Where to find great audio to practice your listening skills in English

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing many episodes around helpful resources that I've found that I think will be useful for you as you practice your English and your self-up skills. Today's focus is all around listening. I found a few podcasts that I enjoyed listening to myself and immediately thought, hey, this would be a great resource to share right here with you.

So, if you want authentic ways to practice your listening skills in English, then this will be your episode. Well, hello there, and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly

and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the Selphip exam. I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together.

Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years and I'm the certified Selphip trainer. I now help students prepare for the self-exam through online classes.

I think a challenge people face as they get ready for the self-exam or if you're just looking for ways to improve your general listening skills in English is finding useful and interesting sources to work with. Now I get it.

Interesting is obviously a personal thing, right? What I find interesting might be awfully boring to you, and you'd be wrong by the way. I'm just kidding. I know the things I like to listen to might not be your thing to get into, but what I

wanted to do today is point you in a few audio directions that I think will lead you to finding content that you'll actually enjoy listening to, and that you'll get something helpful from as you listen for your English and self-adept skills. And that's huge. Finding resources that you actually enjoy listening to in English is

super important because your goal should not be just to listen to something because it's in English. No, your goal should be to find resources in English that you actually enjoy hearing, that you enjoy listening to, so much that it keeps you coming back for more. I firmly believe that practicing your listening skills in English should be fun and engage

something that you actually look forward to doing. Again, you might not like these suggestions that I'm about to offer you and that's okay. I bet if you look around at where I'm pointing you,

you'll find something that you will enjoy. And all the links that I'm mentioning here or that I'm going to be mentioning here will be in my show notes today

if you want to check them out. So here are four audio resources that I recommend you explore. explore. The first one I've talked about several times before, I think, and it's called the CBC World Report. What I like about it is that it's 100% Canadian content, which is something you have

to be listening to on a daily basis if you're getting ready for the Selphab exam. Remember, the Selphab focuses on Canadian English, so you should be exposing yourself to Canadian English sources as much as you can. And let me put a parentheses on that. The CBC World Report, it has Canadian accents. It has people who are Canadians talking, but it features stories from

all around the world. So when I said that it's Canadian content, it doesn't mean that everything that you're going to hear is based on Canada only. No, World Report means you're going to be hearing news reports from all over the world, but it's being delivered by Canadians. With Canadian accents. But well, just check it out. You're going to be hearing all kinds of accents

as you listen to it because, well, the story is covered topics from all over the world, right? But yeah, like I was trying to tell you, this is a Canada-based resource that you should listen to. Best of all, it's free. And you will find that in my show notes today. There is a link to it. It's on the cbc.ca and it's just too much of a long link for me to tell you what

it is right here. You probably fall asleep if I tried to read it out to you, but check out my show notes today if you want to check that out. So that again is the CBC World Report. The second resource is called The Secret Life of Canada. From the podcast description, about the country you know, Canada, but the stories you don't.

I've only listened to one episode so far, but I'm interested. I'm hooked, and I'm going to be checking out more. And I bet you will too if you give it a listen. The episode that I heard is called

The Final Voyage of the Princess Sophia. Better known, and I didn't notice, as Canada's titanic. What I liked about this episode is that there are two hosts, which

will give you some great practice listening to different speaking styles. It also seems to be story based. The last voyage of the Princess Sophia is a fascinating story of a disaster in slow motion. And I'm stealing that quote from the podcast itself, that disaster in slow motion line. I thought that was really

interesting. And when you hear the story, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. It's insane that this thing happened. Listen to find out what I mean. And of course, based in Canada. So that's perfect for your self-listening practice. Because as I said before, you need to be exposing yourself to Canadian accents as much as you can. Because

that's what you're going to face on the exam. The CBC in general has a large podcast directory that I encourage you to check out and explore. The audio will likely be really strong. Like the quality of it will be really easy for you to listen to, which is important so that you you can hear and understand what's going on.

And of course, it's Canadian content, which is important. Because like I said before, if you're preparing for the self-epixiom, you need to be listening to Canadian accents as much as you can.

And I'm going to include a link to that podcast directory in my show notes for you today. And there are some that are not Canada-based that I wanted to share with you

that I enjoyed this week.