February 15, 2025 • 15 mins
In this podcast, you will gain a clear understanding of why listening to podcasts is essential for improving your English language skills. You will learn about the numerous benefits they offer, including enhanced listening comprehension, exposure to natural pronunciation and intonation, and the opportunity to expand your vocabulary in a meaningful context. By the end of this episode, you will have a deeper appreciation of how regularly engaging with podcasts can significantly support your English language learning journey.
you can find the full transcript here
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everybody, welcome to your very first episode of the podcast.
(00:23):
I thought it was a start, maybe we can just give you an idea of how important podcasts
are because you might be getting into this and maybe you don't know how important podcasts
are.
I've been teaching English for a couple of years now and I always give my students podcasts
(00:44):
to listen to so I know like a great deal about podcasts and how efficient podcasts
are.
We might think they're just a waste of time or maybe I don't have time to listen to podcasts
but they are very, very helpful, especially in your English learning journey.
A lot of people tend to overlook them and think that okay, if I want to learn I can
(01:06):
just open a textbook or I can just do something, maybe like use AI, you can still use AI and
that's okay.
But most of the time people are looking for like authentic conversations.
So hopefully today you're going to have an idea about podcasts.
The very first thing that I think it's of paramount importance, very important, is this
(01:30):
idea of developing this intuition for pronunciation.
You see when you speak your language, you have stress, you have intonation of a lot
of layers of pronunciation of sounds.
These layers usually cannot be transmitted from a language or another, right?
So you speak English with a certain intonation and with a certain stress, it's not going
(01:56):
to be applicable to your native language.
When you speak, let's say in French or Arabic or Mandarin, usually you have again a different
intonation.
So English has a different intonation, a different stress.
So when you listen to podcasts, you develop this feel for the language.
So you started to understand or like maybe correct the way you pronounce or mispronounce
(02:21):
certain words.
Take the word for example, communication.
Most people say if you're native French, in French the stress most of the time it is
on its own, the last syllable.
So on Shin, communication, but in English it's a little bit different.
(02:42):
So stress, so in English, falls on certain syllables, right?
And there are certain rules that we should follow.
I mean, if you're born a native speaker, you don't need to follow those rules.
But if you're not, then you need to know those rules.
Again, if you listen to podcasts to give you this feel for the stress, for example, words,
and then with Shin, you don't need to do like a to memorize or to learn any rule.
(03:05):
When you listen to a lot of podcasts or absorb a lot of content related to English, you just
your brain starts to make these generalizations or come up with these rules to help you pronounce
better, right?
And again, if you imagine you're learning English without integrating podcasts and you're
learning journey, you might not get that.
(03:27):
So well, by the end of the, I don't know, your journey, you might get to C1, C2, but
your pronunciation might not be that good.
Not only your pronunciation as well as your listening.
Listening is very important if you don't really develop this scale of listening, you might
listen to native speakers and might not understand on the way they speak.
(03:49):
And there is a lot of research around this.
So a lot of research data already compares our students experience, those who integrate
podcast in their learning journey and versus those who don't use podcasts.
And they found that that those who use podcasts in their learning journey, they are enhanced
a lot, they improved faster and in the cut to akin to a like a native speaker in terms
(04:12):
of our English proficiency.
So it's a very important, I mean, to stress this, this is like the first thing of learning
listening to podcasts is to follow this feel or intonation awareness stress and also the
registered pauses, you know, when native speakers talk, they tend to pause a lot and it's very
important to have that and you can only get that from podcasts and you can also get it
(04:35):
from, let's say movies or TV shows.
That's the way a lot of people, they say we learned English just through watching movies
or TV shows.
And that is true because yes, you can learn from them.
If you really pay attention, you are going to get the intonation, the correct pronunciation.
(04:55):
And also those who listen or maybe learn English from music, right, from just song listening
to songs, American songs, you tend to develop an accent because do way to speak.
You know, sometimes you probably encountered people that speak English like a song, you
know, like an M&M, like the Arab, it's like they're talking as if they were rapping, right?
So see, they got the intonation and got the stress and they got everything from the song.
(05:20):
So whatever you surround yourself with, you tend to pick up, right?
Your brain is too smart.
So it's naturally it's going to pick up that instead of you, you don't need, you don't
even need to think about it, you just are going to absorb it from the environment.
That's why podcasts in a way tend to help you with that.
And one thing that is most of the time, don't really think about is this passive learning.
(05:42):
You think that if you put yourself in an environment, you may not be learning as much.
But with time, my students, so they had difficulty with podcasts at first.
I would give them podcasts and complain to each other, this is too difficult or listen
to the podcast.
