Eve Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6672 days ago 67 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, Spanish
| Message 273 of 489 13 August 2007 at 3:50pm | IP Logged |
My favorite language related activity right now is watching Spanish movies with subtitles, preferably in Spanish. But whenever I get DVD's from Netflix they only have options for English subtitles. Strange. Telenovelas usually have closed captions in Spanish so I have one that I watch every nite. And with DVR it's very convenient. I noticed that my listening skills improved a lot and sometimes I don't even need to read the captions to understand the language. So, in my opinion it's a very useful tool for language learner.
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Calro2 Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6737 days ago 26 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, French
| Message 274 of 489 16 August 2007 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
Out of curiosity, have any of you used your own recorded voice in the target language while re-reading an article, book, or whatever? I'm asking because it is sometimes quite hard to find audiobooks, and even then, you can sometimes run into problems with those. E.g., abridged versions, overly theatrical voices (I've had the exact same problems others did with Harry Potter in French), etc. And it's not always possible to get a native speaker to help you out.
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Wings Senior Member Ireland n/a Joined 6351 days ago 130 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 275 of 489 17 August 2007 at 5:38am | IP Logged |
I was wondering whether I could get somebody to read for me, and of course I could read for them.
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6356 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 276 of 489 17 August 2007 at 5:43am | IP Logged |
Wings wrote:
I was wondering whether I could get somebody to read for me, and of course I could read for them. |
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If we could set up a system such as this on this site, I would be willing to participate. Each person could offer a native reading of a requested text in exchange for a native reading of a requested text of comparable length.
Cooperative reading/recording programs could also be arranged, where multiple readers could divide a larger work into chapters, in order to finish in considerably less time.
In addition, it would likely work best if finished recordings were made available in one or more repositories, much like the FSI language site.
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Wings Senior Member Ireland n/a Joined 6351 days ago 130 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 277 of 489 17 August 2007 at 6:31am | IP Logged |
Exactly, but I’m not sure about having book audio availably on the net……..copy write may be a problem, but there should be no problem posting newspaper articles with audio. You could have sports, entertainment, ect…………. They are short and they can be done in many different accents.
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FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6356 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 278 of 489 17 August 2007 at 7:19am | IP Logged |
Good point; newspaper articles would be shorter, and easily read, recorded, and uploaded within a day. For people wishing to try books, there are plenty already within the public domain (published before 1923) that can be used. Wikisource and Project Gutenberg both contain collections of PD books in many languages.
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Wings Senior Member Ireland n/a Joined 6351 days ago 130 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 279 of 489 17 August 2007 at 8:19am | IP Logged |
Note: if you have a friend who speaks your target language they can read for you; anything you want as long as it’s done privately. Maybe we can set up a link offering our services as English speakers, and in turn attract native speakers of our target language to do the same.
I’m not sure I like the idea of pre 1923 books – too old. News paper and magazine articles are short and up to date. Current news is at lot more interesting and easier to talk about in the real world, compared to Huckleberry Finn. Newspapers and magazines would be full of colloquial terms……ect.
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reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6444 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 280 of 489 17 August 2007 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
audiolang wrote:
It's a shame that a lot of people don't like to read,you'll find in books a lot more richer and fulfilling vocabulary than in Star Trek.
Not that I don't find the DVD movies method good but there is one big difficulty,finding the movie in my target language ,how will I do that?
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I think a wide range of material is necessary. Books (not just fiction)/tv/radio/movies/documentaries/audiobooks etc. TV has one advantage of conveniently drilling the absolute "must" grammar and vocabulary from the start in a wide variety of thematic fields with the additional visual aid. Since you're in Europe you only need to point a dish towards Eutelsat/Astra. Considering you're studying English, finding movies etc. is hardly a feat.
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