Germany's Economy

I had listened one podcast:
“Germany's Economy” at BBC World Service, broadcast on 26 Jun 2009
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p003jb5l/Business_Daily_Germanys_Economy/
I had an aim to self-assess what skills do I have to listening tasks, especially how I can understand the authentic speech. 
Well, I have to admit that I find some difficulties in listening tasks. It was hard for me to listen to people’s accents and there were some words those I didn’t know. But it was suitable "to catch" the words. So it wasn’t very difficult to understand the whole conversation.
Now I want to say some words about the theme of this podcast. It’s about the consequences of the economic crisis too. Business Daily has come to the ancient port city of Hamburg in Germany to look at the effects of the global economic downturn on this trading nation. So there was a decline of about 20% but today they can see some positive signs. Germany is connected with the world trade and China is one of their biggest trading partners. That’s why Germany has problems while China has serious problems. But the plant producing chocolate and marzipan doesn’t think about recession. It extends the whole production. All in all the old dependence on exports should now be reduced.

German banks

I had listened one podcast:

"German banks" at BBC World Service, broadcast on 2 Jul 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p003jd5j/Business_Daily_German_banks/

I had an aim to self-assess what skills do I have to listening tasks, especially how I can understand the authentic speech. 
Well, I have to admit that I still find some difficulties in listening tasks. First of all I want to say that the hardest situation is when there are many annoying voices and sounds on the background because they has drawn my attention away from the general conversation. The rate of podcast presenter's speech wasn't too fast as well as the rate of other speeches. It was suitable "to catch" the words. So it wasn’t difficult to understand the meaning of the whole conversation and it was also very interesting and useful to listen to people’s accents. I needed to listen to podcast not once, but I had listened for two times not the whole conversation. 
Now I want to say some words about the theme of this podcast. It’s about the consequences of the economic crisis. It tells us that nobody is separated from the global financial system. And diverse German banks choose different behavior in order to survive. All banks have to learn to serve the region and the customers.
This podcast helped me to realize how well I am ready at this moment to pass my English exam. So I can say that I have to learn new words and work on my vocabulary.