About
Hi, I'm Leslie — your teacher and guide to all things English.
I've been on your side of the headphones. EnglishLand is the show I wished existed back when I was the one straining to catch every third word.
As a student of Spanish, I benefitted greatly from the many Spanish podcasts available — and decided to pay it forward by creating my own.
For years my Spanish lived in a notebook. I knew the conjugations. I could handle a worksheet. Then someone would speak to me at normal speed and the whole thing evaporated. What finally changed things wasn't another textbook. It was hours of listening to people talk about things I actually cared about, at a pace I could just barely keep up with.
Spanish learners have shelves of that material. I wanted to pay it forward by creating a unique English podcast to help English learners the same way the Spanish podcasts helped me.
Every episode is built around one idea: give you English you can understand, on subjects worth understanding, until spoken English stops feeling like a wall and starts feeling like a conversation you're already part of.
I know exactly what it feels like to catch eight words out of ten and hope the ninth wasn't the important one. That's who I record for.
- For
- Intermediate & advanced
- Focus
- Comprehensible input
- Subject
- US life & culture
- Cost
- Free, always
The approach
Four rules I record by.
Comprehensible input, not homework
You learn a language by understanding what you hear, not by memorizing rules about it. I aim for the spot where you follow most of an episode comfortably and pick up the rest from context.
Topics worth listening to twice
Nobody replays a dialogue about ordering coffee. So the subjects are real ones: United States holidays and the strange traditions attached to them, regional differences, work culture, small talk that actually means something.
A pace you can follow
Not the slowed-down robot voice of a textbook CD, and not the machine-gun delivery of a show made for native speakers. Somewhere in between, where you can actually live.
Vocabulary in context
Words show up inside a story, which is what makes them stick. You'll catch yourself using phrases you never sat down and studied, just because you heard them somewhere that mattered.
Follow the show
Find the show on your app of choice
Same episodes on every platform. Pick the app that's already on your phone and hit follow. That's the whole setup.
Say hello
Tell me what you want to hear next.
Some of the best episodes started as listener questions. If something about English or the US has been confusing you for a while, send it over. That's an episode waiting to happen.