They go four times and they could not understand the second, different accent.
(06:03):
But over time, the first, you just send the first time, the second time, the third time,
my students started to report that they actually, they're starting to understand the podcast
better.
And they don't have to listen to the podcast twice or three times to understand the general
domain idea of the podcast.
So basically it's a passive learning.
You didn't really like learn, actively learn to listen to the podcast.
(06:27):
You just, you're listening to the podcast in your brain is like habituated or getting
used to certain sounds or ways certain sounds are basically absorbed, right?
So you basically are going to absorb information or grammar structure without actually thinking
about it.
And then you can implement it in a true, a lot of say, let's say you watch a lot of
(06:48):
movies.
When you watch a lot of movies, most of the time, let's say there is an idiom or an expression.
And maybe you understood that expression through context.
There's second time around you're going to have that expression.
You don't need to define the expressions.
You already know, like your brain already knows the meaning of the podcast because you
have a lot of visual cues that can in a way help you understand better.
(07:12):
So same thing for podcasts, you are going to develop this feel or this like passive
learning ability to just learn without actually doing any effort.
And in passive learning is a very important skill to have for with me.
I mean, you can do that too.
When you listen, you can listen to the podcast and I think what you need to do is just write
(07:35):
down a summary, right?
What did you understand from the podcast, right?
And then that's going to give you this ability to summarize being able to summarize like
a text or maybe an audio, right?
Maybe in like two, maybe like in a paragraph or sometimes could be like two paragraphs,
right?
You can do this more often again, you are learning skills just of course listening passively,
(07:57):
but when you write them down, you're like doing active learning, right?
And there's a lot of research that show that active learning is the best way to learn,
right?
Yes, it is more like a combination between passive learning.
The active learning is with the learning actually happens, but the passive learning is like
a segue to active learning, right?
You can't have one without the other.
(08:17):
You need to have both, what you have for learning to happen, so to speak.
Yeah, that is there.
Something that I also forgot to mention about the podcast, right?
So when you listen to podcasts, you're not going to listen to just the same theme, the
same idea about certain or certain topic about the podcast.
(08:38):
You are going to be listening to various podcasts, very subjects, various topics that are going
to give you a lot of idea.
Maybe you don't know what is anti-natalism.
You don't know what is shrink-flation.
Maybe you don't know what is like a certain type of food or fascism or, I'm just talking
about our random subject.
Could be like maybe democracy.
(08:59):
You don't know what is democracy.
Maybe you don't know what is election, right?
Maybe you are a second language learner and you haven't been, you don't have vocabulary
about election, right?
So usually podcasts give you an idea.
Of course, the podcast might define certain words beforehand just to give you an idea of,
let's say, if the podcast is talking about election, he might have to define certain
(09:21):
words related to election.
So now you learn certain words related to election and of course, certain ideas, maybe
certain arguments for and against certain subjects.
And then maybe next time you are communicating with someone, maybe you can use those ideas.
If you like the ideas or the arguments the podcaster is saying, you can always write
them down.
(09:42):
And that's also going to help you write them down.
Just being able to express yourself well in a second language or something is something
good, right?
So you develop not only just this intonation awareness, not just this passive learning,
but also you learn a lot of vocabulary, a lot of words, in a lot of expressions, you
learn a lot of arguments, a lot of ideas you haven't seen before, right?
(10:07):
Because podcasters most of the time, they're not going to be just talking, right?
They usually have a script, right?
And then maybe they are really knowledgeable about what they're talking about, right?
They're not necessarily just talking out of thinner.
They just have, I mean, solid background and what you're saying, right?
They're not just going to fool the listeners into believing certain ideas without, unless
(10:29):
they're biased, of course, without any examples or evidence to back up your points, right?
So that's something that usually our podcast gives you.
Well, one, one other important thing is this authentic conversation.
So right now, although we're not having a conversation, but this is how we are going
to see who are native speakers talk.
(10:51):
It's not going to be like in a structured manner, one, two, three, there is this, right?
It's not very robotic, right?
Most of the time it's going to be something like this.
So you should develop again, these like our social norms, behaviors, jargon, expressions
that are usually are done in the context of learning environment, in English learning
(11:13):
environment.
You're not going to find this in like a textbook.
Usually in textbooks, you don't really find expression, maybe related to the environment.
Imagine that you see you learn English through a textbook and you go outside and someone is
going to use like an expression or maybe like an abbreviation that you don't know.
(11:34):
Maybe, maybe someone is going to say, I don't know what do you think?
Imagine someone is saying this and you haven't made a list in the podcast related to let's
say native American accent, you might not be able to pick up on what they said, right?
