Research

Listening to podcasts is a great way to train your ear and improve your English or keep it sharp. If you choose good podcasts (like what we recommend here), you can get all that while also getting to listen to interesting ideas, learn about the latest research, or increase your knowledge of historical events.*

• A great way to incorporate podcasts and English listening into your life is to download and make use of a podcast player app. On Android, I use PodCast Addict. On Apple, Apple Podcasts might be the way to go.
  • Once you've downloaded the podcast player, you can search for podcasts like VoxTalks, VoxDev Talks, Brookings Dollar and Sense, Brookings Cafeteria, The Economist Radio, NPR Money Talks, NPR Planet Money, and Conversations with Tyler.
  • Subscribe to those podcasts, and let us know by emailing crl2 (at) williams (dot) edu if we're missing any good ones from that list!
• Browse through the podcast episode list, and download the episodes that seem interesting to you sometime when your internet is working well.
  • That way you don't have to worry about having internet, or using up your data, when you want to listen. Once you've listened to a couple episodes, you'll get a feel for what podcasts you like.
• In your podcast app, you can click on the options for the episode and choose "add to playlist." We recommend doing this for episodes that seem interesting for a bunch of different podcasts. Any given podcast typically has episodes of a similar length, and the style of delivery is pretty similar. Putting a bunch of episodes from different podcasts on your playlist allows you to introduce variety.
• Depending on whether you have an hour-long commute or are just washing the dishes for about 15 minutes, you can decide which length and what type of podcast you'd like to listen to, and move that to the top of your playlist. That way you get to change things up, but also the convenience of not having to search through every single podcast for an episode you want to listen to.

*These tips are written by a native English speaker who speaks four foreign languages fluently, all of which were learned after age 17. You can improve your English, and you can learn these things, no matter what age you are. Interested in learning another language besides English? This same process holds.

If you're looking to increase your vocabulary in English, a good way to do it is choosing podcasts that have transcripts.

• Any podcast episode from the Brookings Institution also has a downloadable pdf transcript. You can click on the link within our post about the episode to go to the Brookings website and download the transcript.
  • The Brookings podcast episodes you'll see recommended here are ones that are relevent to developing-country contexts. Brookings is a US-based institution, so a lot of its content is focused towards an American audience. The episodes we recommend are ones we think might be useful, even if they're geared towards an American audience, for the ideas or information they present.
• Brookings Dollar and Sense is the exception. Dollar and Sense is a trade podcast, but the host David Dollar is one of the foremost trade economists, and brings his great breadth of perspective to every single episode. Questions are insightful, the topics wide-ranging, and the dialogue engaging.
• If you're looking for more general resources, the BBC runs an English-learning portion of its site. Its audio and transcripts are available to download, and you can look for content according to your level of interest.

If you really want to learn and expand your vocabulary quickly, one of the best things to do is

1. Listen to the podcast episode first without looking at the transcript.
2. Read the transcript, and write in a notebook the words you don't know.
   • Try to guess what the words you don't know mean.
   • Look up any word that appears 2 or 3 times. If a word only appears once, don't look it up unless you have a lot of time on your hands. Chances are these are low-frequency (not very important) words.
3. Listen to the episode again (you can have your transcript in front of you), and keep your ear out for those words you didn't look up.
   • There will be some words you looked up, but forgot when you were listening.
     • That's okay. Circle those words in your notebook.
     • Chances are good that they'll come up again in a future podcast. You'll be more familiar with them the next time
   • If those words come up again and you still don't remember them, don't worry! This process of learning, forgetting, and remembering again is a key part of any learning, and language learning in particular.
     • Keep looking up the words that you didn't know that appeared multiple times. They'll stick eventually, especially as you hear them in several different contexts. If you're really having trouble with a word, google it, and look at the example sentences.
     • Sometimes, you'll come across a word and it will feel... familiar, but you can't remember what it means. When you look it up, you might feel like, "Gah! I looked this up before!"
       • This might feel frustrating, but it is actually exactly what you want to have happening. That frustration is part of what makes the word stick in your mind. This might have to happen a couple times before the word finally sticks, but it will help make it more solid in your mind.
       • This process builds multiple "neural pathways" to that word, which is a bit like building roads in a country.
       • If you've only seen the word once, it's like having a small road that leads up to the village. If the rains wash out the road, there's no way to get to the village. If you have several roads going to the village, however, and one road gets washed out, you can get to the same village by taking a detour. By seeing the same word in different contexts, what you're doing is giving your brain alternative roads to get to the same word.

