In an earlier post, Iโve given a few tips on how you can use podcasts to improve your English listening skills (you can read it here; also available in Serbian here). This article is for those who have neither the time nor the patience to listen to hour-long programmes, but would like quick and more manageable 5-to-10-minute sound bites.
News podcasts are a very useful resource, especially for those who like to keep well-informed. In this post youโll find a short selection of those, each only a few minutes long. As with other podcasts, youโll be able to access all of them easily in your podcast app, or by following the links provided below.
This hourly newscast comes from the CBC Radio – Canadaโs public broadcaster. Itโs regularly updated, and contains the latest news from Canada, as well as the top international stories.
Similar to The World This Hour, News Now is also updated hourly, bringing you news from the US-based National Public Radio.
Independently produced, Five Minute News is hosted by British broadcaster Anthony Davis. This one is a pretty good choice for English learners, as Anthony’s diction is very clear, and the delivery is slightly slower (and deliberately so) than in most other news programmes, thus a bit easier to follow.
My personal favourite, Reuters World News is a 10-minute podcast produced by one of the oldest and most reliable news agencies. New episodes are released every weekday (Monday-Friday), and contain a good balance of global stories, business news and analysis.
Learning English from the News
The last podcast Iโd like to recommend is not a newscast as such, but a podcast specifically designed for English learners, explaining the vocabulary often heard and used in news programmes. It comes from the BBC World Service, with new episodes released on a weekly basis. At the moment of writing there’s a total of 295 available episodes, so there’s plenty of material for you to listen to.
Even if youโre not very interested in listening to news programmes, they can be very useful for expanding your vocabulary and enhancing listening skills in general: if you have some knowledge of current affairs, the content will be known to you (roughly, at least), so you can often figure out the meaning of new vocabulary from the context. Also, a lot of news vocabulary is pretty repetitive: if you listen to the news regularly, youโll keep hearing the same words and phrases, which makes it easier to memorise them.
If you’ve found another news podcast that you liked or found useful, do share the link in the comments section below.
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