English As A Second Language Podcast Interview Questions: Fill & Download for Free

The best till date that I have found is BBC english series of comedy serial ‘Extra English’. You can find it on YouTube. It has wonderful mixed ascents and solely meant to help viewers to learn English.The other podcasts you may try are :-11 English Podcasts for English Learners and ESL StudentsThe English We Speak(iTunes – website)Put down your textbook for a moment and learn from some of the most knowledgeable experts of the English language, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). This English language learning podcast series focuses on everyday phrases and slang. What you will hear is the kind of English spoken by real people all the time and will help you to speak more like a native speaker.The podcasts are published weekly, and each one has a bite-sized duration of 3-4 minutes. Examples of common English expressions explored in the series are: “use your loaf”, “skeletons in the closet” and “take the mickey”.The English is spoken at a slightly slower speed than normal. Every syllable is enunciated clearly. The typical format involves two presenters having a conversation with each other. Sound effects are frequently used to give the impression that the teachers are in different locations.Podcasts in English(iTunes)Variety is the spice of life and that’s exactly what these terrific podcasts give you – spoken English in an assortment of settings. Who said language learning can’t be fun and exciting?Podcasts in English.com is a comprehensive English language learning podcast series with programs for beginners, intermediates and upper intermediates. There are also podcasts for those who need to use business English. The short lessons are conducted entirely in English and feature conversations between two English language speakers.They cover a broad range of topics encompassing nearly every facet of life. Some of the subjects you may hear being discussed are the Winter Olympics, horse riding experiences and Facebook. The podcasts are short, challenging and supported by transcripts, worksheets and vocabulary tasks.EnglishClass101 by Innovative Language(iTunes – website)There’s something for everyone here, in a podcast series for all experience levels. You can choose from four levels of learning to match your needs – absolute beginner, beginner, intermediate and advanced. The podcasts are presented by hosts who also act out different scenes. Once a scene has been performed it is repeated at a much slower speed.The next section of each podcast provides some culturally relevant information. This is followed by a focus on vocabulary and phrases, and definitions of some of the words the listener has just heard. The concluding section of each podcast covers grammar. These English language podcasts are conducted at a moderate pace.Elementary Podcasts by the British Council(iTunes – website)Three cheers for the UK’s British Council who have come up with a very helpful series of English language podcasts for the beginner and intermediate learner. Unusually for language learning podcasts these lessons are quite long, at about 25 minutes. You can, of course, listen in one sitting. But one of the joys of podcasts is you can pause when you want and pick up where you left off when there’s more time.The hosts of each edition take the listener through a number of different scenarios. These are acted out in dialogue and are the kind of situations people experience every day. The podcasts also include broader discussions of some of the topics. The presentation is lively, upbeat and engaging, and the English is spoken at near normal speed. There is a lot of good accompanying material, some of which can be read beforehand to help the listener make the most of each lesson.Splendid Speaking(iTunes – website)Hone your fine language skills to perfection by taking time out to listen to Splendid Speaking’s intriguing podcasts. They are designed for the advanced language learner who can speak reasonably good English. The podcasts offer a fascinating approach to learning the language. Each lesson features interviews and discussions with non-native English language speakers. The recordings also include expert feedback about their performances. Not only is this a very instructive way to learn, but it’s also fun to hear how other learners are coping with the language. You may be able to spot some of their mistakes!Better at English(iTunes – website)Better at English is an eclectic mix of English language podcasts featuring real conversations with native speakers. The topics range from the serious to the silly and light-hearted and are conducted at normal speed. Listening to real, natural-sounding conversations is a superlative supplement to classroom and textbook learning. Unlike anything else, this familiarizes the student with the pace of the language and some of its idioms and common expressions. Better