1000 hours marathon

ALC's training manuals have been tagged with above average prices. And for what I have seen so far in bookshops, their offerings do not impress.

I love the 1000 hours listening marathon. They sell the service for hefty price. JPY24 000. You could buy a nice iPod with plenty of memory for the same price and stuff it and your ears with free for all English podcasts. Of course, podcasts do not come with translations, word lists, definition, never endings explanations, useless exercises and the likes, but it's bette to keep their customer unaware that in order to listen 1000 hours, what you need to do first is to listen for 1000 hours. Parallel chores like reading will progressively take care of the rest with occasional lateral steps to consult dictionaries.

If you already own an MP3 player, the obvious thing to do is not to buy that expensive training set but start listening on your own. The next thing you should that the books won't give you is to look for encouragement and solace by reading and maybe participating to online forums populated with people like you doing the same thing exchange ideas and cheers. You'll save a bunch and progress more.

And as a parallel challenge, you should jump into the 1000 hours of read aloud training. Yes sir. Don't look for less, one hour a day - that's a long, tedious exercise, very physical, but you will be glad at the progress you will achieve, on your own.