Podcasts for improving your English

Oh Yeah Sarah
2 min readSep 18, 2020

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The English learner of the 2020s is incredibly lucky. There is so much free English audio content available online. When I was studying French at school in the late 90s, our teacher told us we needed to listen to French outside the lessons — my options were to find a French radio station or rent a VHS tape of a French film. Of course, I almost never did it.

Today you can listen to any type of English, on any type of topic, whenever you want. Here is my list of recommendations for podcasts to listen to — both podcasts for native speakers and for English learners.

Also make sure you read my post about the best way to improve your English by listening to podcasts.

Podcasts for native speakers

All of these podcasts cover different topics in each episode.

  • British accent

The Modern Mann

The Big Idea

Tech Tent (topic: technology)

Word of Mouth (topic: language)

  • American accent

Telling Everybody Everything

Other People’s Lives

Radio Lab

Podcasts for English learners

Here are some podcasts aimed at intermediate/advanced English learners. Most of them also have transcripts available.

  • British accent

Luke’s English Podcast

Level Up English

  • American accent

English with Dane

Rachel’s English

Real Life English

Of course, there are so many podcasts to choose from. This is just a small selection of ones that I personally enjoy or think are useful.

You might also like:

Useful apps for advanced English learners

The most exciting English language practice app for 2023

Which is the best automated grammar checker? I tested and compared 3

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Photo credit: lifeforstock

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Oh Yeah Sarah

Lover of languages and language learning. Strangely fascinated with the Middle East. I develop digital products for language learning - www.biglanguages.com