Great Courses Plus

It goes without saying that if you want to improve your English listening comprehension, you need to listen to spoken English. But what’s the best way to do this, especially if you don’t live in an English-speaking country?

In this digital age, English learners have plenty of options. My students often mention Voice of America podcasts, BBC News, Ted Talks, and YouTube channels. These are all good, but there are drawbacks. Newscasts are helpful, but maybe you don’t want to hear about world events all the time (this can be pretty depressing these days!). Ted Talks are great, but they’re one-time deals. Sometimes you want to delve deeper into a subject that interests you. And, let’s face it, with respect to YouTube, you usually get what you pay for. YouTube channels are free (although not available in some countries), but they generally lack good production values and the speakers usually aren’t professionals. In my opinion, they can often be pretty boring.

What to listen to, then? Well, if you’re a high intermediate or advanced English student, I highly recommend Great Courses Plus.

Great Courses Plus is a service offered by The Teaching Company, which has been around a number of years. I taught my three children at home from kindergarten through high school, and we used Teaching Company lectures as CDs or DVDs a lot! The Teaching Company contracts with some of the most highly rated, distinguished, and professionally recognized academic professionals in the world. These professors prepare a series of classes (usually 12 – 24) on a particular subject and deliver them in lectures that generally last 30 minutes. The lectures are supported with a fantastic variety of graphics, maps, and photos that really helps illustrate the concepts.

In the past, you had to buy one series of lectures at a time, and they were pretty pricey. But with Great Courses Plus, you can stream ANY and ALL lectures whenever you want. If you start a lecture series and don’t like it, you can just stop and switch to another. You can listen to multiple lecture series at one time. And you can listen on your mobile phone, tablet, computer, or TV (provided you’re able to stream).

Why is Great Courses Plus a great option? First of all, the professors are just GOOD. Really good. Amazingly good. Second, you can choose from an exceptionally wide range of topics … science, history, psychology, philosophy, self-improvement, and even “lighter,” less academic subjects such as cooking, photography, and chess. Third, each course comes with a guidebook that makes it possible for you to preview course material beforehand (which helps to support your listening comprehension during the lecture) and review what you’ve heard afterwards. Some even have study questions at the end.

Yes, you have to pay for Great Courses Plus. The first month is free, so you don’t risk anything by trying it out … just be sure to cancel before the end of your trial month. After that, it’s about $20 a month. In my opinion, that’s a bargain for almost any English student. Many online teachers charge more than that for a single hour of lessons. And citizens of almost any country in the world can subscribe to Great Courses Plus.

Finally, as I said in the beginning, these lectures are most appropriate for high intermediate or advanced students. They are not targeted to non-native speakers. But then, once you get to a certain level of fluency, you will WANT to challenge yourself with authentic, “real” English material. My suggestion would be to sign up for a free trial month and try the lectures yourself. Put lots of different courses on your “Watchlist” and try them out. Find a subject that engages you and a lecturer who attracts you. Preview the content of a particular lecture using the guidebook. Then begin the lecture. You don’t need to listen for a whole 30 minutes. Great Courses Plus automatically bookmarks where you are in the lecture. Even if you switch to a different device, you can pick up the lecture where you left off. You have 30 days to figure out whether this is a service worth paying for.

How to make Great Courses Plus more accessible

Some of my intermediate students enjoy these lectures, but find them a little bit difficult to follow (remember, these lectures are NOT designed for non-native English speakers). Here are a couple of ways to make the lecturers easier to understand.

• Activate closed-captioning on your lecture. When you start the lecture, there will be a bar at the bottom with the rewind, play, and fast-forward functions. There is also a “CC” … if you touch that, you’ll activate closed-captioning (or subtitles), which will display the lecturer’s words at the bottom of the screen.
• Download the course guidebook. To do this, you need to go to the Great Courses website and find the course you’re listening to. Then click on “Guidebook” (circled in red below). The guidebook will download as a PDF … you can also transfer it to your phone or tablet. With the guidebook, you can familiarize yourself with the content of the lecture before you listen, and you can use it to follow along while you’re listening. The guidebook is an outline, not a transcript, so it doesn’t give you the lecture word-for-word. But it can help support your comprehension if you have difficulty following the lecturer, either throughout the lecture or just from time to time.

And please comment here, on my blog, if you like Great Courses Plus as much as I do. Let me know what you’re listening to! Maybe we can share our favorites.