any listening materials online for intermediate student?

[podstawek]

Hi,

I took 2 kyuu JLPT last weekend, and while I did a very good job at kanji and grammar, I am very disappointed with my listening performance. I did so bad that I may well fail the exam altogether because of the low score for listening part.

So, could you please recommend any good source of listening materials online (apart from japanesepod101.com, of course, to which I have just subscribed) in order to improve listening skills at (or around) 2 kyuu level? Unfortunately, I am neither able to go to Japan, nor to watch any Japanese TV, so my choices are limited to the Internet. I'd be grateful for any advices.

Thanks!

[Javizy]

Download iTunes and use the podcast search by language. There are a good few hundred Japanese ones. The news would be an obvious choice (yomiuri has a daily podcast addition). You can also learn some culture that you are likely to find anywhere else with 'Marimo's English' (don't be fooled by the name, it's all casual Japanese except for the one English word they talk about).

[podstawek]

Thank you very much Javizy,

In the meantime I actually found the same solution (i.e. downloading podcasts) by myself, but still thanks for the answer. Japanese podcasts are indeed plenty, lots of good listening-comprehenshion material.

[Belton]

This may have been mentioned somewhere here before but this site is interesting
http://www.njuku.com/

It's very nicely presented but I see the last entry is July 2006 so it might be dormant but there's enough there to keep you busy for a while.

As well as mp3 files it has transcripts and vocabulary lists. Potentially quite useful although I myself have yet to use it. There's only so many hours in the day and it looked a bit advanced.

[Javizy]

That site looks really good, and even though there's no kana, most of the compounds are covered in the vocabulary list, and advanced learners should have a kanji dictionary anyway. Judging by the comments though, it wasn't very popular, even though it seems to have covered some good topics.

[aegd]

At that level, shouldn't you start watching Japanese TV and movies? You should have a big enough vocabulary and knowledge of grammar to understand most of what's going on. You should even be able to pick up alot of new words just from context.

[markystar]

also you might want to try www.englishpod101.com.

it's for teaching english to japanese people, so the low level stuff is mostly in japanese.

[Yoshiko]

I watch ghibli anime. There are lots' of women's voices (which I find easier to understand) and the dialogue is not very difficult. I only started three months ago studying Japanese at university, so I can't make out whole (long) sentences.
Only bad thing about is that the teachers warned us not to use that informal language in class. But I think is is quite useful (and fun!).