you can listen to the episode WITH SUBTITLES on youtube. Just head over to my video and switch on the English subtitle.
- Show notes (Transcript)
Welcome language enthusiast! Learn from and with me, the English learner, Daniel Goodson.
Thanks for tuning in.
Well, along with using an ebook as a learning resource l also use the appertaining audiobook – especially if I want to focus on pronunciation. That is a very effective way you can use on your own without the help of any other person.
That way it is easy to learn and remember pronunciation.
At librivox.com you get a vast amount of such audio books for free.
My tip: Read along while listening to the audio and your speaking skills will get to the next level.
I’m too well aware that it is pretty easy to get intimidated by the length of an audio book. I saw this when I listened to a novel with over 1000 pages (Well it mostly depends on the language level you currently have).
To be more precise: Listening to Stephen King’s it. That audio book really scares the hell out of you but at the same time, you will be thrilled about the story. Well at least if you are the horror type.
And in general, when it comes to train pronunciation – you should listen to little chunks from different audio books of different genre. This is important: different genre. That allows you to learn different types of vocabulary.
At any rate – learning from audio books is not everyone’s cup of tea. I know that. You must be very dedicated if you really want to get the best out of it and still having fun. Besides that, depending on the narrator’s voice and depending on many other factors, things could get rather boring after a while. Or you can’t deal with the amount of difficult words and finally, you won’t be able to enjoy anymore.
To be honest there are plenty of things which can mess up your motivation.
That’s why, instead of using a traditional audiobook as a learning resource, you may consider using an audio book in the format of an audio drama.
Let me talk about the term audio drama first:
Wikipedia mentions different terms when it comes to radio dramas, such as:
audio drama,
audio play,
radio play,
radio theater or
audio theater
and in fact,
It gets pretty easier in German.
You can just say “Hörspiel”.
And with no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story.
Depending on the quality it is actually as you were listening to a movie with a blindfold.
Thanks to advances in digital recording and Internet distribution, radio drama was experiencing a revival in 2010.
INRO ALIEN
This was the very first minutes of a fantastic audio play.
Inspired by this audio drama named alien – out of the shadows by Tim Lebbon, which I’m currently listening to, I want to make audio drama tempting for you. I mean as a learning resource.
By the way, if you are a German learner I absolutely recommend you to purchase the audio drama called “das Kind”: a misery psycho thriller kind of. The author’s name is Sebastian Fizek and it was released back in 2012. That Audiobook blew me away – completely!Even if I was not a thriller type. It gets a 9 out of 10 by me. Thumbs up!
I did a research on that and in the meantime, this audio drama is even available in English
If you have already listened to it please give me your opinion about it.
But now let’s dive into the question how you can learn from an audio drama:
While listening to an audio drama try to imitate the voice of the actors. Focus on intonation and pronunciation. There are more tense and drama compared with a traditional audio book. That is good for your language training. It will support you to get a grasp of the spoken language.
Furthermore, you can then down interesting parts of a speech (This can be by hand. That is perfect). Then use this as a learning material.
Speak out loud short chunks or complete sentences.
By the way, If you want to learn a bit more about pronunciation or intonation training, you may head back to the episode of my fluent podcast called listen and repeat. I will give you a wrap up of this episode. In a nutshell, it all comes down to listening carefully, listening very focused then repeating little chunks and listening again, preferably by recording yourself with a device. This could be your mobile phone. The sound quality these days is just amazing and is enough for your training
Or just start out your own podcast! boooom! And here you are. I mean – compare my very first episode which is called “my speaking journey finally begins” with this one and see if there is a difference? I produced my speaking journey finally begins 12 weeks ago.
It goes without saying you should train on a regular basis to get your results.
I promise you by doing so you will definitely get better in your target language. It’s just a matter of time.
And bear in mind – sometimes less is more. Focus on a few things but master them very well. Actually, that is something I struggle a lot. I want to do too many things at the time.
Just a quick note before I finish up here. Don’t forget to have fun while learning! Everything else is secondary.
I’m your host Daniel Goodson, have a good one!
Outro ALIEN
Head over to audible.com or librivox.com to get your audio book.
Wikipedia.org