You can listen to or watch them not only on your computer, but also bring them with you on your mp3. Fantastic! I never thought to the possibility of listening to several English conversations and videos each week while traveling by bus!
I surfed the Net and I used del.icio.us to find some useful podcasts; I chose these three good podcasts about English learning.
- The British Council Podcast is a wonderful website where you can find many audio files about several topics. You can listen to them and then read the correspondent audio scripts by clicking the ‘script’ link. Here you can find also some exercises that can be useful to check your comprehension skill. The content of the website has been written by English teachers and educationalists. There are many links to interesting English websites.
I think that podcasts are an excellent way of improving your English; you can train your listening and comprehension skills and you can enrich your vocabulary, pronunciation, and style. They are completely free, so everyone can take advantage of this fantastic tool. Cool!
You can subscribe to podcasts syndication feeds, so that you can receive new and interesting video and audio files as soon as they are available on the Web. In this way, you have always recent material at your disposal.
As Sarah pointed out, another important advantage of podcasts is that they can be used whenever and wherever you want to. You can listen to or watch them not only on your computer, but also bring them with you on your mp3. Fantastic! I never thought to the possibility of listening to several English conversations and videos each week while traveling by bus!
I surfed the Net and I used del.icio.us to find some useful podcasts; I chose these three good podcasts about English learning.
- The British Council Podcast is a wonderful website where you can find many audio files about several topics. You can listen to them and then read the correspondent audio scripts by clicking the ‘script’ link. Here you can find also some exercises that can be useful to check your comprehension skill. The content of the website has been written by English teachers and educationalists. There are many links to interesting English websites.
- The BBC Radio Podcast: How to… is one of the several interesting podcasts that you can find in the BBC website. Here you can listen to English radio programs that deal with different everyday situations. Not only can you improve your listening skill, but also enrich your everyday English vocabulary since explanations of language choices are provided.
- The Business English Podcast is an excellent resource to improve your listening and comprehension skills; you can find audio files, the texts scripts and exercises to check what you’ve actually understood. Conversations concern mainly suggestions to improve your business English, your intonation, pronunciation and style in the working field. It’s very useful both for students and workers!
That’s all for now!
Veronica
- The Business English Podcast is an excellent resource to improve your listening and comprehension skills; you can find audio files, the texts scripts and exercises to check what you’ve actually understood. Conversations concern mainly suggestions to improve your business English, your intonation, pronunciation and style in the working field. It’s very useful both for students and workers!
That’s all for now!
Veronica
7 commenti:
Hello Veronica! =)
How are you?
I read through your post and I found it very interesting. I like your blog very much because it has a clear and colourful layout! =)
I agree with you when you say that you ‘never thought to the possibility of listening to several English conversations and videos each week while traveling by bus!’
I have few basic grammar points to highlight in the previews sentence. First, maybe it’s better to write ‘had never thought’ rather than ‘never thought’. Second, you must say ‘think about’; you cannot say ‘think to’ or ‘think of’, in this case. Third, you misspelled the word ‘travelling’.
Thank you Veronica!
Catch you later
Dear Veronica,
I really enjoyed reading through your post. Above all, I appreciated the fact that you started your post explaining what podcasts are. Before starting this course, I didn’t know what “podcast” meant. Well, I had a MP3 player but I didn’t know that there are so many audio files I can download from the net on my i-pod!
Well, let’s start talking about the podcasts you suggested. First, I visited the British Council Podcast. I really loved the fact that each podcast is accompanied by a script. As a matter of fact, sometimes it’s difficult to understand everything. If you don’t know a word, you can see its spelling and you can have a look at it in the dictionary! Therefore, you always learn something new.
As far as your post is concerned, I noticed only three mistakes. However, Martina has already pointed two of them out.Actually, they’re only oversights!
Let's see. You wrote:“but also bring them with you on your mp3”. Maybe you wanted to say “Mp3 player”.
Hope it helps,
Silvia
Hi Veronica!