English is suitable for the intermediate student and above, or for the beginner who really wants to challenge themselves. These English language podcasts are accompanied by transcripts and vocabulary notes.Voice of America Learning English(iTunes – website)This is a wonderful podcast series that really mixes it up. There’s so much variety hear that the listener is really spoilt for choice.Voice of America is an English language news and information service that provides a series of multi-genre programmes in English. In the audio section there is 1) a weekly global news programme 2) a science documentary strand 3) programmes about the history of America and American cultural life and 4) a series on American English idioms. All the programmes are narrated in English spoken at a slower speed than normal.Voice of America is a great addition to the language student’s arsenal of learning tools as it adds variety to structured lessons and conversation-based tuition. As with conventional radio programmes, each podcast is divided into segments and uses music and sound effects to provide a rich audio experience.Business English Pod(iTunes – website)If you are going to be doing business in English speaking countries then this podcast series is your brilliant boardroom primer.Business English Pod is an immersion into the language and conventions of the business world. The series covers the integral language required for every conceivable business situation. The episodes follow a simple structure with the host speaking for a few minutes on a set topic. There are transcripts, quizzes and vocabulary guidance accompanying each podcast.The series assumes the student already has a reasonable working knowledge of English, but it doesn’t assume too much. The English is spoken at about three quarters of normal speed and is therefore quite easy to follow. As you might expect, the diction is perfect. Business English Pod provides a good insight into how business is conducted in English-speaking companies. In addition, the lessons offer valuable listening and comprehension practice.Culips ESL Podcast(iTunes – website)Whether you can barely say “hello” in English or can talk fluently in the language for several minutes, there are some real gems for you here – a podcast series for all levels of English language learner. What’s really great about the Culips site is that there are four different podcast styles. The Close Up podcasts feature recurring characters in a variety of situations. During each episode the host focuses on vocabulary, expressions, idioms and slang. There is also a small amount of grammar. Chatterbox podcasts feature real conversations between people, while Catch Word podcasts are centred on one word only and its meanings and uses. Curious Questions is a podcast devoted to answering listeners’ questions.These are intelligent, practical and well put together podcasts. They are all conducted in English and most of time this is spoken at slightly less than normal speed.ESL Pod(iTunes – website)The English as a Second Language Podcast has a vast library of episodes (more than 900 and still going strong). The host for the ESL podcast is Dr. Jeff McQuillan and the other voice you will often hear belongs to Dr. Lucy Tse. Both have PhDs in applied linguistics. The core of each podcast is an acted out dialogue between two characters. The rest of the episode then concentrates on key words and their uses and meanings. The English is spoken at about half normal speed and is therefore, quite easy to follow. Each podcast is accompanied by a learning guide.Luke’s English Podcast(iTunes – website)Luke is a qualified English language teacher and stand-up comedian who provides an engaging and entertaining podcast series. His intention is to “make you laugh while you learn” and he provides a rich mix of subject material. A quick look at the titles of some of the podcasts reveals such instalments as “Doctor Who Episode – Language Analysis”, “The Prawn Story” and “English Premier League Football”.For many of the podcasts Luke is the sole narrator, although real-life conversations also feature. He has a warm, engaging voice that draws in the listener. What’s more his stories are so well structured that you are eager to hear the next sentence. The English is spoken at normal speed and transcripts are available.Other Resources for Learning with English PodcastsNeed more information on English podcasts? Just follow the links and you’ll find more great resources for improving your English.Great Teachers: List of some nice English podcasts which haven’t been mentioned here. Their focus is on podcasts that feature one teacher, who directly talks to the listener.Smart Learning: Top 10 Free Business English Podcasts and Audio Resources: If you want to improve your business English, make sure you check out this list. Note that they’re mainly authentic content for native speakers, rather than for ESL learners.

