October 7, 2005

Language Learning Software

Sometimes when learning a language you don’t want just the Listen & Repeat CDs or tapes because there are limitations to simply learning a language on audio. You can’t see the words you’re saying which limits your understanding of how spelling informs the pronunciation of the language. You can’t read or write the language at all with audio language programs and that can be important when you’re in a European city trying to read all those signs. And interactive language learning software can be a lot of fun since there’s so many entertaining tests, exercises, and games you can play to learn the language instead of just memorizing it through listening and repeating.

So in the case you’re interested in obtaining CD-ROM or online software for language learning you should check out our recently added publisher pages for Rosetta Stone and Transparent Language. You can check them out by going to:

www.learnoutloud.com/transparent
www.learnoutloud.com/rosetta

Rosetta Stone offers software in 29 languages with Level 1 & Level 2 programs that you can buy on CD-ROM or access through their monthly online subscription which costs $49.95 per month. Level 1 programs provide 92 interactive lessons and Level 2 programs include 118 lessons. Through these lessons you’ll learn through 4 methods:

1. Listening to native speakers speak their everyday language
2. Speaking the language and making sure your pronunciation is right through speech recognition that compares your voice to native speakers
3. Reading exercises that link written language to real-life objects
4. Writing exercises that check your spelling, syntax and punctuation

Transparent Language has a more extensive offering of languages with over 100 different languages to learn through their 7 product lines that are available on CD-ROM with some of their titles available as online software that you can download. These product lines are all described in detail on their publisher page but basically they are an interactive mulitmedia immersion into a foreign language teaching you how to comprehend, converse, pronounce, read, and write a language. Their Complete Suites include three of their software programs along with Linguaphone’s PDQ Talk which has 4 audio CDs and a translation dictionary.

Demos of their products are available online. For the online demo of Rosetta Stone click here. To download Transparent Language’s free trial software click here. We feature most of Rosetta Stone’s titles and Transparent Language’s titles on our site so check them out.

September 15, 2005

Best Actor Narrators

Sometimes when we listen to audio books we want to hear a familiar voice. Because the role of the narrator is to enhance and engage the listener, actors can provide the text a new life and understanding. So here are some of my favorite actors who narrate audio books:

Michael York
Ben Kingsley
Ellen Burstyn
Charlton Heston
Elliott Gould (who narrates many Raymond Chandler novels among other titles)
John Ritter
Vanessa Redgrave
Burt Reynolds
Edward Asner

To check out more actors who narrate audio books check our Celebrity Readers category.

September 12, 2005

The Ultimate Audio Cliff Notes

I recently picked up the massive collection “The World’s 100 Greatest Books” which is a collection that consists of 100 45-minute audio abridgements of the greatest books of western literature. I thought they were very well done in terms of their content and giving background to the stories within their historical and literary context. But they were of course very abridged. If you’re majoring in Literature they’d be pretty priceless because whenever you were falling behind in your reading you could likely pull out the disc for the novel you’re needing to catch up on and get a basic understanding of the plot. The summaries are almost strictly plot related with a little character and thematic analysis. The stories move at a brisk pace which you must pay close attention to. For people who want a broad knowledge of all western literature without spending a lifetime reading I consider it a good set to have.

It’s created by Sybervision whose 14 titles we recently added to our site. They also have the “The World’s 100 Greatest People” and “The World’s 50 Greatest Composers” which I’m going to try to track down. And the rest of their titles are on training yourself through Neuropsychological and Neuromuscular methods. Interesting stuff. Check it out:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/sybervision

September 11, 2005

Listen & Learn in 10 Quick Steps

Online Today publishes a series called “10 Quick Steps” which are downloadable audio programs that teach ways to do over thirty different things in just 10 Quick Steps. There’s useful ones like “10 Quick Steps to Converting VHS Tapes to DVDs“, there’s techie ones like “10 Quick Steps to Perfect Backups“, and there’s fun ones like “10 Quick Steps to Becoming a Standup Comedian”. They typically run between a half hour and an hour. Check them out:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/10quicksteps

