A good place to practise your listening skills is the From Our Own Correspondent (FOOC) news report from the BBC website. It is an interesting radio show with short news stories from around the world and usually it only has one person speaking for each report, so it can be easier to follow. Every week FOOC have a new mp3 available from their Podcast Site 0r RSS Feed and is something that you can be listening to every week.

1. Find and read the description about the MP3 from the FOOC Podcast Page and download it.
2. Use the MP3 description to find one of the stories in written form on the FOOC hompage.
3. Before you listen or read, you can search the BBC Website or Google News to find some background reading material.
4. After you’ve read some other stories – listen to the mp3 without the article, try to understand what is said.
5. Then play it a second time and read the article at the same time.

If you want to find out more about From Our Own Correspondent you can check the wikipedia entry. Or find more about the presenters:

• Kate Adie: Wikipedia Entry, BBC Profile.
• Alan Johnstone: Wikipedia Entry, BBC Profile, BBC News About.