Wikipedia has a whole lot of flaws, and its basic meta-flaw is the disease of familiarity.It does not mean what you think it means. The disease of familiarity is knowing so much about something that you don’t understand what it is like to not understand it.I recognized this phenomenon in 2011 or so. I thought a lot about it and struggled for years with giving it a name. I learned about the term “disease of familiarity” from Richard Saul Wurman, best known as the creator of the TED conference (see a note about it in the end of this answer). Some other names for this phenomenon are “curse of knowledge” and “mind blindness”. See Is there a name for "knowing so much about something that you don’t understand what is it like not to know it"?Unfortunately, none of these terms are very famous, and their meaning is not obvious without some explanation. What’s even worse, the phenomenon is in general hard to explain because of its very nature. But I’ll try to give a few examples.Wikipedia doesn’t make it easy for people to understand its jargon.Wikipedia calls itself “The Free encyclopedia”; what does it mean that it’s “free”? I wrote Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia, one of the essays on this topic (there are others), but it’s not official or authoritative, and more importantly, the fact that this essay exists doesn’t mean that everybody who starts writing for Wikipedia reads it and understands the ideology behind it, and its implications. An important implication of this ideology is that according to the ideology of the Free Culture movement, of which Wikipedia is a part, is that some images and pieces of text can be copied from other sites into Wikipedia, and some cannot. The main reason for this is copyright law. People often copy text or images that are not compatible with the policies, and since this is heavily enforced by experienced Wikipedia editors, this causes misunderstandings. Wikipedia’s interface could communicate these policies better, but experienced Wikipedians, who already know them, rarely think about this problem. Disease of familiarity.Wikipedia calls itself “a wiki”. A lot of people think that it’s just a meaningless catchy brand name, like “Kodak”. Some others think that it refers to the markup language in which the site is written. Yet others think that it’s an acronym that means “what I know is”. None of this is correct. The actual meaning of “wiki” is “a website that anyone can edit”. The people who are experienced with editing Wikipedia know this, and assume that everybody else does, but the truth is that a lot of new people who try to edit don’t understand it and are afraid of editing pages that others had written, or freak out when somebody edits what they had written. Disease of familiarity.The most common, built-in way for communication between the different Wikipedians is the talk page. Only Wikipedia and other sites that use the MediaWiki software use the term “talk page”. Other sites call such a thing “forum”, “comments”, or “discussion”. (To make things more confusing, Wikipedia itself occasionally calls it “discussion”.) Furthermore, talk pages, which started on Wikipedia in 2001, before commenting systems like Disqus, phpBB, Facebook, or Reddit were common, work in a very weird way: you need to manually indent each of your posts, you need to manually sign your name, and you need to use a lot of obscure markup and templates (“what are templates?!”, every new user must wonder). Experienced editors are so accustomed to doing this that they assume that everybody knows this. Disease of familiarity.A lot of pages in Wikipedia in English and in many other languages have infoboxes. For example, in articles about cities and towns there’s an infobox that shows a photo, the name of the mayor, the population, etc. When you’re writing an article about your town, you’ll want to insert an infobox. Which button do you use to do this? There’s no “Infobox” button, and even if there were, you wouldn’t know that you need to look for it because “Infobox” is a word in Wikipedia’s internal jargon. What you actually have to do is Insert → Template → type “Infobox settlement”, and fill a form. Every step here is non-intuitive, especially the part where you have to type the template’s name. Where are you supposed to know it from? Also, these steps are how it works on the English Wikipedia, and in other languages it works differently. Disease of familiarity.And this brings us to the next topic: Language.You see, when I talk about Wikipedia, I talk about Wikipedia in all languages at once. Otherwise, I talk about the English Wikipedia, the Japanese Wikipedia, the Arabic Wikipedia, and so on. Most people are not like me: when they talk about Wikipedia, they talk about the one in the language in which they read most often. Quite often it’s not their first language; for example, a whole lot of people read the Wikipedia in English even though English is their second language, and don’t even know that there is a Wikipedia in their own language. When these people say “Wikipedia”, they actually mean “the English Wikipedia”.There’s nothing bad in it by itself. It’s usually natural to read in a language that you know best and not to care very much about other languages.But here’s where it gets complicated: Technically, there are editions of Wikipedia in about 300 languages. This number is pretty meaningless, however: There are about 7,000 languages in the world, so not the whole world is covered, and only in 100 languages or so there is a Wikipedia in which there is actually some continuous writing