Hello! And welcome to Listen Up!, a podcast that helps you acquire English through comprehensible listening interactions. As you LISTEN to this podcast, it will help to increase or “UP” your English vocabulary and proficiency level. I’m Andrea and today we will be talking about podcasts. I think that podcasts are an important tool (or, device / resource) to use when trying to improve (or, strengthen) your language proficiency. I listen to many podcasts designed (or, made) to help me acquire Spanish and Chinese. They have been a big help in many ways. In the first two episodes of this podcast, I talked a lot about why comprehensible input is important. It is the key (or, the important element) to acquiring and wiring language into your brain. When we comprehend the meaning of input (or, messages) that we read or hear, we make a mental image (or picture) of them in our head. That helps our brain to make connections for that language in our head. When we have those mental-image connections in our brain, we are more capable of using that language spontaneously while speaking. Also, we improve (or, get better) at comprehending language at faster speeds. Books and magazines and videos are great tools (or, resources) for comprehensible input, especially if you can find them at the level that meets your current comprehension level. And, especially if they are interesting and fun! What makes a podcast different, however, is that it forces you (or, requires you) to process language without pictures or words or video images. This is an important skill to develop if you want to be able to comprehend native-language speakers in spontaneous settings (or, interactions). For this podcast, I will always provide the transcript in the show notes so you can read along if needed, or so you can check it afterwards to look up any words or phrases that you didn’t understand. Most podcast players give you the option to slow down or speed up the pace of the audio as it plays. If you think that I am speaking too fast, you can choose to play the podcast at a slower pace. If you think that I am speaking too slow, you can choose to play the podcast at a faster pace. Listening to English podcasts like this one will also help to affirm and strengthen your pronunciation. My goal is to keep the episodes short so that you can easily listen to them multiple (or, many) times. This will provide additional repetition and reinforcement (or, confirmation) of the message and the language used in the episode. Most episodes will be around five minutes long. Sometimes they may be shorter or longer. Repetition of meaningful (in other words, comprehended) messages is an effective way to help strengthen language connections in your brain. Most importantly, my goal will be to talk about a variety of topics and stories. Hopefully you will think that they are interesting and enjoyable. I won’t always ramble on (or, talk over and over) about comprehensible input. I promise! What are the topics that you would like to hear more about? What interests you? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for “LISTENing UP” with me. Happy language learning!
