In the UK we like to talk about our ‘national treasures’. These are things that we value very much. These can be things, places, institutions, even people, that a lot of people like a lot. Radio 4 is an example of a national treasure – a lot of people listen to this speech based radio station. For example its early morning news programme has 7 million listeners – which is a lot in a country with a population of 60 million! Radio 4 is an excellent place to practice your English listening skills and even more so since it started its LISTENING PROJECT. The plan is to record hundreds of short conversations around the UK. People can record their own conversations and contribute them to the project. They are only a few minutes long and you can listen to a wide variety of these conversations on different topics. Teachers should choose some of these to play in class! Students should be improving their listening skills by choosing some and listening to them a few times. Then the next day choose a different one on a different topic. The Listening Project on Radio 4 can be found here!