Easy Stories
I am a big fan of reading for the purpose of learning a language as well, of course as listening, which is why I make podcasts. If you want to improve both of your listening and reading as well as your vocabulary, then this should be a good resource for you today.
In today’s episode, Ariel Goodbody will tell you a story, but pre-teach some of the harder vocabulary first. This is a crosspost episode where Ariel shared one of my episodes on their podcast, and I am sharing a story I enjoyed from Ariel’s podcast.
It’s something a little different, so I hope you enjoy it! Connect with Ariel below, or join the discussion in the comments.
Reading & Listening Methods
Here are some ways you can use stories or podcasts to improve your English.
1. Shadowing
Shadowing is when you follow some audio and try to mimic the way the speaker is talking to follow (or ‘shadow’) their intonation and pronunciation. It’s a great way to improve your speaking speed and rhythm and get you sounding more like a native speaker.
You can use the transcripts to read along to and read out loud at the same time I or my guest is speaking.
2. Checking New Words
If you prefer a more relaxed approach, you can simply use the transcripts to check for new words during or after you listen to an episode. If there is anything you hear but you can’t quite understand, note down the words that come after and, in the transcript doc, use the search function (Usually CTRL+F) to find the sentence that contains the mystery word.
It’s also a great way to learn from context and see vocabulary in a full and natural sentence.
3. Reading While Listening
You could simply try listening to the podcast while reading the transcript. This is a nice way to merge your reading and listening and it’s particularly useful in English because the spelling is often so different to how things are pronounced. You may begin to make connections between some written and spoken words.
(This even happens to native speakers when listening to audiobooks. It’s quite useful!)
4. Transcription Study
This one is my favourite, but takes a bit more time. You can try transcribing the audio yourself. It could be good practice to listen carefully with no transcript, and try to write down everything we say (perhaps not the whole episode – just for a couple of minutes).
Once you have finished your transcribing, check my transcripts and compare them. Did you get 100%? Or perhaps there were some words you missed. I have found this to be one of the most useful ways to improve your knowledge of spoken language and start to use that yourself too.
What are your favourite ways to study with podcasts? Share in the comments!
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I really like listening to stories. it’s effective way to catch words tones, intonation.