Decent German talk radio stations

Hello

I´m living between Kobleny and Mainz. I am trying to find a German radio station hat is equivalent to, say, Talk Sport or Radio 4, so that I can get used to the German language. I listen to SWR3 a lot but the talking is often too fast for me to pick up any words and the most of the time they play music. Apart from SWR2 (which is a bit too heavy for me) can anyone think of any decent talk stations?

Thanks
MarkB

Hey there,

why don't you give this a go... Deutsche Welle . I haven't tried this one yet myself but I find the best way to learn from listening to a language, is to test what you picked up...by doing exercises. So if they provide video or radio clips with exercises, then that sounds perfect to me. Someone else recommended this site to me. Give it a go. ZDF.

It's better not to stick to just one region (like Rheinland-Pfalz for eg. ) as then might you only hear accents from that region. So if you can get exposure to a range of accents, that's even better for your ear when learning a language.

Viel Glueck!

turas

Hi,

have you ever tried listen to podcasts as an alternative to radio?

There are a lot of different free podcast, also for language learning at several levels. And - in my eyes it's a big advantage - you can repeat each podcast as often as you like.

For example, try iTunes and go to iTunes Store, then click on Podcasts and search for German learning podcasts (or other languages). You will see, you will find everything!

In my case, I use Coffeebreak Spanish from Radio Lingua to learn some Spanish. But it's also available for learning German.

Good luck!

Greetings,
Nemi

Would you advise someone learning English not to listen to BBC Radio 4 as it was too heavy or hard?
No. That's the language as it is spoken, albeit quite formal there.
And the same applies to the German equivilents, i think you should sumberge yourself into them.
Though you might find local community run stations use a less formal language.

I'd recommend you try out the podcast from Annik Rubens - she does one called Slow German and her regular one, Schlaflos in Muenchen. Another good one is "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten" from Deutsche Welle:

www.slowgerman.com
http://www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com/
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,2142,8030,00.html

You don't necessarily have to have an Ipod or Mp3 player - you can download these from the sites or get a free copy of Itunes and listen on your laptop if need be.

something else that might be good to listen to.

Die Drei ??? is a series of about 85 radio dramas based on an american detective series. theyre absolutely ridiculous, im not sure if theyre meant seriously or not, but in any case its pretty easy to listen to and you should be able to pick up whats going on.

a friend of mine cannot go to sleep without listening to one of the episodes. i understand.