TOEFL® prep: Which RADIO to prepare oral comprehension?

[Can]

Hi All,

I was thinking of listening to on line radios in English to improve my oral comprehension skills.

My favorite radio is BBC 4 intelligent speech but I've noticed that British English is far too easy for me to understand, in comparison to American English.

And as the TOEFL is rather an American English examination, I thought I should rather listen to American radios.

But I've found no radio that I really like, that is really interesting... I've tried CNN, but I find they put too many ads on.

I've also found some American local radios, but they are bad quality, or the accent to strong for me.

What would YOU advise me to listen then?

[Yankee]

Hi Can

For American English, try NPR (National Public Radio), especially the 'All Things Considered' program:
http://www.npr.org/
.

[Can]

Thanks a lot! I'll try it!

[Yankee]

You're welcome, Can.

In case you're interested, there are also three ESL books (with audio CDs) based on NPR broadcasts:

Consider the Issues
Face the Issues
Raise the Issues

I believe the author of all three is Carol Numrich.

[Can]

hmmm... I actually try to spend as less money as possible on learning materials, that's why I was looking for online radios.

I have just listen to NPR and it seems to be excellent

But one good point is that it has a stand-alone listening feature for their live 24H-program.

So I can input it directly in real-player instead of always having to go on the website each time I want to listen to it, contrary to CNN... (BBC has it )

[Can]

Hey, does anyone know any other stand-alone radio???

[Lost_Soul]

http://www.radio-locator.com/

[Princess]

Do you know the English program named TTC( The teathing company)?

You can download the free mp3 in emule. I think the contents and the speeds are quite suitable for IBT

[TOEFLnIELTSLisa]

Try the podcasts at the national public radio site NPR.org (sidebar under services, select topic from list > start with technology and work your way through. "I'd skip gardening"
or podcasts at sciam.com
discovermagazine.com has a couple, but only on medical topics. Their site is better for vocab training (just ignore the scientific terms and look at adjectives, verbs and nouns that look familiar e.g. "The galaxy is pregnant with dark energy" TOEFL loves such unusual uses of words you thought you knew.
CNN.com used to be better, but is becoming increasingly harder to use for this purpose. Always check that you get native speakers.

Good luck,
Lisa