activity. In the other 200 the activity is only sporadic, or there is no activity at all—somebody just started writing something in that language, and a domain was created, but then the first people who started it lost interest and nobody else came to continue their work.This is pretty sad because it’s frequently forgotten that many, many people cannot read what they want in Wikipedia because they don’t know a language in which there is an article about what they want to learn. If you are reading this answer, you have the privilege of knowing English, and it’s hard for you to imagine how does a person who doesn’t know English feel. Disease of familiarity: You think you can tell everybody “if you want to know something, read about it in Wikipedia”, but you cannot actually tell this to most people because most people don’t know English.The missed opportunity to bring more knowledge to people becomes even more horrific when you realize that the people who would have the most appropriate skills for breaking out of this paradox are the people who are least likely to notice it, and the people who are hurt by it the most are the least capable of fixing it themselves. Think about it:If you know, for example, Russian and English, and you need to read about a topic on which there is an article in the English Wikipedia, but not in Russian, you can read the English Wikipedia, and it’s possible that you won’t even notice that an article in Russian doesn’t exist. Unless you exercise mindfulness about the issue, you won’t empathize with people who don’t know English. To break out of this cycle, one can practice the following:Always look for articles in Russian first.Dedicate some time every week to translating articles. (See How does Wikipedia handle page translation?)When you talk to people in your language, don’t assume that they know English.A person who doesn’t know English is just stuck without an article, and there’s not much to do. It’s possible that you don’t even know that the article you need exists in another language. And maybe you cannot even read the user manual that teaches you how to edit. What can you do?Try to be bold and ask your friends who do know English to translate it for you and publish the translation for the benefit of all the people who speak your language.(Of course, there’s the solution of learning English, but we can’t assume that it works. Evidently, there are billions of people who don’t know English, and they won’t all learn English any time soon.)(In case it isn’t clear, you can replace “English” and “Russian” in the example above with any other pair of languages.)It’s particularly painful in countries where English, French, or Portuguese is the dominant language of government and education, even though a lot of the people, often the majority, don’t actually know it. This is true for many countries in Africa, as well as for the Philippines, and to a certain extent also in India and Pakistan.People who know English have a very useful aid for their school studies in the form of Wikipedia. People who don’t know English are left behind: the teachers don’t have Wikipedia to get help with planning the lessons and the students don’t have Wikipedia to get help with homework. The people who know English and study in English-medium schools have these things and don’t even notice how the other people—often their friends!—are left behind. Disease of familiarity.Finally, most of the people who write in the 70 or so most successful Wikipedias don’t quite realize that the reason the Wikipedia in their language is successful is that before they had a Wikipedia, they had had another printed or digital encyclopedia, possibly more than one; and they had public libraries, and schools, and universities, and all those other things, which allowed them to imagine quite easily how would a free encyclopedia look like. A lot of languages have never had these things, and a Wikipedia would be the first major collection of educational materials in them. This would be pretty awesome, but this develops very slowly. People who write in the successful Wikipedia projects don’t realize that they just had to take the same concepts they already knew well and rebuild them in cyberspace, without having to jump through any conceptual epistemological hoops.Disease of familiarity.It’s hard to explain this.I unfortunately suspect that very few, if any, people will understand this boring, long, and conceptually difficult answer. If you disagree, please comment. If you think that you understand what I’m trying to say, but you have a simpler or shorter way to say it, please comment or suggest an edit (and tell your friends). If you have more examples of the disease of familiarity in Wikipedia and elsewhere, please speak up.Thank you.(As promised above, a note about Richard Saul Wurman. I heard him introduce the “disease of familiarity” concept in an interview with Debbie Millman on her podcast Design Matters, at about 23 minutes in. That interview was one of this podcast’s weirdest episodes: you can clearly hear that he’s making Millman uncomfortable, and she also mentioned it on Twitter. This, in turn, makes me uncomfortable to discuss something I learned from that interview, but I am just unable to find any better terminology for the phenomenon in question. If you have suggestions, please send them my way.)Disclaimer: I’m a contractor working with the Wikimedia Foundation, but this answer, as well as all my other posts on the topic of Wikimedia, Wikipedia, and related projects, are my own opinions and do not represent the Wikimedia Foundation.

