I’m a beginner in learning English, and I’m looking for some great audiobooks to help me improve my language skills and build my confidence. I’m new to this, so I need some simple recommendations.
Can you share some audiobooks that are good for beginners like me? I would love to hear suggestions for audiobooks that teach English, and maybe some that also help with building confidence when speaking.
Also, I’m not a native English speaker, so I’m a little confused about what speed would be best for listening. Should I start with a slower pace or a faster one? Any tips on that would be really helpful. Right now, I am using this audiobook speed calculator for finding speed for my audiobooks.
If you know any good tools or resources for learning English, that would be great too. I appreciate all the help!
Thank you!
What level is your English? What is written in your post suggests a high command of the language, but you speak as though that’s not the case.
What books have you read, or tried to read? What audio content have you listened to and found approachable? Can you give an example of something that is too hard still?
It will be hard to give useful recommendations without knowing this unfortunately.
English is not my mother language, I did my best to write this so forum members can understand it. You can say intermediate level… I can read, listen speak and understand English, but sometimes I can’t understand difficult words… hope you will understand.
i have watched content like videos podcasts etc on YouTube and fb. also I have read many hard copy books.
Okay, go with recommendations even if they are hard. I will check them out, maybe I can read/listen to them.
What types of genres do you prefer? Are you specifically looking for educational topics?
Unless the books you read are older, there’s a good chance there’s an audiobook for books you’ve already read, so you could definitely go down that path as well. That way you’re already familiar with the source material, so if it’s on the harder side you’ve already pre-studied it in a way.
Hmm. With my experience trying to work on my Japanese listening skills and seeing others post about theirs, I’d say that either a normal pace if you’re confident or a slower one if you’re not both work. Faster paces would generally be more for a challenge where you want to get through the book quickly and are confident in understanding the majority of what you’re listening to.
I can definitely give some suggestions, but I’m afraid difficulty may be all over the place; I have no concept of relative difficulty as I’m a native speaker. (I also don’t generally listen to audiobooks in English, so some of my recommendations will be more a combination of hearsay in terms of good voice acting and experience in terms of me having read but not listened to the book.)
One book that comes to mind in terms of learning to speak well is The Gift of the Gab (let me know if there’s a better site I can link to for you for English audiobooks, if there’s a preferred provider you have); it’s both written by and narrated by British English speakers, and while it does use jargon to discuss the topic at hand, I’ve found it to be approachable and written for the general reader rather than an academic one. I don’t know that it’ll give you specific practice on speaking well, but it should give a good general foundation of what’s considered eloquent speech in English.
I think maybe you misunderstood what I was asking for. Can you give examples of books (ex: Harry Potter, The Giver, Hunger Games) or podcasts (names of the podcasts) you find to be easy, or that you find to be hard?
Unfortunately ‘intermediate’ is a wide range.
Or for another option, listen to a sample of these videos and let me know how difficult they are?
(I also don’t generally listen to audiobooks in English, so some of my recommendations will be more a combination of hearsay in terms of good voice acting and experience in terms of me having read but not listened to the book.)