Thank you very much for your quick answer. I’m very glad that you listened to a podcast I suggested and you found it very interesting. It is very ‘rewarding’ the fact that somebody reads your work and appreciates it. Thank you!
By the way, I had a look at the podcasts you suggested, me too! On the British Council Podcast, I found interesting information about TOURIST ACCOMODATION. In the podcast, a travel agent talks to a couple who are asking about holiday accommodation in Wales. I found this podcast very friendly and nice; as you know, I am a Wales lover!!! I definitely love Wales, especially Aberystwyth!
Thank you so much Veronica for suggesting me that site! =)
I’m glad that you appreciated my peer-to-peer revision. I definitely agree with Silvia in saying that actually you didn’t make big mistakes: they are only oversights! Keep up the good work, Veronica!
Huge kiss!
Catch you later
Hi Veronica!
How are you?
Reading through your post I decided to visit the Business English Podcast. I agree with you when you say that it's useful both for students and workers! I also like the fact that there is the text of the introduction and then questions about the whole podcast to see if you have actually understood what they said. There are a lot of topics and videos as well.I found it very helpful for this branch of English language!Thanks for your suggestions! ;-)
I think your post is clear and I like the fact that it is full of details. However, I found some little mistakes.
1- *You have always - you always have
2- In Italian we say "in questo modo". However, in English you have to say "This way". I always wrote "In this way" like you, and I learnt it only last year that I was wrong! I think it's a very common mistake for Italian people.
I hope my comment will be useful to you!
C U tomorrow at the lab! ;-)
Hi Veronica!
How are you?
I know you were looking forward to reading my comment!!! Weren’t you? Joke apart… I’d start with a sentence on podcasts you wrote which I like very much: “you can train your listening and comprehension skills and you can enrich your vocabulary, pronunciation, and style. They are completely free, so everyone can take advantage of this fantastic tool.” In few words and very clearly, it sums up the usefulness of podcasting in language learning. A very good job, Veronica! I appreciated too that you gave a detailed description of what podcasts are and how they can be exploited.
As for the websites you suggested, I particularly enjoyed listening to some podcasts from The British Council website, such as the one about the future of English or another one about marketing. I totally agree with you: this site is really interesting since it deals with lots of different topics, and I liked the fact that it offers audio scripts as well, although they speak very clear (I managed to understand almost everything!). It’s very nice too that, in the archive, podcasts are arranged alphabetically according to their title. Thank you very much for suggesting this site: it’s of such high quality and so well-structured!
As for peer-reviewing, your post is very good! I agree with the suggestions the other girls pointed out. Just one more: I have some doubts about the position of ‘also’ in the sentence “Here you can find also some exercises”; maybe it sounds better if you move it before the main verb. BTW, Sarah taught us that, instead of using ‘also’, it’s better to use ‘as well’ or ‘too’ at the end of the sentence.
Thank you again for your remarkable contribution to our group!
See you soon!
Elena
Hi Veronica!
I've just read your post, and what I liked the most is the fact that you're very concise, short, but clear and exhaustive!
I've had a look at the British Council Podcast and I think that it is a very good website, full of interesting tools available to improve our English!
As for peer-reviewing, I'd like to suggest you to have a look at these mistakes:
- "The first word indicates the transmission of audio and video signals over the airwaves from radio or television"
I think that here you should have used "by" instead of "from",which is the right preposition introducing the agent!
- "...can be used whenever and wherever you want to."
Here I think that the "to" is redundant.
- "The content of the website has been written by..."
Pay attention to tenses: here the action is completely over, so here it was better to use the simple past!
With regard to your comment in my post about Sophie Kinsella, I must definitely say that my favourite among her novels is "Shopaholic & Baby", the last one of the "Shopaholic" serie...that's absolutely amazing!
However, you should read all Sophie's books in order to follow Becky's adventures!
They all make me LOL!
See you soon!
Camilla
Posta un commento