Self - assessment on online listening to podcasts

I have listened to these podcasts : http://a.media.abcnews.com/podcasts/071025exclusiva_eng.mp3;



http://a.media.abcnews.com/podcasts/071104tw_pre.mp3;




I have listened two quite difficult for me podcasts. I had to listen it three times because from the first time it was even difficult to understand the main point of speech.



When i listened the podcasts the third time i understood everything quite well. But still the biggest problem is that the topic wasn't easy for me and i think my vocabulary is poor. It was very important that the rate of speech wasn't too fast because when the speaker speaks very fast i really can't understand the meaning. That's why sometimes listening for me can be easy and sometimes i don't understand it at all.




Also it was very important to concentrate on authentic American speech because they often speak faster than British people. So, as i said before vocabularly is very important. Than you can understand much more than i did.



The topics i have chosen to listen was interesting for me and i tried to understand as more as it is possible.




In conclusion, i can say that i am not very good at listening and i think i am not well prepared form my listening paper exam. I need more practise in order to concentrate on topic.