Jan 23 2008
Listen to Radio in Another Language
Listening comprehension can be a tough nut to crack when it comes to language learning. It was my biggest problem when I started learning Spanish. I had much less trouble reading and writing than understanding spoken Spanish, perhaps due to my learning preference.
Fortunately, for people like me, there are things such as free world radio in other languages. Radio Japan Online has its radio program on-demand in 18 languages, including Arabic, Japanese, Spanish (Castillian), Russian, and even Persian. I’ve been listening to the Spanish version for some time and it’s good exercise.
Radio programs are available as podcasts (yay! I love podcasts), for easy listening on an iPod or other mp3 player. There even are RSS feeds of podcasts, so new episodes in a target language can be snatched quickly and easily. Another thing that’s really cool is there are transcripts available in about half of the languages, so a person can follow along by reading while listening to the podcast.
If you don’t like sitting at the computer for this, you can easily print out the transcripts and listen and follow along wherever. Be sure to have a dictionary close-by for the occasional (or frequent?) times you come across a word you don’t recognize.
