I believe that podcasts (done properly) are a great way to learn English. One of my favourite podcasts was EnglishPod and I was disappointed when it went offline a few months ago. The good news is that it's back in a revamped form. The bad news is that they're starting from scratch and the old episodes are no longer available.
Currently there are just three lessons at Elementary level on offer but 3 other channels are listed: Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate and Advanced and I imagine more lessons will be added soon.
The lessons follow the same format as before. During the course of a 10-minute podcast, the two presenters introduce a dialogue and then discuss language points and explain the vocabulary. They call this 'the lexical approach'. There's plenty of repetition of the key language items and if I were a learner of English, I'd think I'd find this an invaluable resource for improving listening and vocabulary skills.
If you sign up, you get free access to all areas of the site until February 1st 2009 and this includes transcripts, pronunciation and vocabulary exercises. No doubt there'll then be a subscription-based Premium version for users who want all the extras. For the time being, however, this is a great opportunity to try out one of the best online English-learning sites for free.
I do have a couple of quibbles, however. Firstly, it doesn't seem to be possible to subscribe to the podcasts with iTunes, which was the case before. And secondly, although they say in the introductory podcast that you'll be learning English with native speakers, the two presenters are, in fact, non-native speakers. One is Egyptian and the other from Ecuador originally. Their English is perfect but they do both have slight accents.
