Hi guys, welcome back to English with Max. In my last video I talked about the best
ways, in my opinion, to improve your English listening skills. If you haven't
yet seen that video I recommend that you first go and watch it. I'll put a link in
the info box or you can click on the card above. I also just want to warn you
that you might hear some strange noises coming from outside.
Those are frogs.
They're loud and unpredictable. We think it's mating season at the moment. "Mating"
is what animals do to make babies. It's like sex between animals, basically.
But be careful. We don't use "mating" for humans. We don't say, for example, "John and
Kate mated." No, that would be weird. But anyway, that is a topic for another
video. In this video I'm going to talk about the best resources that you can
use to practise your English listening. I'm actually going to break this topic
up into three videos. I thought my last video was a little long,
at least a little long for my liking.
So in this video I'm going to show you some
websites with free material and I'll also look at podcasts. I'll do another
video on movies and TV shows, and another one just focusing on YouTube and how you
can use YouTube to improve your English, because I think there's a lot to say
about that. So without further ado, let's first look at websites.
The first website I want to show you is called LingQ. This is a very useful
website for learning languages in my opinion. It has a lot of functions,
however, today I just want to show you how you can access the free downloads -
the free audio downloads. First you do have to sign up. This is quite easy. You
choose your language, your level, then you put in your name, email, etc. If you put
the wrong level or language in, it doesn't matter because you can change it
once you're logged into the website. I already have an account, so I will log in.
Okay, so now I'm logged in. The one criticism I have about this website is
that the layout isn't overly clear. I don't think the format is very clear. But
if you're only using it for listening, then it's quite easy to get used to.
I think the best thing to do is click on Lesson Library. Then you go to filters,
and here you can select your level. I'm just going to put intermediate. Then you
click "Apply". And now we have a long list of audio for intermediate levels. Let's
click on the first one. If you just want to play it on your computer, you click
this button. As you see it goes for 6 minutes 56. There are some that
are longer and some that are shorter. If you want to download it, you click this
button, and then you can listen on your - listen to it on your smartphone or MP3
player or something. Here we have the transcript. If you click on the words, you
can get definitions on the side. But anyway, that's - that's another
function that I don't want to talk about too much. If you want to just see the
full text altogether, you click this button here. Another thing is: this is the
name of this one piece of audio: Identity. AJ's Podcasts is the series, so to
speak. Like the series of podcasts. So you click here and then you have all of the
different pieces of audio within AJ's podcast. Click on this one. Okay, so if you
think you like AJ's Podcasts, you can then go and see what else there is - what
else is available. Like I said, I think this is a really great website for
learning languages, but as I'm focusing on listening in this video I don't want
to talk about all the functions right now. The next website I want to show you
is called elllo. I think that's how that's pronounced. This has lots of different
audio files. As you can see, the - the level is indicated, and the accent of the
people speaking - well, accentS of the people speaking. In this one there is an
English person and an American person. They're not all native speakers. I mean a
lot of them are. For example, we have a Canadian and another American here, but
here we have an Indonesian girl and a German girl. If you click on one of the
links, you can click here to play. I don't think you can download these. I haven't
seen that on this website anyway. But it's still quite useful. There's normally
a quiz and you also have the transcript. This website is very similar to the last
one we looked at. As you can see the - the listening
exercises are divided into levels. Let's click on one. And there are some - some quizzes
normally, and some other activities. You can listen to it right here or you can
go to where it says "Quiz Script" to get the transcript. And yes, so here you can
listen to it and read the transcript at the same time, if you want to do that.
I don't think you can download these though, so that's one drawback of this website.
