...Podcasts...

Hello everybody!
The world of podcasts is really huge! I couldn’t imagine that it was possible to listen to everything you are interested in, to give you an example I found many podcasts about Chinese. Furthermore, what is really useful is that you can download them onto your mp3 player and listen to them in the train or in the bus every morning when your are going to university or simply at evening sitting on your sofa... You relax but at the same time you learn something new because instead of listening to the music you listen to native speakers’ dialogues. What a nice way of improving your English!
Searching the Web, I found two interesting podcasts about ESL lessons and one about business English; all three are very useful for improving not only your listening but also your vocabulary skills.
Searching the website 'English as a Second Language Podcast' I found the following podcasts:

• ESLpodcast319 ‘Being under stress'

It is about a dialogue between two people, one of whom is having problems because he is under stress. At the beginning the two people speak slowly, then there are the explanations of the whole dialogue especially of the most difficult and idiomatic words and finally you can listen to it at a normal speed. For instance, some useful word explanations are:

1. Something is acting up: something is not working correctly; you can use this verb to talk about a machine, for example: ‘my car is acting up again’, or about a young person, i.e. a child who causes problems.


2. to be worn out: it is a way of saying that you are very tired, exhausted.


3. dog-eat-dog: this expression means very competitive, agressive, i.e 'this is a dog-eat-dog business' means that there is a lot of competition.


4. a breather: a rest, a break.

• ESLpodcast279 ‘Saying goodbye’

It is about the different way of ‘saying goodbye’ to somebody that you know. The following is a list of some useful expressions:

1. I’d better be going: I need to go now, I should leave now.


2. To run into each other/ someone: to see the other person almost by accident.


3. To catch up: to talk about all of the things you have done since the last time you met a person.

This two podcasts are structured in the same way. I didn’t find difficulties in undestanding them because they give a lot of good explanations.
On the other hand, the website 'business English podcasts for professionals on the move' provides many activities for business English students, which are very useful for improving listening, vocabulary and language skills in a specialized business context. I listened to the podcast ‘Telephoning:leaving a message’, which explains how to take and leave a telephone message professionally, giving both a bad and a good example. You learn that a professional phone has 4 parts: the greetings (you can say: ‘Hello', 'Hi', 'Good morning/ afternoon'), the company’s name (you need just the company name or the name of the dipartement,i.e sales), the answerer's name (this is...), the offer to help ('How can I help you?' 'What can I do for you?'). Moreover, you learn how to say that someone is unavailable (i.e. 'Sorry, Mrs is on a meeting now, would you like to leave a message?'). At the end of the dialogues you are asked to answer some questions, which make you reflect on the content.

I really enjoyed listening to the podcasts, let me know what you think about them.

See you soon,

Elisa ;-)