Foreign language audio books have proven to be an ideal vehicle for learning or polishing up one’s knowledge of another language. Audio books are the perfect choice to learn new languages during your free time. Audio books will teach you not just how to read but how to say the words correctly.
A good audio language program will make learning a second language more enjoyable, more effortless and more satisfying. With the help of an mp3 player, CD or car radio you can be learning a foreign language while walking, travelling, driving, and relaxing- the list is endless!
So, how to learn a language through audio book?
Audio books provide the listener with a comprehensive, self instructional, step-by-step guide on how to learn a new language. The phrases are kept short and simple so that by listening two or three times, you can pick up the essentials of new language.
Audio books are based on tried and tested techniques and principles that have proved to enable rapid and successful language learning.
Audio books have unique audio method allows the listener to learn pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
In addition these, audio books make the effort to learn a language more enjoyable. Most modern programs emphasize the give and take of everyday language, with less of an emphasis on individual vocabulary words and other rigid language structures.
You can also found that the variety of different audio book programs allows learners to choose the type of speaking voice and emphasis that they are most comfortable with. We can now learn a language like Russian, Chinese in a shorter time and in a less painful manner than we did years ago.
One of the favorite things about using an audio book course to learn a language is the ability to practice phrases and conversations at practically any time. When I say that, most people agree that their car is a really good place for them to learn a language.
Who says that learning a language can’t be fun?
Whether you’re a businessperson, student, or traveler, whether you’re brushing up on a forgotten language or just interested in learning a new one, audio book teaches you the skills you need at the pace you want.
There are lot of amazing resource that lists hundreds of titles from leading authors and experts. You not only get your downloads fasters but also get superior, DVD-Quality recording for an enjoyable playback.
By: Paul Proctor
Posts Tagged ‘Pronunciation’
Advanced Language Learning – Language Exposure, Multiple Sources, Keeping Your Language Alive
November 24th, 2009Once you set up learning a new language, you’ll have to pass through several steps, such as building a basic vocabulary, learning the new grammar and so forth. Most language enthusiasts and polyglots agree that this is the hardest part of the language learning process, since you have nothing to build your knowledge upon. The following tips and tricks assume that you’ve already passed these hard times and have moderate control over your new language and want to improve it or improve certain parts of it such as pronunciation, spelling and so on.
Get Constant Language Exposure
This is extremely important in the latter stages of your language learning process. Try exposing yourself to the new language as much as possible. For example, if you’re on a journey to learn Spanish, watch Spanish TV channels, listen to Spanish radio, Spanish music, read Spanish newspapers, comics, books and so on. Obviously, other languages might be harder to get exposure to than Spanish, but try and get everything you can.
If you have a supportive friend or family member that already knows the language you’re trying to learn, ask him if you could (seriously) talk in that language during your normal conversations. It might sound silly at first, but it’s very effective and after the “LOL we’re talking a foreign language in our own house” comedy passes away, you’ll be left with some good practice.
Language exposure isn’t just a means to test yourself. It’s also an incredible exercise for your pronunciation and vocabulary. It will also be easier for you to make yourself understood and at the same time, understand what the others are talking to you. If you can, try visiting the (a) country where the language you’re trying to learn is the native language. Even a 1 week stay there will do wonders to your foreign language skills. Being surrounding by nothing other than that language, forcing you to handle yourself using it is an intense exercise that will prove enormously helpful.
Learn and Practice Using Various Sources
I really don’t like the idea of learning a language from a single book course, online lesson bundle and so forth. I think if you want to cover up the entire complexity of the language you’re trying to learn, than you need to do so from several sources and through various methods. This will also add up some diversity to your language learning process and take the boredom and frustration away (boredom and frustration are two of the main reasons people quit in the middle of learning a new language). Here are a couple of methods that you can use to improve your learning process:
- Free language lessons online – The Internet is a wonderful place for language enthusiasts and polyglots. Although language learning sites were on the web early on, it’s only recently that they have become so efficient, with newer web browsers allowing interactivity.
- Playing educational games – These games are always fun, regardless of your age. However, they mostly work in the earlier stages of your language lessons.
- Flashcards – One of the best ways to improve vocabulary and memorize words is through the use of flashcards. If you can buy them that’s great, but if you can spare some time, try making them yourself.
- Translations – Translated texts (that can be compared to the original of course) can prove to be very useful, because you can see how grammar rules differ from your native language to the ones of the language you’re learning at the moment. They can also clear up some vocabulary issues, since you’ll see how words are being used figurately. But don’t rely on translations alone, since they can be misleading sometimes, since there are certain structures or even words that can’t be translated accurately, so the author of the translation probably replaced them with something having the same meaning.
Don’t let Your Foreign Language Rot
Even if you manage to become fluent in the foreign language you were studying, you’ll need to keep practicing if you want to be able to use it in the future. Otherwise, it will simply fade away and after a while you’ll have trouble remembering basic structures, you’ll lose your hard-earned pronunciation skills and so forth.
