LearnEnglish Stories and Poems Podcasts are for learners at Intermediate to Advanced level and cover stories and poems by writers as famous as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tagore or Yeats, as well as stories by our resident writer, Chris Rose, and both stories and poems sent to us by our users. For this trial period, we will publish a new podcast every month.

LearnEnglish Stories and Poems Podcasts are a way for you to practise your English language listening skills. You can listen on your computer, or download to your mp3 player. Each article is accompanied by an activity/activities that you can do on your computer while you listen, or print out and do when you want. They are free, and if you subscribe we will send them to you every month.

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Content to go live on 10 March

Three jokes
Have you heard the one about the chicken and the frog? How about the one about the firing squad? And the one about the parrot who didn't want to talk?

URL of mp3 file + length and duration (for RSS feed):
http://podcasts.britishcouncil.org/podcasts/three-jokes-story.mp3
length = 2115014
duration = 00:02:53
URL of three jokes story podcast page (for RSS feed):
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts-stories-three-jokes

Content to go live on 17 March

The Bright Dresses
by Robert Seatter
This poem is about teaching English and conveys powerful emotions through observation of impersonal details which in a different context would be trivial or even banal.

URL of mp3 file + length and duration (for RSS feed):
http://podcasts.britishcouncil.org/podcasts/bright-dresses-poem_01.mp3
length = 1267959
duration = 00:01:44
URL of bright dresses poem podcast page (for RSS feed):
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts-poems-bright-dresses

Content to go live on 24 March

The Dinosaur in Jake's Garage
by Chris Rose
When Jake finds a dinosaur in his garage, nobody believes him. But when he finally brings it out to show them, the result is not what he expected either ...

URL of mp3 file + length and duration (for RSS feed):
http://podcasts.britishcouncil.org/podcasts/dinosaur-story.mp3
length = 8957617
duration = 00:09:18
URL of jake's dinosaur story podcast page (for RSS feed):
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts-stories-jakes-dinosaur

Content to go live on 31 March

The White Room
by Irene Soriano Flórez
This lovely short poem was written by a learner of English, a student at the British Institute for Young Learners in Madrid.

URL of mp3 file + length and duration (for RSS feed):
http://podcasts.britishcouncil.org/podcasts/white-room-poem.mp3
length = 703335
duration = 00:00:57
URL of white room poem podcast page (for RSS feed):
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts-poems-white-room