C1 in English by April 2020

[StringerBell]

Which podcasts are you planning to listen to? There are some really amazing ones, perhaps I can recommend a few in the case your lack of enthusiasm is related to not having any lined up that you are excited about.

[TeoLanguages]

Which podcasts are you planning to listen to? There are some really amazing ones, perhaps I can recommend a few in the case your lack of enthusiasm is related to not having any lined up that you are excited about.

That would be great, thanks! I really appreciate it! I do lack of enthusiasm as far as podcasts are concerned, so any recommendation is more than welcome.

[MamaPata]

What sort of films will you be watching?

What are you interested in? I don’t listen to many podcasts in English, but would always recommend Desert Island Discs as everyone can find *someone* they like being interviewed.

[TeoLanguages]

What sort of films will you be watching?

What are you interested in? I don’t listen to many podcasts in English, but would always recommend Desert Island Discs as everyone can find *someone* they like being interviewed.

Thanks for the recommendation! Anyway I intend to watch whatever it attracts me. I mean, every kind of film I like, with no distinction. Do you mean what genre? It depends, I don't have a favorite one.

[StringerBell]

English podcast recommendations:

1) Radiolab
2) Freakonomics
3) This American Life
4) Hidden Brain
5) Serial
6) Car Talk

All of these podcasts are on NPR (National Public Radio) and can be found for free on iTunes podcasts, or downloaded/streamed for free via their websites.

Car Talk is not currently running but there's 20+ years worth of episodes that NPR still plays. It's a call-in show (people from all over the US call in with car related problems). It's hilarious (I grew up listening to it and never cared about cars at all - you don't need to be a car enthusiast to enjoy the humor) and it's very good listening practice since callers have very different accents.

I've found transcripts online for This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/164/crime-scene-2000 Click on "transcripts". From their website: "Mostly we do journalism, but an entertaining kind of journalism that’s built around plot. In other words, stories! Our favorite sorts of stories have compelling people at the center of them, funny moments, big feelings, surprising plot twists, and interesting ideas. Like little movies for radio."

The Freakonomics podcast is done by Stephen J. Dubner (a journalist/author) and award-winning economist Steven D. Levitt who wrote the book Freakonomics, "a book about cheating teachers, bizarre baby names, self-dealing Realtors, and crack-selling mama’s boys". It became a worldwide best-seller and they started a podcast on the same theme. They basically apply economics training to a lot of really unusual areas that economists normally don't deal with. I highly recommend their books.

Radiolab is similar to This American Life in that each episode has a theme/story, but the stories tend to be science-related in some way. This is one of my go-to podcasts when I have a long car ride, it makes the time fly by!

I also found transcripts for season 3 of Serial online: https://serialpodcast.org/season-three/1/transcript but I'm not sure if there are transcripts for season 1, since I couldn't find them easily. I haven't listened to this podcast yet, but it's been recommended to me by several people and it's on my list. My understanding is that it's a real story (kind of like Making a Murderer on Netflix). From their website: "It's Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he's innocent - though he can't exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon. But someone can. A classmate at Woodlawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trouble is, she’s nowhere to be found."

I just recently started listening to Hidden Brain (it was recommended to me by my language exchange partner). The most recent episode is called, "Bullshit Jobs: How Meaningless Work Wears Us Down".

[TeoLanguages]

Wo! That's a bunch of stuff! Thanks mate! I will definitely check them out.

[TeoLanguages]

Hi everybody!

I decided to use this topic to keep track of my progresses concerning my journey towards the C1 level in English, so I will post here my updates once in a while starting from today.

As I just said, today I started the path that will lead me to C1 in English (hopefully). A bit above there is my general plan so you can check out what resources I'm using and how I split up my study sessions.

As far as today is concerned, I struggle quite a lot with the grammar, because I spent the morning revising (restudying better said) some grammar rules and doing exercises about that. There are still a couple of point I struggle understanding but I hope I'll get it soon. As regards listening and reading I started reading and listening to topics I don't really care that much about but that I have to learn in view of the exam. In this case, I could understand quite well the whole picture and even some details but I found them extremely boring, so this made the whole session quite painful.

Hopefully next days will be better. To sum up, I'm quite satisfied after this 1st day of learning, even though it was pretty hard.
Cheers!

[TeoLanguages]

Hi everybody! I want to give you a first update regarding my language mission.
The first week of learning is gone and I tried to optimize my free time as much as I could in order to study as much as I could. Eventually I was able to dedicate 8-10 hours daily to English this past week but I feel I will have a burnout quite soon if I continue learning in this way. So Iìm thinking of reducing I dedicate to English (actively or passively).
In this week I learned a lot but I feel overwhelmed by the language itself so I'll try to slow down and focus on less stuff but in a deeper way as I did this previous week.
I thought that "quantity over quality" would have worked but I already feel frustrated and tired so I will try a different approach.

[mentecuerpo]

English podcast recommendations:
1) Radiolab
2) Freakonomics
3) This American Life
4) Hidden Brain
5) Serial
6) Car Talk

Excellent selection, I listen to some of those just for the pleasure of listening and learning something new. Not even for the sake of English learning but for learning and having fun

[TeoLanguages]

Time to update!

Long time has passed since I've updated this topic last time. I've still been learning English every single day (apart from Saturday and Sunday, which I devote to revising) and after an initial boost lasted 4-6 weeks I started feeling a bit stuck last week. I felt like I wasn't learning as much as before despite the fact that I keep interleaving activities and spending a handful of hours in daily learning. Eventually I realized that this could true, meaning that I'm learning less than I was expected now because when I started I needed to bridge some long-lasting gaps I wasn't aware of. Even though I'm not learning as fast as I would, the results are tangible and I feel there was a (big?) improvement since I've started this venture. There still is a long way to go and my being perfectionist doesn't help for sure but hard work always pays off and hopefully all the struggle I'm having will be worthwhile.
Bye for now!