You have to ask them to repeat.
Even if they repeat, they may not be able to give you the exact, you might not understand
(11:54):
exact thing that they're saying because again, native speakers tend to swallow a lot of sounds
when they speak, they connect a lot of sounds together.
And then that's why it's really difficult to understand and that's why when you listen
to native speakers, maybe in a context, in a real context, it's going to be very difficult
for you to do that in a movie or like a professional setting, right?
(12:18):
Usually they tend to be more formal and they don't really use a lot of jargons.
They don't really shorten their words, but when you meet them outside, it's going to
be a totally different story.
And that's something that a lot of people don't really think about when trying to learn
like a net language, you don't really surround themselves or don't learn like English or
(12:40):
the language authentically, right?
They just take the language and learn it from like a textbook.
And the learning usually it's not a very solid one, right?
You're not probably going to forget your English in a couple of years and you have to do the
learning again.
That's why you have to enjoy like when you do podcasts, you get this, you are going
(13:01):
to be curious to listen to the very next podcast.
You can start with something very short.
You don't have to do like a 20 minute podcast at the start, maybe do like five minute podcast
and then go on, you can go all the way to like two hours or three hours podcast.
I don't want podcasts to be like a just stick to the script, right?
(13:22):
I don't want to use a script.
I want to talk natural, right?
And then I think talking natural, I think you learn a lot more as opposed to if I want
to use like a script.
Yes, I have an idea of what I'm going to talk about.
I know I understand the information.
I'm going to deliver it in a way that I see fit, that I think it's going to be better
delivered as opposed to if I just read from the script, it's not going to be interesting.
(13:47):
There is going to be no emotion in this, in me reading the script.
It's going to be robotic monotonous.
I don't think you're going to like it, right?
So I'm just going to be using this way of talking just somehow spontaneous.
I don't have a to stick to a certain script.
And that way you get to have like a nice conversation, we share a nice conversation.
(14:09):
And at the same time, you learn something new, right?
And I'm going to do my due diligence to basically give you information that are accurate, not
biased on most of the time, like the, what the other side think about what I really think
about, say what I think about, and that's, that is important.
(14:29):
Sometimes you have to share your view.
And yeah, I'm not going to be biased.
I'm going to present both sides if we're talking about any subject that is always going to
be like kind of like, yes, I'm neutral, but at the same time, I'm not going to not going
to say my opinion.
But yeah, hopefully you had fun listening to the podcast arm until next time.
(14:51):
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Hello everybody, welcome to your very first episode of the podcast.
(00:23):
I thought it was a start, maybe we can just give you an idea of how important podcasts
are because you might be getting into this and maybe you don't know how important podcasts
are.
I've been teaching English for a couple of years now and I always give my students podcasts
(00:44):
to listen to so I know like a great deal about podcasts and how efficient podcasts
are.
We might think they're just a waste of time or maybe I don't have time to listen to podcasts
but they are very, very helpful, especially in your English learning journey.
A lot of people tend to overlook them and think that okay, if I want to learn I can
(01:06):
just open a textbook or I can just do something, maybe like use AI, you can still use AI and
that's okay.
But most of the time people are looking for like authentic conversations.
So hopefully today you're going to have an idea about podcasts.
The very first thing that I think it's of paramount importance, very important, is this
(01:30):
idea of developing this intuition for pronunciation.
You see when you speak your language, you have stress, you have intonation of a lot
of layers of pronunciation of sounds.
These layers usually cannot be transmitted from a language or another, right?
So you speak English with a certain intonation and with a certain stress, it's not going
(01:56):
to be applicable to your native language.
When you speak, let's say in French or Arabic or Mandarin, usually you have again a different
intonation.
So English has a different intonation, a different stress.
So when you listen to podcasts, you develop this feel for the language.
So you started to understand or like maybe correct the way you pronounce or mispronounce
(02:21):
certain words.
Take the word for example, communication.
Most people say if you're native French, in French the stress most of the time it is
on its own, the last syllable.
So on Shin, communication, but in English it's a little bit different.
(02:42):
So stress, so in English, falls on certain syllables, right?
And there are certain rules that we should follow.
I mean, if you're born a native speaker, you don't need to follow those rules.
But if you're not, then you need to know those rules.
Again, if you listen to podcasts to give you this feel for the stress, for example, words,
and then with Shin, you don't need to do like a to memorize or to learn any rule.
(03:05):
When you listen to a lot of podcasts or absorb a lot of content related to English, you just
your brain starts to make these generalizations or come up with these rules to help you pronounce
better, right?
