HOLA!!
I found the task of this week really stimulating…I’m even more struck about Web.2.0 which provides access to a wide range of useful sources for English language learners. I’ve already heard about the word “pod” but I didn’t know what exactly was…A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which can be found on the Internet. The portmanteau word "podcast" comes from "iPod" and "broadcast" terms.
First of all, I added this well-build website thought up specifically for English language learner. Its main targets focus on listening and understanding...it also gives the opportunity to learn some of the most used idiomatic expressions coming across the dialogues or speeches. Moreover, at the and of any recording more time is spent to explain some idiomatic expressions or phrasal verbs and lead us to a metalinguistic reflection. We know that working with this kind of recording, a track can be played as often as necessary and it may be advantageous to press “pause” after each sentence or a particular expression and take time to think or write it down in order to memorize and learn to use them and the way native speakers do.
First of all, I added this well-build website thought up specifically for English language learner. Its main targets focus on listening and understanding...it also gives the opportunity to learn some of the most used idiomatic expressions coming across the dialogues or speeches. Moreover, at the and of any recording more time is spent to explain some idiomatic expressions or phrasal verbs and lead us to a metalinguistic reflection. We know that working with this kind of recording, a track can be played as often as necessary and it may be advantageous to press “pause” after each sentence or a particular expression and take time to think or write it down in order to memorize and learn to use them and the way native speakers do.
The second one is BBC news podcast …I found this website useful in order to improve our linguistic skills and at the same time we can keep update about what happen around the world. Maybe it’ll be hard to live up to such listening without reading but it is suggested that students trying to keep our hand in listening real and fluent speech. In particular, it is said that English learner are supposed to use the variety that has came to be known as “BBC English” which is the pronunciation used by speakers such as newsreaders and announcers on TV and radio. BBC is a widely broadcast and respected variety, and for most people Is easily understood so for these reasons it is considered as “the model English”.
Finally, I subscribed Business English Pod because I consider it essential for those who are going to work in a European and international context. it provides free weekly MP3 podcast lessons for intermediate and advanced business English learners. Each Business English podcast lesson is based on a particular skill (like meetings, presentations, telephoning, negotiating, socializing, travel, conversation ....) and language function (clarifying, disagreeing, questioning, expressing opinions, persuasion ...). I’ll find it extremely interesting and useful because I personally realised that business world change very quickly and to keep us up-to-date we can’t focus only on textbooks… and above all this kind of topics are not usually treated exhaustively in class.
We all know that podcasters' websites offer freely download of their content, but what’s more a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.
so TAKE ADVANTAGE....
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4 commenti:
Hi Ely!
I visited the BBC website you suggested us. I already used it, and I find it helpful because what is presented is real English and not podcasts thought for ESL students. I think this distinction is important, because podcasts for students generally adopt a kind of language that is comprehensible because speakers speak slow, but which is not the real use of the language. Instead, in BBC podcasts speaker use their natural tendency to speake and so students have to try to understand them. At the beginning it’s quite frustrating but it’s really helpful to learn the right flow of English speech.
Bye!
Hi Elisa!
I visited the first website you suggested us and I found it very good!
I did the listening called "Being under stress"; it was easy to understand because the speakers were talking quite slowly. Then I listen to BBC news; as always, I understood not all the news because journalists speak very quickly!! However, as you said, for these types of listening activities it's important to pay attention to the pronunciation!
Bye!!
Hi Elisa,
I went through the website on business English that you suggested us and foud it useful. As I noticed before with Vale, I must say tha there is a great number of websites about business English on the net and I hope they would be useful to improve my knowledge in this field.
I listened to the activity about handling angry customers on the telephone. I think this is really a difficult task to perform, also in Italian, so that it seems to be very useful to learn how to react to a client's complain with patience and without being rude.
I don't know whether it is only a problem of my own, but I noticed that when I'm angry I often forget half of the vocabulary I'm supposed to use; I hope that listening to a conversation like the one presented here may help me to remember to keep patience and not to turn nervous after few seconds of talking.
I just wanted to write in and say thanks for mentioning our podcast in your blogs and to congratulate you all on some very well written articles.
It’s great to know what listeners think of our podcast and your introductory comments regarding the novelty of podcasting were very informative from our perspective. Sometimes we forget that the technology and terminology surrounding podcasting is completely new to most of our audience and your comments are a useful reminder.
Regarding your observations on the different speech rates across the range of podcasts you researched, we’ve always tried to keep it a close to native speaker rates but add in more frequent and longer pauses. The idea being that the actual words are delivered at near normal rates but there’s enough time between the ‘chunks’ for listeners to digest the language and maintain comprehension.
As Monica commented on the example of handling a customer complaint, people tend to speak more quickly when they get angry and developing your listening skills to the point where you can still understand (most) of what is said in stressful situations is a necessary skill for many people in business.
That said, I take your point about the difficulty of listening to long sections of native dialog and we’ve been consciously trying to shorten our recordings without affecting their utility.
My compliments to you all on these well researched and written posts and I’m sure your efforts will be rewarded with steady progress in reaching your language goals.
All the best
Peter
BusinessEnglishPod.com
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