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Looking for BRITISH English conversation

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menez93
Pro Member
Italy
Joined 4209 days ago

10 posts - 10 votes
Speaks: Italian*
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 Message 1 of 8
01 November 2015 at 2:25pm | IP Logged 
I see around in the internet that there are a lot of websites with audio conversation
and dialogues but all of them with an american accent.
I live in UK so I prefer to focus on british accent because, as well as, improve my
listening I want to pick up a good accent and get rid of my Italian accent (which
sounds quite silly).

So...do you know if such resources, websites and so on exist in a british accent?
I haven't found anything yet...

Something like Englishclass101, where you have a different level of difficulty
or something like Assimil, which I love..So...sort of dialogues like these two along
with transcript.
My level, concerning the listening skill, I would say is C1-C2. Just today I attempted
a listening test for the CPE and I did actually really well.
So if the resource is challenging as well it would be great.
I'm trying with films but it's still quite difficult to watch them without subtitles.

And please don't suggest me to read novels in English because I tried and I find them
not very useful if you want to improve your vocabulary while listening. The words,
most of the time are used in writing, a different style, in which I'm not really
interested right now.

I hope someone can help me. It would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance
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Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4427 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 2 of 8
01 November 2015 at 6:29pm | IP Logged 
Any British sitcom will do, or popular shows like Geordie shore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHsMF634Bo

Edited by Medulin on 01 November 2015 at 6:35pm

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4424 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 3 of 8
02 November 2015 at 1:56am | IP Logged 
menez93 wrote:
I live in UK so I prefer to focus on british accent



menez93 wrote:
My level, concerning the listening skill, I would say is C1-C2.


At C1 and above I would have thought that most TV programmes would be quite comprehensible. You won't get a transcript, of course, but you will get
plenty of authentic British accents. The BBC news and local news should provide a wealth of useful listening material. There are plenty of US-
sourced programmes, but there are plenty of home-grown ones too.

The BBC has iplayer and many of the other channels have an equivalent, so you can find something you like and watch it again an again, skipping back
over sections you didn't quite catch the first time around. That should provide plenty of material for input. As for output, you can record and
listen to yourself (although when I tried that I found it a bit tedious) or you can ask friends for input ...

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4424 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 4 of 8
02 November 2015 at 2:03am | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
Any British sitcom will do, or popular shows like Geordie shore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHsMF634Bo


Unless you really want a very specific accent I would suggest that you steer clear of something like that. By all means
use it to improve your listening comprehension but imitating that sort of accent isn't likely to be helpful, especially
since, until and unless you get it right, you'll sound like you are taking the mickey, or just weird. The aim (IMHO)
should be to eliminate from your speech any influences from your native language, in order make your conversations
easier to understand. Throwing in a reasonably heavy regional accent isn't the best way to do that (again IMHO).
1 person has voted this message useful



Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4427 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 5 of 8
06 November 2015 at 11:39am | IP Logged 
I beg to differ.
Solfrid Christina speaks Spanish with a heavy regional accent (Andalusian)
and I speak Portuguese with a heavy reagional accent too (Baiano).
Native regional accents are much more convincing than non-native foreign accents.
The key is: go to a certain region, spend some time there and acquire the local accent,
this especially true for Italian, since all Italians speak with a local accent
and no Italian speaks with the standard Italian - the accent RAI dubbing/voice actors use.

Edited by Medulin on 06 November 2015 at 11:42am

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4424 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 6 of 8
07 November 2015 at 8:26pm | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
The key is: go to a certain region, spend some time there and acquire the local accent,


Well if you live in Geordieland, then you'll (probably) pick up (at least some) of the local accent naturally. Regional accents (that
aren't from your local region, obviously) are generally harder for outsiders to understand than the accents they are more familiar with.
In the UK that would be the local accent and the modern-BBC accent (not the plum-in-the-mouth accents you get in broadcasts from the
1950s). Those are the ones everyone hears and is familiar with. The stronger the accent, the harder it is (generally) to understand when
it is not your local one.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a regional will often evoke an almost automatic response in the mind of the listener, and that
response will not always be positive. I'm from the West Midlands and I can tell you that that accent isn't necessarily the most helpful
one when you are in a job interview.

Finally, if your foreign accent is getting in the way of comprehension, then that's clearly something to work on. We have at least a dozen
non-native English speakers in the office who have a clearly non-native accent (Italian, Polish, various part of India etc.). All of them
are perfectly understandable and all of them make various noticeable (but not-intrusive grammatical errors). If they were to ask, then I'd
suggest sorting out those errors before worrying about eliminating an existing accent or acquiring a new one.

Here's a Romanian speaking easy-to-understand, pretty good English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iI4RF8kQ7Y .


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haziz
Bilingual Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3621 days ago

28 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian)*, English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 7 of 8
22 November 2015 at 10:07am | IP Logged 
How about listening to the BBC World Service News? While it is targeted mainly at foreign shores, I believe you can stream it from within the UK. While it is no longer exclusively the "Queens English" that you will hear from the announcers, and there are now some announcers with mild regional accents, it is mostly "proper" English that you will hear from the announcers and correspondents. Moreover, the overall quality of the programming on the World Service remains quite superb, not just the news.
1 person has voted this message useful



luhmann
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5092 days ago

156 posts - 271 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*
Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 8 of 8
27 November 2015 at 1:48am | IP Logged 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ysVimz2tw&list=PL0713159CB 6F2AFE5

Edited by luhmann on 27 November 2015 at 1:48am



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