Podcast Speed Recommendations for Learning English and Personal Development?
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Hey everyone! I’m learning English and focusing on personal development, so I listen to a lot of podcasts in English. Since it’s not my first language, I’m wondering what podcast listening speed you’d recommend for someone like me? I’m trying to balance understanding the content while also improving my language skills. If anyone knows of any tools that can help with this, I’d love to hear your suggestions! Thanks in advance!
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Yeah, I finally found the solution after some research! Turns out, a playback speed of 1.25x to 1.5x works best. It’s easy enough to understand, but still gives you a bit of a challenge. In my case, I usually watch about 1 to 1.5 hours of podcasts on different topics, but it started feeling boring. So, I decided to increase the playback speed. After that, I saved some time. For example, if I watch a 1-hour podcast at 1.25x speed, it completes in 48 minutes, saving me 12 minutes. I used https://playbackspeedcalculator.net/ to figure it out. If you’re just starting, try slowing it down first and then gradually increasing the speed as you get more comfortable. It really helps, trust me!
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Thanks for sharing your learning experience @jamesalery1! Appreciate it.
For anyone who needs a guide to change playback speed on Pocket Casts, it’s here: https://support.pocketcasts.com/knowledge-base/playback-effects/#htoc-playback-speed
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<strong style=”font-size: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;”>Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. When I was grinding English through podcasts on self-improvement stuff, the speed thing was tricky at first. I started at 1.0x because anything faster and I’d miss half the idioms and nuances.
After a few months though, bumping it to 1.3x felt perfect — it kept me focused without losing the meaning, and I actually finished more episodes. Funny thing is, the real boost for me wasn’t just the speed, it was when I started connecting the ideas to my own personality. Like, listening to stuff about motivation and habits made way more sense once I saw which inner “parts” of me were driving my behavior.
That led me down a rabbit hole with Jung’s archetypes. If you’re into personal development anyway, this Jung archetypes test free gave me some solid “aha” moments about why certain advice clicks with me and some doesn’t. Might be worth checking after a good podcast session.
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