Slow? Hard? Who Is It For? Words and Their Stories, Measured Over Five Episodes

'Words and Their Stories' is a programme from VOA Learning English. Each episode takes up one set of American English expressions, and works through that expression with its meaning, its origins, and plenty of example sentences. The speaker is Anna Matteo alone, who is also the writer. There are no ads, and the audio is read-aloud only.

Its construction is quite different from the three BBC programmes measured so far, so I measured it with the same yardstick. The subject is the five most recent episodes (released between 20 February and 13 March 2025). Let me note this up front: new releases of this programme stopped in March 2025.

The Measured Numbers: Episodes of 3 Minutes 33 Seconds, Speed Averaging 106 WPM

Start with length. The files run from 3 minutes 20 seconds to 5 minutes 14 seconds, with only music attached at the front and back — no ads and no announcements for other programmes. The main programme averaged 3 minutes 33 seconds. The main programme runs to 375 words on average.

Dividing by the word count, the speed comes to an average of 106 words per minute (102 to 117 words, depending on the episode). In earlier measurements, the slowest BBC programme, 'Learning English from the News', averaged 150, '6 Minute English' 162, and 'The English We Speak' 167. This programme is clearly slower than any of those measured so far.

Dividing by speaking time alone still gives an average of 131 words, a reading style that takes longer pauses between sentences. The numbers came out just as the wording in VOA's description puts it: 'about one-third slower than ordinary English'.

In principle one person speaks. In only one of the five episodes, a rebroadcast of an older production, the reading was by two people.

The vocabulary was checked against the NGSL list of frequent words (2,801 words). Average coverage was 85% for the top 1,000 words, 90% for the top 2,000 words, and 93% for the list as a whole. Among the four programmes measured, its overall coverage is the highest, and the share of words outside the list is the lowest, at an average of 7%.

The words outside the list also have a fairly fixed cast. At the centre is the very expression that episode teaches. In the mushroom episode, the mushroom family appeared 16 times, and in the dial episode, the dial family appeared 8 times. In other words, most of the words you do not know are words the programme itself supplies with meanings and example sentences.

That the text published on the official site is the reading script itself is another feature. Its agreement with the transcripts averaged 0.972 across the four episodes that could be checked. You can verify, in writing exactly as it is, the places you could not follow by listening.

How It Differs from the Three BBC Programmes

Set alongside BBC Learning English's the measured article on 6 Minute English, the measured article on The English We Speak, and the measured article on Learning English from the News, the first thing that differs is speed. Against averages of 150, 162, and 167, its 106 is a clear step slower. On vocabulary, against coverage by the 2,000 most frequent words of 85%, 87%, and 90%, its 90% puts it on the easier side, alongside The English We Speak.

The sound is made differently, too. Against the BBC's British English with two hosts and inserted voices, this is one person reading aloud in American English. Against the BBC, where ads take up about a third of the delivery, this has no ads.

The content: against one expression, one topic, and one news item with three vocabulary items, this side follows the spread and origins of a single word or expression. The biggest difference is updating: the BBC continues to release new episodes every week, but this programme stopped in March 2025.

Who It Suits, and Who It Does Not

It suits people who are in the middle of consolidating the 2,000 most frequent words and who stall on speed with BBC programmes. Put into test numbers, around TOEIC 400 to 550, or Eiken Pre-2 to Grade 2, can be thought of as a guide for the entry point.

Because it reaches 90% with the 2,000 most frequent words, you will stall almost only at the expression that episode teaches. At about three and a half minutes per episode with no ads, it is also light enough to keep working through the archive one episode every morning. It also suits people who want to know not just the meaning of an expression but the origin of a word, like greenhorn.

It does not suit, first, people who want to get used to the speed of natural conversation. This programme's slowness is something designed for learning, and real conversation moves at nearly twice this speed.

Nor does it suit people who want to build a learning habit by following a new episode every week. New releases have stopped since March 2025. The same goes for people who want to get used to conversational exchanges and the sound of multiple speakers: this programme's audio is one person reading aloud, and live conversation with restarts and overlaps does not appear.

Using the 3 Minutes 33 Seconds

Listening starts with listening through without looking at text. Infer from the example sentences what that episode's expression points to.

Next, on each episode's page on the official site, check the full text and the vocabulary explanation 'Words in This Story' (episode page). Because the text is the script itself, you can find exactly as written the sentences you could not catch.

Finally, pick just two or three example sentences using that episode's expression, cut them into short segments, and listen repeatedly. For an episode of about three and a half minutes, all of this takes about ten minutes. The archive has many episodes, so rather than working back from the newest side, it lasts better to pick episodes on familiar themes (food, colors, parts of the body, and so on).

For the chunk-and-repeat stage, Rehear is another option. It is a listening practice app made by the team behind this magazine, and with it you can cut just the example sentences you could not catch into short segments and listen to them again and again. You can also open this episode in Rehear.

On other services, you can also listen on Apple Podcasts.

One thing to be careful about is, first, that new releases have stopped. The newest episode was released on 13 March 2025, and no later episodes can be confirmed even on the official delivery. Episodes that touch on current affairs will grow dated, and it cannot be used as a programme whose continuation you wait for.

The other is that episodes from the older production are mixed in. Among these five episodes too, one was a rebroadcast of an older production, about five minutes long, with two readers. The further back you go in the archive, the more you hit episodes with different opening phrases and formats. Please read the numbers as averages for the five most recent episodes.

In Summary

Whether it suits you, you can mostly tell by listening through once. If you can follow the meanings of the example sentences and stall only at the new expressions, you can start from this programme.

Use this time's numbers as the guide: an average speed of 106, and 90% with the 2,000 most frequent words. For people who stall on speed with BBC programmes, this one is the best entry point of all. No new episodes will come out, but the archive has plenty of episodes. Pick up an expression and its origin one episode a day, and once you can follow it easily, moving up next to a programme on the BBC side is the usage that fits.