The Unsung Hero in Language Learning
What do you think is the most revolutionary development in language
learning in the last 50 years?
In my opinion, and I've been learning for languages for more than 50
years, I would say it's the MP3 file, and I'm gonna explain why.
There are other things that have revolutionized language learning:
the internet, online dictionaries uh, and so on and so on.
But to me, the big thing is the MP3 file.
And I remember when I was a student in France, I was paid by a language
school in Paris to run their language lab for English 30 people sitting
and listening to the same content on these open reel tape recorders.
I remember sitting in Hong Kong in my room listening to an open reel tape recorder.
I couldn't take it anywhere.
Today on my cell phone I have an enormous library, you know, a language
lab of content in so many different languages, all consisting of MP3 files.
I can share MP3 files, I can send them to my friends, I can download
them from YouTube, from podcasts.
They're everywhere.
And what's more, the technology is continuing to evolve so that now
I'm able to get an MP3 file, import the audio to LingQ and automatically
create a transcript and a lesson.
What's more, if I use our audio import system, the transcript is
timestamped, which has a tremendous advantages advantage for us at LingQ.
It does at least two things: one, if I study the lesson in sentence
view, then I have the natural audio timestamped to the sentence, which
is very handy, especially if you are at an early stage in the language.
Later on, I can listen to the audio and read and follow along, or listen,
you know, away from the computer.
But initially to get started to get some traction, it's very helpful to have
the audio for that sentence accurately timestamped to match the sentence.
Another thing I can do on LingQ is use our kara...
what we call karaoke view so that I can turn the audio on and the text
will scroll down following the audio.
If you've never used LingQ before, a LingQ lesson allows you to read through and
listen and also watch, in this case, to a piece of content in English, translating
the words and phrases that you don't know, saving them to your own personal
database and then learning English from content you're actually interested in.
That's also very helpful because it introduces another way of studying the
text and you know, every time we're learning anything for that matter,
particularly languages, if we can cover the same material in different ways, you
know, sentence view or full text, or vocab review, or karaoke view, or listening away
from the lesson, all of this is covering the same material in different ways.
It introduces a certain degree of variety.
Because we know that, you know, block learning is not as effective as when
we have what's often, often called interleaving, where we are covering the
same subject and inter interspersing other things with it and so forth.
So again, the MP3 file makes sentence view possible, makes karaoke view
possible, makes it possible to take it away and listen elsewhere.
It.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful thing.
I am constantly on the lookout for good MP3 resources for different languages.
Obviously, podcasts potentially are a good source, but very often the podcast won't
let you download the MP3 file because they want to get you to go to their podcast
and build up their, you know, viewer base.
Uh, we're dealing with this at LingQ so that we are still able
to access those audio files and create lessons where we essentially
refer people back to the podcast.
But some podcasts do let you take the MP3 file.
And, uh, I've been doing, for example, MTV Lebanon, which is a TV station
in Lebanon for Levantine Arabic.
Some of their podcasts let you download the MP3 file or convert
it to an MP3 file and some don't.
I don't know why I even signed up 'cause I had downloaded some of their MP3 files.
It's kinda interesting.
So I pay them their $35 a year.
I don't wanna feel as if I'm taking advantage of them.
However, when you sign up, they ask you for your age and they have it in different
age classes, and the maximum age is 75.
So they have a group 70 to 75.
They got nothing for anyone over 75, so I kind of snuck in there as the 70
to 75 age group, paid my 25 bucks for the year, whatever the number was, and
now I feel better about downloading their MP3 files for import into LingQ.
But, If people know of good MP3 file resources for different languages,
even if there's no transcript, if there is a transcript, so much the better.
But if there's no transcript, these can be very valuable for LingQ members
and perhaps for other learners, uh, because it's possible then to get through
Whisper AI accurate timestamping, which is very helpful in language learning.
So there you have it.
The MP3 revolution.
Let me know what you think and let me know if you have any
suggestions as to, uh, resources where people can download MP3 files.
Thanks for listening.
Bye.
