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The Problems with Listening-Reading L-R | ||
Tags: Listening-Reading (L-R) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Toriyama Newbie United States Joined 5731 days ago 12 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 64 20 July 2013 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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After having spent a lot of time experimenting with Listening-Reading, I came to the conclusion that it is a truly brilliant method and by far the best I have ever used, but there are two major problems with it.
The first problem is that it is incredibly difficult to find suitable material. You may be able to find a parallel text, but no audio, or you may be able to find audio, but no parallel text. For books with no translation and no audio book, it is hopeless. During my time here I noticed that the community has come together several times to attempt solving this problem. The first major initiative was bilingual-texts.com which aggregated parallel texts. It eventually shut down because of cost issues. The next was omilia.org which was a brilliant idea and more in line with the solution I was trying to devise. They produced and manufactured their own parallel texts with audio books and sold them through amazon. They don't seem to be active any more, but I can see where they ran into problems (manufacturing and distribution can kill a company). The second problem is that the initial learning curve can be daunting, especially for languages unlike your own. In the beginning, it was always difficult to stay synchronized between the audio and text. I would often need to repeat sections of the book and found it tedious to constantly seek the audio file to the right place. I knew there had to be a way to automate these processes with software. Why isn't there a way to highlight the text as it is being spoken? Why can't I repeat a paragraph with a single click? I have wanted to solve these particular problems for years. I finally decided to just do it and started a project with the assistance of the brilliant people at Purdue University. The goal is to provide a complete solution to both of the problems mentioned above. We are starting with a few languages, but plan to include languages on demand. Where there is no translation available, we will provide our own. All of the audio books are recorded by our voice actors with the intent of being used specifically for listening-reading. The software we have created highlights the text as it is spoken and allows you to repeat any paragraph by clicking on it. We'll be ready to start beta testing the program by next month and I would love for all of you to try it out and make suggestions for improvements. If you are interested in getting involved in the project, message me for more information. You can sign up here for access to the beta test. Sincerely, Toriyama Edit: Added a link to sign up for the beta test. Edit: Added a link to an explanation of the L-R method. (thanks erenko) Edited by Toriyama on 21 July 2013 at 9:45pm 19 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 64 20 July 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sounds good. What languages are you planning to include for your first version?
By the way, it seems a lot like the original version of Transparent Language. Too bad they went off their core principle and into the direction of things like video, games, "survival language", etc, in order to make it more marketable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Toriyama Newbie United States Joined 5731 days ago 12 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 64 20 July 2013 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I updated my original post with a link to sign up for updates on the project.
Jeffers, It is up to the team. Whichever books are finished first will constitute the first languages available. We will gradually include more languages based on the needs of our users. Feel free to suggest specific books and languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4396 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 4 of 64 21 July 2013 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sounds great! Do you have any more information about the team at Purdue that you're working with?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5020 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 64 21 July 2013 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Listening-reading is an open method. One can adapt it to the material available. More you use it less you need the whole package of text, translation and audio. By the way people use to think of it as 2 texts and one audio but 2 audio with one text do it too. The full package is more important at an early stage but there are a few solutions available and for free to start with. book2.de offer 60 languages. euronews podcast the same short reportages in all 14 languages To mention only 2.
Why do you need to listen and read at the same time. Listen to one section a few times then read it then listen again, reread it - no need to synchronize. If you want to synchronize one way is to build your own audio flash cards and review them in Anki. Another way is to build subtitles files from your texts.
Audacity allows everyone to cut a long audio file into smaller parts - short files make it easy to reach the right place. It is very easy to loop-listen with Audacity, VLC and other softwares.
I doubt you will have native voice actors for many languages but it would be a great news for languages with less material available if you have some actors for those languages. Do you mean they will read at a lower pace in the hope to help learners ? I prefer they read at natural speed and I would slow my listening when it fit my learning.
Karaoke and subtitles already do that. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 64 21 July 2013 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes, this might be possible. But not simple. A lot of what Toriyama is proposing has been done before. As I mentioned, in the early days of Transparent Language it was all about having text that you could click on for translation of both the individual word and the whole sentence. Then they added audio, so it became a perfect accompanyment to learning languages. Initially they were adding texts like short stories, but then trying to be more commercial they began to focus on things other programs did better. Yes, it's been done before, but if they do it well it will be a useful addition to our language learning arsenal. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Toriyama Newbie United States Joined 5731 days ago 12 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 64 21 July 2013 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Michel1020,
You make some interesting points. Your view of listening-reading must be different from mine. To me, listening-reading is done using real literature, and must be performed simultaneously for maximum effect. The content and length matters, because to stay interested it must be enjoyable. This is the reason why literature is the ideal material for this method. Like I mentioned earlier, there are tedious parts of the L-R method that include manual adjustment of audio tracks that I want to automate because they are a waste of precious time that can be used learning instead of fiddling around with audacity. This is the same reason flash cards are not an option -- because they are tedious and boring. The goal is enjoyment above all else that will lead to real understanding. You will be surprised at how large the international community is here at Purdue. The reach of the school is quite incredible. I don't anticipate any problems finding native voice actors for most languages. Because the audio is likely the most important part of the method, there will be no compromise on quality. They speak at a native speed and make sure to pronounce words clearly. We automate all of the tedious aspects of the method so that the learner can focus on enjoying the content and acquiring their target language. I know there are a lot of people who want to try the method but are intimidated by how difficult it is in the beginning. The tools we created will allow them to do something they would otherwise have dismissed as being too difficult. jhaberstro, The team is always growing and includes native voice actors, linguists, language instructors, language learners, software developers, and people that just want to help in any way they can. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| umiak Groupie Poland Joined 4515 days ago 51 posts - 77 votes Speaks: Polish* | Message 8 of 64 21 July 2013 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Hello, Toriyama,
My experience with R-L method, though shorter than yours (only around a year), is similar -- I find it the best for me to learn a language. It's very useful and enjoyable. However, I agree there are some issues that take your precious time away. I chuckled while reading your initial post, as I had been doing the relistening to some paragraphs in a pretty longish book and was being nagged by the constant need to find them in the recording. The tedious process of finding the right paragraph in the audio file in order to relisten to it is time-consuming. The only way, I've come up with to make it less so is writing the name of the audio file and exact time of the beginning of a paragraph I want to relisten at its beginning. You can then drag the marker on the time bar of your audio player to the exact moment when your paragraph starts. It would be nice, however, to be able to, for instance, make some sort of bookmarks for the beginning and end of the paragraph and then to listen to it with one click (and loop it if need be). As for the materials, I've been somehow able to find the necessary ones so far; though, sometimes I had to give one text up, because something was lacking, but I've been lucky enough to find other sources. This may be problematic with some languages, though. The greater problem for me is, for instance, alligning the text, especially if it is a long book (e.g. Ulysses by J. Joyce, Don Quijote de la Mancha by M. de Cervantes, etc.). Sometimes you have to digitalise a book, which is also time-consuming. I think that highlighting the text while listening to it is especially important while learning a language that uses a different script (e.g. for a Polish native learning Chinese -- I'd love to start one day). I was wondering the other day if it was at all feasible -- I don't know a squat about Chinese, so how would I know when each sign is said? The idea you're writing about looks interesting. Could you please write something more on how the software in question works? I mean the requirements for the files. Does it work with vairous types of audio and text files? Is it possible for someone from beyond Purdue University to access the sources you're talking about? Edited for mistakes. Edited by umiak on 21 July 2013 at 9:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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