HEAR the voices behind the conversations

Listening to natural English conversation is something students should enjoy! People who sound warm and friendly make students feel better than if they had to listen to activities where announcers are over-enunciating words. You know, I was so excited in my last post about celebrating the teachers who did the recordings we made for Nice Talking With You, telling you who was involved and so on, that I forgot to GIVE an EXAMPLE of the recordings. Do’h! One of the first things ESL teachers learn to do in the classroom is to GIVE EXAMPLES.

Since we live in an age where the average adult attention span rivals that of a toddler, I thought I’d better frame the audio sample so it’s purty an’ all. You can hear it below! It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? I mean, how quickly ESL teachers and learners have become bored with simple audio. For publishers, it’s more cost-effective to package audio the way they do, and we can understand that. But I wonder if video will ever replace audio? Anyway…

Thanks again to my fellow teachers who took the time out of their busy teaching lives to lend me their voices. I’m lucky to know some really wonderful people, good teachers in the Nagoya area where I live.

text sample audio © Cambridge University Press.

Like listening to natural English conversation? You can hear all the audio from textbook level one here.