How to use podcasts and other audio records effectively

How many times should you listen to a podcast or other audio recording? Is once enough? Twice? Three times?

Listening to the same recording more than once can be helpful if there are things in the recording that you don’t understand. After listening one time, you get a general idea of what is happening. This helps you understand even more the second time you listen. A third listening may help you if there are still several things you don’t understand.

There is no rule about how many times you should listen to the same recording. The aim is to understand what is being said. You should stop listening if you are bored or understand everything you want to understand. Most people find that if the recording is difficult, it can help to listen at least two or three times (some will listen even more). But you should do what you find comfortable and useful. You may, for example, want to listen without the transcript the first time, then with the transcript the second time, reading along to see what you missed.

You can read more about podcasts in one of my previous posts:
English As A Second Language (ESL) Podcast Resources for Studying English

Reading it the key to good grammar, spelling and writing

Most people know that reading is a good way of improving your vocabulary. But did you also know that reading can help you with your grammar, your spelling, and your writing? When we read, we “acquire” or pick up a lot of information, even information that we are not consciously aware of. Doing a lot of reading in English will also improve your listening comprehension, because you will know more about the language and be able to recognize more words when you hear them.

What sort of things should you read? First, you should be sure to read something that you can mostly understand, a book or article where you understand 90 to 95% of the words. This is important because you need to be able to know enough words in the reading to be able to figure out the new words. If too many of the words are new to you, you won’t be able to guess or figure out as many of those new words. Second, you should start by reading about something you already know a lot about or learned a lot about in your native language. For example, if you’ve read a lot about cars in your native language, you may want to read some articles about cars in English. You will be more familiar with the topics (we’d say you’ll have more “background knowledge”) and that will make the reading easier to understand.

Relax and your pronounciation will be better

Many people find pronunciation to be very difficult when speaking another language. One of the most important things is to be relaxed, to stay calm. If you get nervous or excited when you are speaking English, your pronunciation will usually get worse. Do something to relax yourself before speaking, such as breathing in and out a few times to calm yourself down. If you have to give a presentation in front of a group of people, be sure to practice your speech many times so that you are very comfortable with it.

Some scientific studies say that the best way to be relaxed during a presentation is to do what is called “visualization.” To visualize means to picture or imagine something in your mind, to think about how it looks, sounds, and feels. When preparing your presentation, spend some time thinking about the people whom you will be talking to, and the place where the presentation will take place. Now picture or imagine yourself doing this speech or presentation very, very well.
Imagine yourself being very successful and being very relaxed, with excellent pronunciation. Go through your speech or presentation in your head and see yourself being successful. This may sound strange to you now, but some researchers believe this is an excellent way to be more relaxed when speaking in front of other people.

Reading Is The Key to Good Writing

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to do a lot of reading. We know from many years of research that good writers are almost always good readers. Most of what you need to write well – good grammar, organization, spelling – come mainly from reading.

Writing isn’t just a result of reading, of course. There are some hints and tips that can improve your writing, and there are skills you learn that are specific to writing. Interestingly enough, people who are good writers in their native or first language are usually also good writers in their second language. If you’re a good writer in Japanese, for example, you will probably also be a good writer in English. This is because many things you use in writing “transfer” from one language to another language.

Reading is especially important if you want to write a specific type of letter or report. Try to read other letters or reports similar to the ones you want to write. The more samples or models of good writing you can find, the easier it will be to write like a native speaker. American business letters, for example, are usually more direct and shorter than business letters in some other languages. By reading lots of business letters, you’ll get a “feel” for how letters in English are written. Soon you will be able to write letters in a similar style yourself.

English As A Second Language (ESL) Podcast Resources for Studying English

Today I decided to write about some of my favourite podcasts which I'm using for improving my English level (listening comprehension). All of these resources are specialized ESL (English as a Second Language) podcasts hosted by English professionals and native speakers.

First of all, I want to introduce EslPod.com site. This site and its podcasts are created by the Center for Educational Development, in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Lucy Tse writes scripts and records many of the dialogs and stories. Dr. Jeff McQuillan is the host of the podcasts. Both were university professors of applied linguistics and education for many years, and have taught English as a Second Language at several colleges and universities.

I think, this is one of the best ESL resources in podcasting world. The main idea of ESL Podcast is that every issue of this podcast lasts 10-20 minutes, and has three parts:

1. An dialog or story read a bit slower than normal speech.


2. An explanation of some of the expressions and phrases used in Part 1.


3. A repetition of the dialog or story at a native rate of speech.

This podcast structure helps listeners to improve their English by listening to native speakers talk and discuss topics of interest to you.

Next podcast I want to describe is TOEFL Podcast by the Center for Educational Development and Dr. Jeff McQuillan. This podcast has a similiar structure to ESL podcast:

1. A dialog or conversation at a somewhat slower speed


2. An explanation of some of the expressions and phrases used in Part 1


3. A repetition of the dialog or conversation at native speed


4. A comprehension question similar to those found on the exams

In this podcast native speakers talk and discuss topics similar to those that will appear on the TOEFL or IELTS exams.

Very different from previous podcasts is English Idioms and Slang podcast, which is set of really short issues about english idioms.

And last introduction for today: English Teacher John Show Podcast. This resource is hosted by John Koons, English teacher from Philadelphia, which currently works in Matsumoto, Japan. In this podcast Teacher John uses many different studying techniques such as: listening to english speakers dialogs and describing new idioms and new words, listening and describing songs, speaking about world news, etc.

Thats all for today and I hope this information will be interesting and useful for you in your way to fluent English. :-)

In one of my future posts I will describe my favourite and very interesting IT podcasts which I'm using for improving my English listening comprehension.

Educational Podcasts of Universities: MIT and Harvard

In one of my previous posts I've described interesting podcasts directory on Berkeley University site.

After that link was posted on the Digg.com, some new links to educational podcasts from MIT and Harvard Universities has beed posted there in comments:

• MIT: MIT IS&T: Podcasts at MIT


• Harvard: Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet

Of course, using this resources are not quite as good as attending the class in person, but these schools are known for there excellent professors so they may be of some use to other students out there.

Berkeley lectures as podcasts

Last week I've found very interesting podcasts directory on Berkeley University site. There are full lectures podcasts for IT, technical, history and other courses of this university.

Most interesting for me (I have subscribed to them) there are CS courses for Computer Science students:

• CS 162 - Operating Systems and System Programming


• CS 61A - The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs


• CS 61B - Data Structures


• CS 61C - Machine Structures

These courses are interesting because my own university have not so professional teachers and I was not able to study this courses as deeply as Berkeley students can.

If you want, you can digg post about described directory.

What kind of American English Do You Speak?

Do you know, what kind of American English do you Speak? I know :-)

• 70% General American English


• 15% Dixie


• 15% Yankee


• Midwestern


• 0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Welcome To The ESL Advices Blog!

Hello and welcome to the ESL Advices Blog! I'm Alexey Kovyrin and I want to present to you my new blog about learning English.

For many people around the world, learning English is very important. Unfortunately, there are very few useful, effective sources for learning English. Most people take English classes, which help them up to a certain point. This Blog is designed to help you continue to improve your English.

There you will see lots of useful advises about how to improve your speaking, listening, reading and writing English! So, let's make our English better together!