Two Great Internet Resources

Some of my friends ask me how I train my listening comprehension now and then. To be honest, my listening is just OK. It still leaves much room to be desired. I still have to work on it. However, if I have to name one thing that has helped me a lot, I would say that watching English news has been always a good and effective way.

I talked about the obstalces to English listening comprehension before in my experience. (Please refer to my article at http://garychangformosa.blogspot.com/2007/01/listening-comprehension-1.html.) One of them is the accent problem. At times we feel we can understand what a teacher is talking about in class and become very confident about ourselves. However, it seems to be another story when we talk to other people. In the case, accent can plays an importnat role. However, here in Taiwan, it's difficult to build an English-speaking environment with various English accents. As a result, taking advantage of the abundant Internet resources can be a better solution to this problem.

I'll give the following websites two thumbs up. Both of them encompass a lot of TV or radio programs across the globe. If you want to train yourself to undestnad British accents more, you can go to BBC World news or the like. If you care for more perspectives beyond America and Britain, Al Jazeera can be just the ticket for you. It covers international current events from Arabic perspectives. It would be an eye-opener and broaden our horizon. Besides news websites, if you are big on movies or documentaries, don't miss the movie channels and discovery channels. If music is your scene, then some MTV channels are just there waiting for you. The list goes on and on. Just check them out yourself.

What can you do to kick off the services? All you have to do is to go to the following websites. It's just as easy as pie.

(1) http://wwitv.com/portal.htm
There are so many channels to choose from. Some of them are live while others are recorded. Just click on whatever programs you are into, and then you are ready to go.

(2)http://www.livestation.com/channels/3-al_jazeera_english
This website offers a great variety of programs from all over the world. I'd suggest you to check out Al Jazeera first. Besides watching the programs on the site, you can also download the "LiveStation" software and install it on your computer. Once you install it and subscribe to programs that you like, you can activate the programs easily at any time, stay on top of the current events around the world, and watch them to your heart's content. If you'd like to have more info about how to install and use the software, please refer to the video demonstration at http://www.livestation.com/howto.

I love the two websites (or tools) very much. They help me improve my listening comprehension tremendously. Give it a shot and see if this works for you. Let me know if you guys have any qeustions.