If you’re looking for material to practise your listening skills, you might like to look at the BBC’s [1] Reith Lectures.

Reith was the first Director General of the BBC, and the Reith Lectures are held every year in his memory. For each year’s lectures, an expert is chosen to speak on a topical subject.

This year’s lecturer is Professor Jeffrey Sachs, an economist, who is speaking on the challenges faced by the world’s economy in the decades to come. His second lecture was given on Wednesday in Beijing, at Beida. He will give a total of 5 lectures.

You can also listen to past lectures. I have been listening to the very interesting lectures on the philosophy of trust given in 2002 by Onora O’neill.

Recordings of the lectures are accompanied by transcriptions, so you can follow the text while you listen, and the lecturers generally speak very clearly, so I think these lectures are ideal for practising listening.

If you do listen to some of the lectures, please leave a comment to this post to tell me what you thought of it and whether it was useful.