(Photo: SBS)

SBS’s Learn English podcast is celebrating its first anniversary. It produces Australian English content to help newly arrived migrants gain confidence to use English in everyday conversation.

The podcast covers topics from calling in sick to work to cheering for a footy team – bringing simple and useful English to common situations.

The Learn English podcast is published fortnightly and has generated over 340,000 downloads in its first year, across 16 languages including Arabic, Cantonese and Mandarin.

SBS Director of Audio Language and Content David Hua said despite the array of English learning offerings, SBS Learn English is distinct in its belief that there is no perfect English.

“A lot of new migrants aim to have perfect or a ‘native’ English speaking level and there is no such thing – it’s a myth,” he said.

“All Australians have accents and we’re all different, which is why we use a number of different accents in our content – we even use recordings from current learners to make our content real and inviting.”

A free service, SBS Learn English will continue to add to its offering in 2023 with short form wildlife videos, enunciation guides with SBS newsreader Janice Peterson and more.