VOA (Voice of America)

VOA (Voice of America)

http://www.voanews.com/english/index.cfm

Today I want to recommend a website called Voice of America. The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.

I am first contacted with this website in the interpretation class. The teacher introduced me about the website with abundant news and other resources which are good materials for interpretation and English learning. And we also take download the news to interpret. I found out that I not only learned many vocabulary and phrases from the VOA news, but also I absorbed international news which can broaden my global vision.

I strongly recommend for language learners to download the VOA news and save it in your computer or iPod for listening as many time as possible to improve your listening ability. Also, you can read the scripts of the news and check the vocabulary, phrases and usage in the news by yourself. Gradually, I believe that your English ability will be improved. Also, VOA news provides the latest news for us to know what happened in the world and broaden our global vision. You can know what is going on in Europe, Asia, Africa, Mid-East and other countries with various topics.

Next I want to recommend something about language learning. There is portion in VOA which is called Learning English. The articles provides in Learning Language are special selected articles which is aimed at ESL and EFL learners. I have listened and read some articles, and I found out that the articles here are shorter and simpler than the normal VOA news. And the speaker speaks very slowly in order to let the listener feel secure and confident, increasing their interest and self-confidence in learning English. I think that VOA is concerning its audiences with care and attention.

Another related resource I want to recommend is VOA Podcast. It is also divided into two parts; one is for language learning and the other is the normal one. The Podcast here is different from the VOA news. It’s more like a talk show or a discussion. You can know more about others’ opinions and viewpoints toward an important issue, such as food crisis or election.

There are some hot issues right now and VOA news has arranged the related, important and up-to-date news of each issues. Taking examples from VOA, the hottest issue here is “The Road to the 2008 Us Elections”; VOA news provides abundant news and analysis about US politics. And another important issue in VOA right now is “Food crisis”, advocating the news about feeding a hungry world.