Podcasts for Listening 2

In Podcasts for Listening 1, I talked about some intermediate and advanced podcasts that you may want to try. This time, I’d like to tell you about some very short podcasts. Scientific American produces a range of podcasts whose episodes are all just one minute long. This means that, even if there are some difficult words, each episode is so short that you can go back and listen to the difficult parts many times.

There is no web page for these podcasts, so please search for the term 60-second in iTunes. The podcasts available are:

Finding data on readers

The 英語多読完全ブックガイド is a good place to look for information on graded readers and other books!

古川 昭夫,神田 みなみ,黛 道子,佐藤 まりあ,西澤 一,畑中 貴美,宮下 いづみ
コスモピア
発売日:2010-03-12

Learn vocabulary and feed the hungry

Almost everyone needs to improve their vocabulary. One popular site is freerice.com. The site gives you multiple choice questions, and Free Rice donates 10 grains of rice each time you get a correct answer.

If you like Free Rice, please register. You can use Facebook or Twitter to register, if you wish. After registering, please consider joining the LLC group. Let’s learn together! You can find the group here:

http://freerice.com/content-group/llcpuk

Speaking

Speaking is perhaps the skill that most students are concerned about. Unfortunately, it is the skill that it is most difficult for us to help you with directly. Fortunately, because all the four skills are linked, any work you do on listening, reading, or writing will indirectly benefit your speaking ability—even if you don’t feel any improvement immediately.

There are many things you can do to improve your speaking, perhaps the most important being to make an effort to actually speak in class when you have an opportunity. Also, you should do lots of listening practice to prepare yourself for speaking, and do some shadowing practice, too. Try asking your teachers or the LLAs for more advice.