Self-Study Ideas · 06. January 2017

Did you know that the UK has more accents than any other country (for its area)? Even within a large city, local people can often recognise which neighbourhood someone comes from by their accent. People’s accents are often different according to their social class or level of education, as well as the region they are from. Most of the British accents heard in films and on television are RP (received pronunciation) which is the accent of middle-class, well-educated people from the south of...

Self-Study Ideas · 04. August 2016

"Five Minutes With ..." is a series of short interviews created by the BBC with a huge range of interesting people. Each interview is exactly five minutes long, and usually involves lots of short questions and answers. Click here to see the list of interviews on the BBC website.

Self-Study Ideas · 12. June 2016

TED is an organisation that encourages people to share their ideas in short talks. There's a huge library of videos these talks on the TED website, and you can choose talks according to topic area, language, and length. They're a great way to improve your listening - and therefore your speaking, too. Below are some suggestions of ways to use TED talks in self-study. You don't have to do all the exercises for each talk - just choose one to start with.