You have the problem while communicating with Girls?You don’t have the friends for practicing the English?Not confident to pass the interview rounds?Do you not raise your voice in team meeting due to poor communication?Your colleague is lighting on your communications?You don't have an English speaking accent?You have difficulty while reading the English book?If your answer is yes, this answer for you.As many of people said no once born with intellegent and many of people not get English envornment to practise the same.I’m also come with such area where no onces master of familer with english but my passion leads me here to help people which also belongs to same area.I comlete my primary education in government school and where as no any english teachers for lot of class.But in a recent couple of years, I have completed my degree in science and now working in Tata consultancy services from the last three years, where I have responsibilities to talk with clients.I believe in continuous learning because Benjamin Hardy once said,“Entertainment and distraction is the enemy of creation and learning. They will keep you in mediocrity”How I improve my speaking English?"Once you choose hope, anything's possible." -- Christopher ReeveHere are the tricks,1) Talkative nature: The Talkative nature is the needs for learning any new language, which helps you to keep in touch whit people to create English environment.I would like to talk with people I have ability to talk on phones for hours and hours on unknown person as well, so I use my strength and I was calling on daily to any the toll-free number and take a piece of information from customer service officers.Our daily products have their customer care center here is the list of toll-free numbers in India.So find your the list of all importants toll free number just doing one google search and start calling in your free time.List Of All Important Toll-Free Numbers | सभी महत्वपूर्ण Toll Free Numbers की List ! | WelcomenriIf you don't know how to speak English still you try to speak and they also try to understand and give your answer to your question because you are a valuable customer for them. So take a advantage ans start calling tem.Native speaker: People always complain about they don't have anyone to practice English speaking.If you have a smartphone and internet you don't need to someone else.Here are the apps that will you to talk with strangers any time.Open talk: one of my favorite app to talk with new people from different countries and cities in the world, some of my profiles screenshot share below.Link of App : Opentalk: Be better by talking - Social Voice App - Apps on Google Play3) Increase vocabularies: For daily communication vocabularies play an important role, daily learning the new words and they use is daily communication is the challenging work but don't worry here is the shortcut.VoLT according to me it is the best app in the world to learn vocabularies with his unique style.VoLT (Vocabulary Learning Techniques) is an app which will provide the reader with various innovative techniques to remember difficult English words.Various Usages, Synonyms, and Antonyms have also been provided along with each word.Link of the app : VoLT - Vocabulary Learning - Apps on Google Play4) Listen to audiobooks: for learning any language needs to listen to the new words and understand pattern the sentence we need to listen to more English, audiobook not only improve English but also knowledge.Podcast: listen podcast is also helping for same, many authors, entrepreneurs, and highly successful person podcast available on youtube.5) Writing: Last but not the list, you practicing with all these methods only work once you start the writing I know sometimes you know remember correct word for that use below site.Write with a Built-In ThesaurusHow its work :When you get stuck on a word, Twinword Writer will automatically sense that you have paused, analyze the context of your writing, and open a box suggesting alternative words you can use.You can search and highlight all the related words in your writing with just one click. This is not pattern matching. Based on the meaning of the word you search for, Twinword Writer will point out all the other places you have used that word and related words also.Bnonouse Tips: The word best dictionary is Merriam-Webster.it's available on web site as well as an Andriod app with the same name on play store link for the website :Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America's most-trusted online dictionaryHope you like it.Here's the second version of this answer hope you enjoy.Balaji Joshi's answer to How can I become fluent in English?inspiring me for upvoting the answerIf you want to know more about English follow me here Balaji Joshi .