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Listening to audio books can be a lot of fun, as well as a great way to learn. These days, I listen to spoken word recordings on my smart phone. While I clean up the kitchen after dinner, I like to listen to someone reading to me. For English language learners, listening to a good speaker reading is one of the best ways to ingrain the natural sound of the language, to recognize the flow of sounds. Many people watch movies and TV in English to improve their fluency, but most media do not offer good models for learners to imitate. Media does not try to use correct English at all. On the contrary, a lot of dialogue is intentionally incorrect for dramatic effect. Unless you always want a dramatic effect, better not to speak like people in the movies or on TV.
A much better method is listening to recorded books (formerly, books on tape/DVD and now mp3). Often, the person reading the book is a professional actor who has received years of special training in proper speaking techniques. Even when books are read by volunteers, almost all the readers provide good-to-excellent models for pronunciation, speed, rhythm, tone, and clarity. In every case, the book’s publisher has checked the grammar and vocabulary very carefully so you can be sure that all the phrasing and word order is correct, standard English, whether American or UK style.
The first sound recording, by inventor Thomas Edison, was the popular nursery rhyme (child's poem), “Mary had a little lamb.” Music immediately dominated the recording industry, but the spoken word survived as well. The original audio books were produced by Recording for the Blind. Now called Learning Ally, the organization continues its mission to spread knowledge through the spoken word. Years ago, volunteers read books out loud to be recorded on vinyl disks. Speaking all the words in a book takes much longer than reading them silently: some books required many disks. The original vinyl disks could store only a few minutes of speech. Then the disk was turned over to play the other side. Spoken word phonograph records originally rotated at 16-2/3 rpm (revolutions per minute).
In addition to books on records, spoken word recordings include famous speeches, poetry, drama, and language instruction. My mother, a high school French teacher, used records to help students practice their accents. Maybe that is why I have a positive feeling about recorded speech. In the 1950s, the new “long playing” (LP) vinyl records took over. My first albums were LPs that could hold a half hour of high fidelity (hi-fi) music on each side. In many cases, each side could have 6 or 8 songs, or "cuts" (the soft vinyl disk had spiral grooves cut into it), with slight periods of silence between them. Because they were cheaper, I also bought 45s (45 rpm) that held only one song per side. The better of the two sides was called the “A side.” Often, the “B sides” were the artist’s less popular recordings. The 45s had a big hole in the middle for reasons I do not know. All vinyl records melted and warped if you left them in the sun or other warm place.
Tape recorders were also fairly popular and could hold a lot more material. They were reel-to0reel tape recorders with thin magnetic tape. Tapes were hard to change, store, and copy. Phonograph players were not so complex so they were more popular, I think. Growing up, my father had a nice hi-fi record player and my mother had a tape recorder. She also used this in her teaching. Pretty soon 8 track tapes, then cassette tapes, started to seriously compete with vinyl disks. Both technologies became obsolete immediately after CDs became widely available. Ironically, with the Internet’s mp3 downloads and streaming audio, even the CD is largely obsolete. 
The smart phone app Audiobooks provides more content than I will ever have time to listen to. Many of the books are free because they are in the public domain. In other words, the copyright has expired and no royalties are collected for the author or publisher. A huge number of books in English first published before 1960 are available for free. On the Internet, you can download these audio books for free from Librivox.org. This organization recruits volunteers to read books on all sorts of topics, both fiction and non-fiction. Because of the different readers, the quality varies a little, but most are excellent examples of spoken English. Most of the people reading the books have an American accent, though some have non-native accents that are quite intelligible. Listening to English recorded books, lectures, or other spoken words is a great way to tune your ear. You will be better able to imitate the optimum timing and phrasing of English that you are seeking.
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