Do lectures

Do lectures is an impressive site Russell Stannard informed about in his November newsletter.

This is what Do lectures say about their site:

The idea is a simple one— that people who Do things can inspire the rest of us to go and Do things, too. So each year Do lectures invite a group of people who have stood out in a field to talk about what they do. They can be small Do’s or big Do’s or just extraordinary Do’s. But when you listen to their stories, they light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back of your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.

To go find your cause to fight, your company to start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb. The one thing the Doers of the world Do, apart from Do amazing things, is to inspire the rest of us to go and Do amazing things too. They are fire-starters.

NFB

The National Film Board of Canada is a website where you can watch films about arts, the world, biographies, history.

Many of the films are only available under subscription or registration, but there are also dozens of films open to everybody, some of which include a CC option.

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.

English Language Improvement Resources

The Collegial Centre for Educational Materials Development (CCDMD) in Canada has quite a few nice English Language Improvement Resources, primarily for advanced English Language Learners.

The resources include listening, reading, writing and speaking as well as literature and vocabulary and pronunciation.

All in all English Language Improvement Resources is a great site for Advanced Learners who wish to study English in a systematic way.