BBC Podcasts

This is the BBC podcast home where you can download podcasts on most, if not all, programmes of the radio station.


I would recommend Witness, though. On this programme, history is told by the people who were there. The programme is on five days a week, and they talk to some of the people who lived through moments of history to bring the audience a personal perspective on world events.

Audio files and transcripts galore

A few days ago we published a link to Huffduffer where we can find a wealth of audio files about very different topics without the need to surf the net.

Today let me tell you about an even more interesting site from our perspective as advanced English learners. The American National Public Radio (NPR) hosts a section on their webpage called On the Media.

They upload a choice of their most interesting programmes once a week over the weekend, and every Tuesday the transcripts of the latest programmes are also available.

Besides, if you click on the Archive tag you can choose old programmas dating back to 2001. All of them are ready to download as podcasts and are accompanied by their transcription.

A really good find for everybody.

H/T to colleague Antonio Obis.

Podcasts for advanced language learners

Huffduffer is a site that collects thousands of podcasts from many different sources.

The topics are really varied and there are helpful tags to lead us in the process of choosing one of our interest.

Unfortunately, transcripts are not available for all the podcasts, but the main interest of the site lies on the fact that they have done the work of finding authentic material to listen to, so we do not have to be surfing the net to spot audio files.

Huffduffer can be really helpful for us to prepare the listening tasks in the exam and to shake off whatever fears to authentic materials we might harbour.

60 Seconds Civic

60 Second Civics is a daily podcast produced by the Center for Civic Education. Each 60 Second Civics episode offers a short lesson about US Civics. Along with each episode is a one question quiz about that day's episode. Currently, the podcasts are focused on a comparison of British Parliament and US Congress.

I learn about 60 Second Civics from Free Technology for Teachers.

Professional podcasts

The British Council site offers English learners at intermediate and advanced level this series of podcasts that can help you improve your English, while they cover a large range of business and work fields. You can download the audio files, the transcript and a pack of activities with each podcast.