Greetings,
I want to write it and congratulate you on your site and on the new sound files you posted on your site. Let me admit my bias here as I work for the Office of English Language Programs and am responsible for the English Language Forum online {:-{>}.
I think that many students will find the files valuable. From my 20 years as a teacher and teacher trainer (mostly in Central and Eastern Europe), one of the most common requests was from students and teachers looking for affordable, clear listening exercises that were also interesting.
Thanks for taking the time to make these files available to everyone.
Rick
Hi Rick,
Thank you for your kind words about the recordings. We've already received some favorable feedback from learners and teachers, so I guess making the stories available was a good idea.
If you are responsible for the English Teaching Forum website, perhaps you would consider putting up a link to the page with the stories?
I am working on both a link for your site as well as a very cool graphic from the original English Teaching Forum (with a very clever shaggy dog). I will send you a copy of the graphic and let you know about where I have linked to your site.
Best,
Rick
Hello!
I am looking for some listening exercises to lear to listen British English. Can you provide me some Links from where I can down load sound files to learn hear British English.
I await you reply.. Thanks
Snehal
Rick, if you're reading this, thanks for the link.
Thanks for the great sound files, Tom. I have listened to them many times and found them funny.
Do you have the scripts of those stories? In the stories there are some difficult words that I'd like to learn. I'd like to look them up in dictionaries, but it is very difficult to guess the right spelling of those words. So I think it would be great if you include the scripts in your site. I think the scripts can also be useful for learners who find it difficult to understand the stories.
Nice to see you back, Tee.
I knew you would like the stories. :-)
Which parts don't you understand? I can probably help you if you specify their location.
If we published the whole scripts, people would likely read them before they listened to the stories, which would turn the stories into a rather poor listening comprehension exercise. It would take away the whole pleasure of understanding spoken English without reading it at the same time.
BTW, we don't have the scripts and would have to type them ourselves. It would be a rather pleasant and quick job (less than 10 hours of work), but one that I don't think is necessary.
After reading your above message, I'm convinced that it may not be a good idea to publish the scripts on your site.
However, I've managed to find the scripts of those stories (with the help of Google). :-)
In fact, there were only a few words and phrases which I did not know and found it difficult to guess the spelling just by listening alone (such as the word "wringle" in "The Secret of a Long Life"). There were also some words and phrases that I encountered for the first time and could guess the spelling correctly (such as "smoke my head off"). I always used my dictionaries to check if my guess was correct.
But the fact that I couldn’t guess the right spelling of some words, which made me unable to look them up in my dictionaries, hardly interfered with my understanding of the stories. This was because usually I was able to guess the meaning of those words from the context.
Perhaps it's a good idea to remember the words as "sound patterns" if one does not know the spelling?
Personally, I think I can get pleasure from listening to spoken English while reading along with it at the same time. But normally I would start looking at the text after I had listened to it several times.
Correction:
But the fact that I couldn’t guess the right spelling of some words,...
---> But the fact that I couldn't guess the right spelling of some words,...
<<<<
Perhaps it's a good idea to remember the words as "sound patterns" if one does not know the spelling?
>>>>
Personally, I've done this only as a last resort. Normally, I try to look up the word. If I don't know the spelling, I'm not even sure I'm hearing the right sounds. A [p] could be a [b], an [Ou] could be an [u], etc.
> (such as the word "wringle" in "The Secret of a Long Life")
You must mean "wrinkled".
