A podcast is an audio file that you can download for free onto your pc or mp3 player.
Nowadays podcasting is really widespread around the world and on the net you can find a lot of podcast about all the different topics that you want.
I mean, this is great!! I don’t know if you like Radio Deejay, but I do! On Radio Deejay website you can download podcasts of the different programs…U have to try “Deejay chiama Italia”!!! Linus and Nicola are great!! Just an advice: if you walk around listening to them on your I-pod you’r surely going to laugh a lot….Other people may think that you’r mad! Hahaha J
Well, obviously podcasts can be useful also for educational purposes, I think that they have replaced the old cassettes of the language lab we grown up with!
Thanks to this technology the audio files available have increased incredibly and so we have got a lot of chances to improve our listening skills.
Searching for podcasts in Google I found some interesting things:
1) http://www.voanews.com/english/podcasts.cfm
This is a web site where you can find many different podcasts; you can choose a region like Africa, USA, Europe and so on, to see the news about those areas, or you can choose a topic like for example arts and entertainment, environment, education, sports an so on. I mean, many different kind of information available to be downloaded!! And moreover you can also see the scripts of the audio files!!! I think it can be very helpful to check whether you have understand it well or not!
2) http://www.englishthroughstories.com/scripts/scripts.html
Also in here you can find podcasts , but this time there are short stories divided into episodes. At the beginning of each audio file, a voice tells us who is going to read the story and sums up what happened in the previous episode. It is also possible to see the transcription of what the voice is reading and, as I have already said, this is very useful: you can see what u have actually understood and it is a good tool to make auto corrections.
3) http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
Here there are jokes for ESL students…To tell the truth I thought it to be funny…But the jokes are terrible!![John says I’m pretty, Andy says I’m ugly, what do u think Peter? I think u’r pretty ugly!L ] Is it a matter of cultural differences!? I guess so… Anyway it can be interesting to listen to them. A part from jokes there are also short stories, exercises of “listen and read along” and “listen and repeat” to improve our pronunciation.
Nowadays podcasting is really widespread around the world and on the net you can find a lot of podcast about all the different topics that you want.
I mean, this is great!! I don’t know if you like Radio Deejay, but I do! On Radio Deejay website you can download podcasts of the different programs…U have to try “Deejay chiama Italia”!!! Linus and Nicola are great!! Just an advice: if you walk around listening to them on your I-pod you’r surely going to laugh a lot….Other people may think that you’r mad! Hahaha J
Well, obviously podcasts can be useful also for educational purposes, I think that they have replaced the old cassettes of the language lab we grown up with!
Thanks to this technology the audio files available have increased incredibly and so we have got a lot of chances to improve our listening skills.
Searching for podcasts in Google I found some interesting things:
1) http://www.voanews.com/english/podcasts.cfm
This is a web site where you can find many different podcasts; you can choose a region like Africa, USA, Europe and so on, to see the news about those areas, or you can choose a topic like for example arts and entertainment, environment, education, sports an so on. I mean, many different kind of information available to be downloaded!! And moreover you can also see the scripts of the audio files!!! I think it can be very helpful to check whether you have understand it well or not!
2) http://www.englishthroughstories.com/scripts/scripts.html
Also in here you can find podcasts , but this time there are short stories divided into episodes. At the beginning of each audio file, a voice tells us who is going to read the story and sums up what happened in the previous episode. It is also possible to see the transcription of what the voice is reading and, as I have already said, this is very useful: you can see what u have actually understood and it is a good tool to make auto corrections.
3) http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
Here there are jokes for ESL students…To tell the truth I thought it to be funny…But the jokes are terrible!![John says I’m pretty, Andy says I’m ugly, what do u think Peter? I think u’r pretty ugly!L ] Is it a matter of cultural differences!? I guess so… Anyway it can be interesting to listen to them. A part from jokes there are also short stories, exercises of “listen and read along” and “listen and repeat” to improve our pronunciation.
5 commenti:
Hi Cristina,
I agree with you about podcasts; they are really useful and nowadays you can find a lot of podcasts on different topics on the net.
Thank you for the advice on listening at "Deejay chiama Italia"; I know that they make laugh as I listen at them. Try also the "Zoo" on Radio 105, you may enjoy it!!!!
I went through the sites you suggesed us and found strange the one about jokes. Yo are right, some of them are not so funny but I think that sometimes jokes can give you some input on the culture of the second language. I mean, each contry has its different humour and it's curious to know what makes people with a different culture laugh, isn't it?
Hi Monica!
You are right about the jokes, that's why I choose this podcasts...but anyway they are terrible! :-/
Hi Cristina!
I visited the website you suggested, the one about English jokes for ESL learners. I listened to the podcast “A sentence that starts with I”…. They joke is on the double meaning of I: the letter of the alphabet and the subject. Terrible! Maybe is this what is called English humour! However, I found interesting the section Listen and Read Along, I liked that it’s divided into section and the topics presented are interesting: American stories, science in the news etc. I also appreciated the fact that the duration of each podcast is written, so one can choose which podcast listen to according to the time he/she has.
Bye!
Hi Cristina!
As the other girls I chose the website you suggested us about jokes...It was funny!I think that there were some funny jokes like these for example: "Did your father helped with your homeworks?" "No, he did all by himself!":-)Or..."I was born in California!" "Which part of it?" "All of it!" Ha ha...They are funny,aren't they?
However,I agree with you when you said that there were also terrible jokes...I found this terrible one:"What has many keys but can't open any doors?""A piano!" :-( Or this one:"Can a kangaroo jump higher than the Empire State Building? Yes because the Empire State Building can't jump!" :-(
However, I think that it's good to listen to jokes because if you laugh, it means that they were funny but also you were able to understand them. Don't you think so?
See you!
Elena
Hi Cri,
I read your comment in Vale’s Blog and I must say I quite agree with you.. real English is so different from the English we used to listen to the record tapes in class.. thanks to this new tool (podcast) we could face to the different speed of speaking, maybe according to our mood…or not?...I particularly liked the voanews website because It’s useful practising with different kind of English…I mean…although we commonly talk about “English pronunciation” obviously not all speakers of English pronounce it in the same way. Even between countries where English is the first language of the majority of the population there are considerable differences, and we can distinguish between the pronunciation of British English, American English, Australian English, South Africa English, and so on…..across these varieties of English, there may be differences in how vowels and consonants are pronounced, how words are stressed, and in intonation…nevertheless, thank you for your suggestions…
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