Special English Podcasts on VOA

Recently I begain a search for podcasts or other similiar options that would be useful for learners of English or other foreign languages. Personally I am interested in continuting my study of German and Chinese. I have always been drawn to the use of techonology in the study of foreing languages. First of all I suppose I should explain what a podcast is, or at least my understanding of what podcasts are. The word "podcast" itself is a term coined from Apple's iPod. It combines the "pod" in "iPod" with the "cast" from "broadcast". "Cast" is a word that all by itself means "to throw". "Broad" means "wide". No, a podcast is not "throwing pods" but it is broadcasting non-music audio in an MP3 format that you can listen to on your iPod or other digital music player. Heck, if you wanted to, you could burn it to an audio CD and listen to it on a cd-player as well.

These days there are very few families in Japan who don't have a computer and an Internet connection. Students who don't have these things at home often have similiar resources available to them at school or someplace else. Many people also have MD players or MP3 players. There are many ways to listen to a podcast. You can copy the file to your iPod or other MP3 player, burn them to an audio CD or copy them to an MD and listen to them in a car or while walking or exercising.

By the way, if you do copy them to your MD player, I suggest you not do it with a SONY Net-MD. It is best not to use the Net-MD software and to copy them to the MD using a stereo line. The reason why is that SONY Net-MD software will mark each track you copy to the MD as non-editable. You can't delete it, divide it or combine it. Being able to divide tracks on an MD or add track marks is a valuable function for learners of language. For example you can add a track mark (divide a track) right at the beginning of a phrase or word that you want to be able to practice. Then you can use the back function on your MD to listen to that word or phrase over and over again without having to search for it. You could even have the MD player repeat that phrase over and over again.

Sorry for the long digression. What I really wanted to do with this article is to introduce a great resource for English listening practice. What I found yesterday was the Voice of Americas Special English podcasts. These podcasts are for learners of English and are in slow and clear American English. Go to http://www.voanews.com/ and look for the Learning English or Special English link. There you can listen to the Special English Internet radio broadcasts or download the podcasts to listen to later. I'm really excited about this and I hope many of you can take advantage of this valuable resource. VOA says on their site that they are offering the podcasts as a trial. Let's hope that they make it a permanent feature!