The trick to learning language well is to expose yourself to the language as much as you can, and in as much of a variety as you can. Don't worry if you don't understand some of the words, or if it doesn't seem to "click," or if someone has an accent that's hard to understand. View all these things as training for your brain. By exposing yourself to things that are tough, you're making your own mind more flexible.

If you're somewhere that has fairly good internet, you can also check out our videos section. Most of the videos recommended in there come with closed capitioning (subtitles). Be aware, though, that if the link says "auto-generated," the subtitles might not be completely accurate.

Perhaps you're back home after having spent a year at the CDE, and there just aren't that many opportunities to interact with English speakers. Perhaps it's been a while since you graduated from the CDE, and you're feeling like your English familiarity is slipping away from you. Maybe you're forgetting what words you wanted to use when Tom gets in touch to ask if you could proctor an exam, or nervous about calling a classmate because you're worried they won't understand what you're saying. What can you do?

Podcasts can help a lot with this, but you need to start interacting with them in a different way than you might be used to. The way you train your speaking and your pronunciation is by actually speaking and pronouncing words, and doing this can be a little tough without speakers around who can interact with you.

The first thing that will help is your own interest in the topic. Pick podcasts that you really like, or an audiobook for a book by an author you admire in English. Or, choose anything that you enjoy doing in your down time, and find a way to do it in English (Netflix, soap operas, TV series, Youtube is another way to go). Wanting to do it is the most important step. If you pick something that you would normally do while you were wasting time and do it in English, it's not going to be hard to do on a daily basis. The best way to get (and stay) good in a language is by interacting with it on a daily basis.

We try to select interesting and engaging episodes to recommend to you. Browse through our selections, try out a few, and email us at crl2 (at) williams (dot) edu with feedback about what episodes you liked or didn't like. That helps us know what kinds of podcasts to recommend.

To train your speaking, get on your headphones and put on a podcast. As you're listening to an episode and you come across a word you wouldn't use in a conversation or don't know, pause the podcast.

Say the word aloud. Try to say aloud the entire sentence the word was in, or as much as you can remember.

Be silly with this. If you can't remember the entire sentence, make some of it up, the more ridiculous the better (if you have kids at home, do this with your kids).

Exaggerate the sounds of the word. Try as hard as you can to mimic the accent and the delivery (Tim Phillips in VoxTalks and VoxDev Talks has a lovely accent to try to imitate). Then, try to comment on the sentence, or critique it, or change it in some way. Do this aloud.

Yes, you're talking to yourself, but if you're somewhere with people and have your headphones on, they'll think you're in a call.

Then rewind the podcast 15 seconds (the "back" button on the Podcast Addict app can be set so that if you click on it, it rewinds 15 seconds). When you get to the sentence with the word you didn't know or wouldn't use in it, try to say it along with the speaker. Try hard to exaggerate the sounds of the word. It might feel like you're overdoing it, but if you feel like you're reeeeeally overdoing it, you're probably still just a little short of where you should be.

Pause the podcast again, and again try saying the word or the sentence aloud with the speaker.

Repeat this process as many times as you can stand. Each time you go back, try harder to exaggerate the sounds of the words, and to find another way to comment on or respond to what the speaker said. Try to be creative, and use words you don't use often.

Do this throughout the podcast. If you get sick of it, just listen through the rest of the podcast, and take it up another day when you're feeling silly.

Over time, you'll be amazed at how your pronunciation improves. The act of responding and commenting will hone your ability to respond in a dialogue.