SELF-ASSESSENT OF PODCASTING SKILLS

In the end of this term, we are going to have a listening exam. It is not new for us, because of having it in A-level exam in school. However, what is important if you want to get a good mark is practice. We have this opportunity online, in http://martinmcmorrow.podomatic.com/ I inspected two topics.
The first was about deriving and the second one was about naivety. I was very happy because of various tasks on this webpage.

THE RATE OF SPEAKING
I think speakers are very slow in these podcasts. In our class listening practice tasks are more difficult than here. Speakers say words slowly and clearly.

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU LISTENED TO SELECTED PODCASTS?
I have listened to podcasts only once. As I have mentioned before, speakers talk slowly and clearly, so it can be difficult to understand only then you do not know a meaning of the word.

WHICH EXERCISES ARE USEFUL FOR IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS?
First of all, if you want to improve your listening skills you have to listen. That kind of practice everybody can get in film watching and listening to music. It is also very good, to do some exercises during the listening. Open-ended questions, multiple choice, and True/False exercises help to improve and understand the real meaning of the listening.

HOW DO YOU EVALUATE YOUR ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND AUTHENTIC SPEECH?
Very important factor in this question is different types of understanding authentic speech. First of all, communication to somebody whose native language is English is really different from listening to some podcast. Talking and understanding person in a real conversation is much easier than listening to some tap. However, I believe that my listening abilities are quite good but there is a lot of space where I should improve my skills.

DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO PASS A LISTENING EXAM PAPER IF YOU HAD TO TAKE AN EXAM TODAY?
In my opinion I would pass a listening exam paper if I had to take it today. The result would not be brilliant but I would be quite satisfied with it.

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS?
As I have mentioned before, communication to other people, film watching, listening to music are everyday ways to improve our listening skills. Very important to me is to expand my vocabulary because of misunderstanding I do the biggest amount of an errors.

In conclusion, only a lot of various practice can bring us a perfect results.