And again, if you imagine you're learning English without integrating podcasts and you're
learning journey, you might not get that.
(03:27):
So well, by the end of the, I don't know, your journey, you might get to C1, C2, but
your pronunciation might not be that good.
Not only your pronunciation as well as your listening.
Listening is very important if you don't really develop this scale of listening, you might
listen to native speakers and might not understand on the way they speak.
(03:49):
And there is a lot of research around this.
So a lot of research data already compares our students experience, those who integrate
podcast in their learning journey and versus those who don't use podcasts.
And they found that that those who use podcasts in their learning journey, they are enhanced
a lot, they improved faster and in the cut to akin to a like a native speaker in terms
(04:12):
of our English proficiency.
So it's a very important, I mean, to stress this, this is like the first thing of learning
listening to podcasts is to follow this feel or intonation awareness stress and also the
registered pauses, you know, when native speakers talk, they tend to pause a lot and it's very
important to have that and you can only get that from podcasts and you can also get it
(04:35):
from, let's say movies or TV shows.
That's the way a lot of people, they say we learned English just through watching movies
or TV shows.
And that is true because yes, you can learn from them.
If you really pay attention, you are going to get the intonation, the correct pronunciation.
(04:55):
And also those who listen or maybe learn English from music, right, from just song listening
to songs, American songs, you tend to develop an accent because do way to speak.
You know, sometimes you probably encountered people that speak English like a song, you
know, like an M&M, like the Arab, it's like they're talking as if they were rapping, right?
So see, they got the intonation and got the stress and they got everything from the song.
(05:20):
So whatever you surround yourself with, you tend to pick up, right?
Your brain is too smart.
So it's naturally it's going to pick up that instead of you, you don't need, you don't
even need to think about it, you just are going to absorb it from the environment.
That's why podcasts in a way tend to help you with that.
And one thing that is most of the time, don't really think about is this passive learning.
(05:42):
You think that if you put yourself in an environment, you may not be learning as much.
But with time, my students, so they had difficulty with podcasts at first.
I would give them podcasts and complain to each other, this is too difficult or listen
to the podcast.
They go four times and they could not understand the second, different accent.
(06:03):
But over time, the first, you just send the first time, the second time, the third time,
my students started to report that they actually, they're starting to understand the podcast
better.
And they don't have to listen to the podcast twice or three times to understand the general
domain idea of the podcast.
So basically it's a passive learning.
You didn't really like learn, actively learn to listen to the podcast.
(06:27):
You just, you're listening to the podcast in your brain is like habituated or getting
used to certain sounds or ways certain sounds are basically absorbed, right?
So you basically are going to absorb information or grammar structure without actually thinking
about it.
And then you can implement it in a true, a lot of say, let's say you watch a lot of
(06:48):
movies.
When you watch a lot of movies, most of the time, let's say there is an idiom or an expression.
And maybe you understood that expression through context.
There's second time around you're going to have that expression.
You don't need to define the expressions.
You already know, like your brain already knows the meaning of the podcast because you
have a lot of visual cues that can in a way help you understand better.
(07:12):
So same thing for podcasts, you are going to develop this feel or this like passive
learning ability to just learn without actually doing any effort.
And in passive learning is a very important skill to have for with me.
I mean, you can do that too.
When you listen, you can listen to the podcast and I think what you need to do is just write
(07:35):
down a summary, right?
What did you understand from the podcast, right?
And then that's going to give you this ability to summarize being able to summarize like
a text or maybe an audio, right?
Maybe in like two, maybe like in a paragraph or sometimes could be like two paragraphs,
right?
You can do this more often again, you are learning skills just of course listening passively,
(07:57):
but when you write them down, you're like doing active learning, right?
And there's a lot of research that show that active learning is the best way to learn,
right?
Yes, it is more like a combination between passive learning.
The active learning is with the learning actually happens, but the passive learning is like
a segue to active learning, right?
You can't have one without the other.
(08:17):
You need to have both, what you have for learning to happen, so to speak.
Yeah, that is there.
Something that I also forgot to mention about the podcast, right?
So when you listen to podcasts, you're not going to listen to just the same theme, the
same idea about certain or certain topic about the podcast.
(08:38):
You are going to be listening to various podcasts, very subjects, various topics that are going
to give you a lot of idea.
Maybe you don't know what is anti-natalism.
You don't know what is shrink-flation.
Maybe you don't know what is like a certain type of food or fascism or, I'm just talking
about our random subject.
Could be like maybe democracy.
(08:59):
You don't know what is democracy.
Maybe you don't know what is election, right?