This website is called News in Levels, and what it does is it takes a news
story and then writes about it using varying degrees of difficulty. So Level 1
is the easiest - the language is really quite simple. And Level 3 is
the most difficult. You can also listen to the audio file down here. I don't
think this is the best website for listening practice, but I think it's
still quite useful. This website - I think it's pronounced yoo-glish - is one that I
discovered quite recently. It's very useful for hearing how words are
pronounced in phrases or sentences. If you just want to hear how a word is
pronounced, obviously you can go to an online dictionary. Most of them now have
audio files. But it can be hard to find out how something is said when it's
surrounded by other words. For example, let's look at "how's it going". Now this
website looks through - it looks through YouTube videos. I believe
it searches through the - through the subtitles.
And you can see many videos where this phrase is used.
We can go to the next one.
Come on.
Okay, so sometimes it's said very fast, but it's very handy
because you can see it said in a variety - you can, sorry, HEAR it said in a variety
of contexts. Let's put something else. I don't know... "a cup of tea".
And finally here is a website that I'm sure many of you are already familiar
with: BBC Learning English. I think the most useful feature for
listening is "6 Minute English". Here we have all the topics.
Let's click on one. You can listen to it online. Here we have the vocabulary, and
there's also a transcript. If you want to download the transcript as a PDF, you can
do so by clicking here. You can download the audio and you can also have it as a
podcast. Now we're going to look at a few podcasts. I don't actually want to recommend
too many podcasts, because what interests
me won't necessarily interest you. I can give you some suggestions, but at the end
of the day, you need to find something that you really want to listen to.
Okay, the first one I want to show you is Luke's English Podcast. Luke is from
London, so this is British English. His podcast is aimed at people learning
English, but he speaks at a relatively normal pace. It's not too slow, so it's
probably aimed at people with an upper intermediate to advanced level. So it's,
yeah, not too slow, but he doesn't use vocabulary that's too complicated.
And what I like is that he always tries to find interesting topics, and he also
has a good sense of humour. If you want to just listen to it on the website, you can
click here, but you can also - but you can also download it, and then listen to it,
like, on a - on an MP3 player or something, by clicking here. The next one is
something that I listen to quite a lot. This is called Stuff You Should Know.
It's done by two American guys who research and then talk about lots of
different topics. Some are a bit scientific, some are about technology,
some are cultural, some are historical. There's - there's a big mix. The guys are
really nice. They have a sense of humour and they're intelligent, but they don't
try to sound intellectual. They're not pretentious or anything. This is aimed at
native speakers so it's a bit more difficult than Luke's podcast, but they
speak well. They don't - they don't speak too quickly and it's clear that they
have a good "command" of the language, so to speak.
Now let's look at the next one. This one is called Good Job, Brain and it's also a
podcast that I listen to quite a lot. Like Stuff You Should Know, it's more for
advanced learners. It's aimed at native speakers, so it can be a little bit
difficult. It's actually probably a bit more difficult than Stuff You Should Know,
because there are four people talking, which means they're sometimes
talking at the same time, and they're often joking, and that can be a little
bit difficult for a non-native English-speaker. I really like trivia and quizzes,
which is why I listen to this. They get together, and they ask each other
trivia questions. They also sometimes research certain topics, and then tell
the others about it, a bit like - a bit like Stuff You Should Know.
The last one I want to show you is called No Such Thing As a Fish. I don't
know where they got this name from, but anyway, I think this is similar to the
last two that I showed you - to Stuff You Should Know and Good Job, Brain - because
this is about a wide range of topics. However, this is British English. This is
actually linked to the TV show QI. That's a show that I watched quite a
lot. If you really want to push your English to the next level, I recommend
that you try to find this TV show. It's kind of like a quiz. It has a quiz format,
but the people participating are comedians, so it's not a - it's not a
serious quiz. However, they do talk about some quite complex and interesting -
interesting topics. The people who do this podcast are actually the
researchers for the TV show. If you want to just listen, you can press the play
button, but if you want to download them, you can click on the links right here.
That's all for today folks. I hope you've found this video useful. If you did, let
me know in the comments. Please also tell me what you use to practise your English
listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and to share this with your
friends, your parents, your cat... And remember that you can also follow me on
social media. I'll put the links in the info box.
See you next time.
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