If you're like me, learning vocabulary, proper spelling and grammar is about as fun as doing your tax return, but without the refund to look forward to at the end!
I checked out some educational podcasts that focus on language skills in the hopes that someone out there was taking the sting out of 'stertorous'.
Revenge of the Word Nerds
"The Word Nerds: A Podcast About Language" is produced by three language teachers and features themed shows that last around 30-40 mins. Here's an excerpt from their website.
The Word Nerds is a podcast about language and language change. It has been published on the Internet since March 21, 2005. Originally published every week, it now appears once every two to three weeks.Three language teachers, Dave Shepherd, Howard Shepherd, and Howard Chang, talk about nearly any topic you could imagine having to do with language. We are all native speakers of American English. Dave is a high-school German teacher, Howard S. teaches high-school English, and Howard C. teaches high-school Latin.
I chose the episode called "Equivocation and Discourse" because I had no idea what equivocation was. The episode gets off to a slow start, but the hosts get into the swing of things in a few minutes. Here is a breakdown of the episode from iTunes:
If you can get comfortable with the conversational tone and somewhat slower pace, you are sure to find something in this podcast to pique your interest. What makes the content so interesting is the way the "word nerds" connect their linguistic theme of the week to the real world in all kinds of ways - political, academic, and sports related speech all make an appearance. I learned about upspeak & how it relates to psychology, and about differences between formal and informal, British and American, and public and personal speech. And let's not forget the rude word of the week - weasel! - a recurring segment that spotlights terms from "windbag" to "bullshit."
- Howard Shepherd talks about his favorite summer reading book--Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a first novel by his former student Marisha Pessl. (2:47)
- Reasons for equivocating (4:37)
- Music bumper from "Ockham's Shaving Kit," by George Hrab (14:46)
- Verbal and lingual ways of equivocating (15:27)
- Song: "Maybe I'll Wait," by Robin Welty (21:36)
- Rude word of the week: "weasel" (25:16)
- Music bumper from "Telepop" by The Jerrys (28:57)
- Paralingual and nonvocal equivocation (29:36)
- Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network and IODA Promonet
- Theme music by Kick the Cat
- Closing music from "Grapes" by Evan Stone
From a technical perspective, the sound quality is good and the podcast makes good use of musical snippets to break the show up into smaller chunks, with one full song at about the halfway point. The "word nerds" are not working from a script. They use a broad outline and the conversation seems to flow more or less smoothly from there.
So while you may think that the podcast sounds a little, well, amateurish at first... all those ahs, ums, somewhats, kind ofs, and so forths are just, like, sort of, well, hmm, a little bit of, er, equivocation after all. You know?
Check Out These Other Highly Recommended Podcasts
The Princeton Review Vocab MinuteResearchers say music helps us remember. These goofy vocab songs are only one minute long, but that's plenty of time to fix each word in your memory!
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better WritingGrammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Whether English is your first language or your second language, these grammar, punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. These are only about 5 minutes long.
On The MediaJoin On the Media (from NPR) for compelling radio that examines the impact of media on our lives. Each episode runs about 50 minutes.
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