Maybe you are a second language learner and you haven't been, you don't have vocabulary
about election, right?
So usually podcasts give you an idea.
Of course, the podcast might define certain words beforehand just to give you an idea of,
let's say, if the podcast is talking about election, he might have to define certain
(09:21):
words related to election.
So now you learn certain words related to election and of course, certain ideas, maybe
certain arguments for and against certain subjects.
And then maybe next time you are communicating with someone, maybe you can use those ideas.
If you like the ideas or the arguments the podcaster is saying, you can always write
them down.
(09:42):
And that's also going to help you write them down.
Just being able to express yourself well in a second language or something is something
good, right?
So you develop not only just this intonation awareness, not just this passive learning,
but also you learn a lot of vocabulary, a lot of words, in a lot of expressions, you
learn a lot of arguments, a lot of ideas you haven't seen before, right?
(10:07):
Because podcasters most of the time, they're not going to be just talking, right?
They usually have a script, right?
And then maybe they are really knowledgeable about what they're talking about, right?
They're not necessarily just talking out of thinner.
They just have, I mean, solid background and what you're saying, right?
They're not just going to fool the listeners into believing certain ideas without, unless
(10:29):
they're biased, of course, without any examples or evidence to back up your points, right?
So that's something that usually our podcast gives you.
Well, one, one other important thing is this authentic conversation.
So right now, although we're not having a conversation, but this is how we are going
to see who are native speakers talk.
(10:51):
It's not going to be like in a structured manner, one, two, three, there is this, right?
It's not very robotic, right?
Most of the time it's going to be something like this.
So you should develop again, these like our social norms, behaviors, jargon, expressions
that are usually are done in the context of learning environment, in English learning
(11:13):
environment.
You're not going to find this in like a textbook.
Usually in textbooks, you don't really find expression, maybe related to the environment.
Imagine that you see you learn English through a textbook and you go outside and someone is
going to use like an expression or maybe like an abbreviation that you don't know.
(11:34):
Maybe, maybe someone is going to say, I don't know what do you think?
Imagine someone is saying this and you haven't made a list in the podcast related to let's
say native American accent, you might not be able to pick up on what they said, right?
You have to ask them to repeat.
Even if they repeat, they may not be able to give you the exact, you might not understand
(11:54):
exact thing that they're saying because again, native speakers tend to swallow a lot of sounds
when they speak, they connect a lot of sounds together.
And then that's why it's really difficult to understand and that's why when you listen
to native speakers, maybe in a context, in a real context, it's going to be very difficult
for you to do that in a movie or like a professional setting, right?
(12:18):
Usually they tend to be more formal and they don't really use a lot of jargons.
They don't really shorten their words, but when you meet them outside, it's going to
be a totally different story.
And that's something that a lot of people don't really think about when trying to learn
like a net language, you don't really surround themselves or don't learn like English or
(12:40):
the language authentically, right?
They just take the language and learn it from like a textbook.
And the learning usually it's not a very solid one, right?
You're not probably going to forget your English in a couple of years and you have to do the
learning again.
That's why you have to enjoy like when you do podcasts, you get this, you are going
(13:01):
to be curious to listen to the very next podcast.
You can start with something very short.
You don't have to do like a 20 minute podcast at the start, maybe do like five minute podcast
and then go on, you can go all the way to like two hours or three hours podcast.
I don't want podcasts to be like a just stick to the script, right?
(13:22):
I don't want to use a script.
I want to talk natural, right?
And then I think talking natural, I think you learn a lot more as opposed to if I want
to use like a script.
Yes, I have an idea of what I'm going to talk about.
I know I understand the information.
I'm going to deliver it in a way that I see fit, that I think it's going to be better
delivered as opposed to if I just read from the script, it's not going to be interesting.
(13:47):
There is going to be no emotion in this, in me reading the script.
It's going to be robotic monotonous.
I don't think you're going to like it, right?
So I'm just going to be using this way of talking just somehow spontaneous.
I don't have a to stick to a certain script.
And that way you get to have like a nice conversation, we share a nice conversation.
(14:09):
And at the same time, you learn something new, right?
And I'm going to do my due diligence to basically give you information that are accurate, not
biased on most of the time, like the, what the other side think about what I really think
about, say what I think about, and that's, that is important.
(14:29):
Sometimes you have to share your view.
And yeah, I'm not going to be biased.
I'm going to present both sides if we're talking about any subject that is always going to
be like kind of like, yes, I'm neutral, but at the same time, I'm not going to not going
to say my opinion.
But yeah, hopefully you had fun listening to the podcast arm until next time.
(14:51):
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
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In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com