That’s about it folks, if you follow these tips and if you have a little ambition, then that language should be grasped faster than you can say “I’m a polyglot”. Well not really, it will still take a while to become fluent in any new language (at least 4 to 6 months), but it will still be faster than those year long courses that you take and end up not knowing how to say hello in the foreign language you’ve studied.
By: Michael Gabrikow
Visualization- an Essential Method for Teaching Modern Languages
September 20th, 2009In order to make a language class successful one has to try to match its content with various methods aiming to make studying exciting and engaging. The usage of modern technological equipment ought to be taken in consideration when preparing teaching materials for a language course.
Needless to say, one has to always keep in mind the following objectives when teaching a language class:
1. to develop the intellectual potential of the student
2. to raise his/her interest towards the culture and the civilization of the country whose language one teaches
3. to teach the student to decrypt the texts written in a foreign language
4. to provide the student with procedures, means and methods that would make him/her be able to communicate orally and in writing with a native speaker
The last objective can be reached by using CDs, where voices of native speakers are recorded. It can be a vocabulary class, when a bingo game is used to have the student match the picture with the name pronounced by the virtual teacher; a grammar exercise where the sentence is built as a puzzle; or a movie with subtitles that help the student at the beginning level to better understand the language pronunciation. This visualization tool helps students with both visual and non-visual minds.
When teaching a language course using CDs, the teacher can easily find out that the students are more prone to join debates and discussions at the end of each activity. They try to recall what they just studied and often attempt to mimic the models observed on the CDs with other peers. In the process they often try to use the same pronunciation and imitate the voice. As a result, one can notice that individual and collective thinking become more developed. Consequently, one third of the work is done by the student itself. The student becomes not only a recipient of information, but also an active member of the group. He or she becomes his or her own co-participant of the studying process.
Here, one should also talk about the so-called programmed instruction, which is performed independently by the student, under the teacher’s supervision. The work in video and audio laboratories is a perfect example. The student progresses in his/her own rhythm. He/she establishes his/her own objectives and reaches them in his/her own way. In case there are not enough computers, team work is useful. Moreover, when this is a movie that needs to be discussed at the end, the group or several small groups can be made up to achieve the objectives. In these cases the teacher is required to have a rich imagination and flexibility.
An article of the Romanian magazine “Computer World” argues that the benefits of computerized education are real: “We don’t have to ask ourselves if the teaching process gets better by means of computerized language methods utilization,” it claims. “It is obvious that the methods of teaching are unconquerable: interactivity, operational precision, capacity to offer multiple and dynamic representations of different phenomenon. Also, there is a constant interaction with every student.”
G. de Landshere, a famous methodology expert, has been always pointing out that the educational process needs to be always intense and has to be inspired from the cognitive psychology. He has been striking the importance of suppression of the routine methods by the modern techniques. Speaking of this, it is opportune to affirm that the CDs ensure the active construction of the knowledge, significant contexts for learning, promoting reflection, absolving the student from routine activities, stimulating his intellectual activity.
Modern pedagogy has to research the experience of the European and American professionals and try to understand why the new methods of teaching modern languages using the software had such a great success there. The foreign languages professors struggle to study the educational system by formulating new problems that might appear at the social horizon and they consider this as their important mission to experimentally verify and prepare solutions for the moment when society reaches that horizon.
What are the chances that this method has the same success here? The chances can be estimated only if the method is implemented in the core-curriculum of the specific classes. The method has been used in a case study with groups of medical student form the University of Medicine and Pharmacy. The outcome was plausible. Students got more interested in the class, they shared their experience with the colleague from the other faculties, and they asked me to keep using this method in the next modules. The use of informatics tools and the use of the visualization in the modern languages courses is the horizon of today’s historical moment.
There is an idea, entirely accepted by the specialists, that the educational soft is classified accordingly to the specific pedagogical function to have in the instruction process: exercise, interactive presentation of knowledge, simulation of models and phenomenon, testing the abilities, relaxation during the educational process due to game activities.
The studies made on the international lever lead to different important conclusions:
the memorization time is reduced, the material is so interesting that the memorization happens in a shorter delay of time
the attitude towards computer based education gets positively changed
computer based education is more efficient as complementary instruction rather than an alternative form
strategies base on the computer education are good enough for the elementary level of education as well as for the advanced one
Specialized shops exhibit a variety of CDs that make us study various conversational topics, new vocabulary, and dialogues, watch movies, and play games. And all this for one purpose: to easier and better speak a foreign language. The final result would be a diversification of the intellectual abilities, gathering of a new reserve of words. The software presents images, songs, game animation, business discussions, shopping and restaurant conversation situations, as well as maps of the country whose language is to be studied. The maps are also sounded. Pushing the image of a city the soft makes you listen to the pronunciation of that very topographic name. These multimedia CDs are a treasure and a condition sine qua non of a more productive and efficient language learning.
To sum up, I would like to point out that we have to keep insisting on the inclusion of this modern method in the curricula and always struggle against the unjustified fear towards new communication technologies in order not to limit or stop the creative spirit of the professor and the student.
Viorica Demici, MA American Studies
By: Viorica Demici