September 7, 2005

Shakti Gawain Author Page

I just put up an author profile page for Shakti Gawain. While I was working on her biography I became rather interested in her concepts. She basically says what we want can be made manifest through mental will. In other words, the physical can affect the spiritual and become physical again. Does that make sense? Let me go over it again, there are parts of the body that we can utilize to affect parts of the mind, once the mind is stimulated, our world can be made to change. That’s some pretty provocative stuff. If anyone knows more about her work, I’d love to talk further and get some recommendations if possible.

September 7, 2005

NYC Soundwalks

I was in New York City for the first time this summer. And I downloaded a couple audio programs from the publisher Soundwalk. Basically these programs are audio walking tours of various sections of New York City that are timed to your footsteps. The narrators are NYC natives that know the ins and outs of the neighborhoods and tell you where to go.

Right now they have 13 programs for New York City, 1 for Paris, and 1 for India. New York City is perfect for these audio tours because the neighborhoods are so dense and there’s so much history and diversity in a small area.

I did the Chinatown walk and the Lower East Side Manhattan walk. Both were excellent. The Lower East Side of Manhattan is incredibly diverse as they take you into delis, into back alleys that were former speakeasies, and into a Jewish temple that is now a place for artists to jam and put up their art work. There was even an acid jazz band playing when I went in to the temple.

The second walk I took was in Chinatown narrated by a guy who was born and raised there. This tour took us off the tourist trap strip of Chinatown and down some very interesting streets. Some of the doors he requested us to enter were locked probably due to too many people doing these walking tours. This one ends in a peaceful Buddhist temple.

If you’re going to New York I definitely recommend doing a few of these. They’re about 45 minutes long. They have great music that keeps you in step. They’re not for the faint of heart as they take you into some potentially dangerous places but nothing too serious and the narrators use some dirty mouth so they might not be for kids. You can buy them as mp3s through the Soundwalk website or on Audible.com or Amazon. So load up your portable digital audio player or CD player and hit the streets with Soundwalk. It’s better and cheaper and less obtrusive than any NYC tour bus.

August 5, 2005

Unabridged Classic Literature on Audio

For those of you who love classic fiction audio books I figured I’d point out some places to find classics unabridged. Three places where you’ll find just about all the seminal classics unabridged are Recorded Books, Blackstone Audiobooks, and Books on Tape. Blackstone and Recorded Books offer their titles for rent, and all these publishers have their titles on Audible.com and iTunes available for audio download. In Audio and Tantor are two other publishers that pride themselves on unabridged editions of classic literature. Penguin Audio and NAXOS Audiobooks offer some unabridged literature in addition to many abridged works of literature.

July 17, 2005

Teaching Company Offers Audio Downloads

I love the Teaching Company. For anyone unaware they publisher and sell lecture courses from the nation’s best university professors on CD, Cassette, DVD, VHS, and now for a few select courses Audio Download! Here are the courses available for audio download:

American Civil War
American Identity
Books That Have Made History
Chamber Music of Mozart
Classical Mythology
Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition
History of Ancient Egypt
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music
Peoples and Cultures of the World
Plato’s Republic
Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations
Story of Human Language

And they appear to be adding more courses for download every day so I’ll update this list. You can download these courses as MP3s or as MPEG-4 which makes the files bookmarkable on your iPod. I bought “Peoples and Cultures of the World” in MPEG-4 format and the lectures showed up in the Audiobooks section of my iPod. My only qualm was that each lecture showed up separately there so you can bookmark each lecture individually but you have to remember which lecture you were on. I prefer what Audible.com does with the Barnes & Noble Portable Professor series where the course is listed as a whole within your Audiobooks section and then the file is broken up into chapters according to each lecture and you are able to bookmark the course as a whole. But other than that I think it’s awesome that the Teaching Company has made the leap to the digital realm with their courses and I plan to buy and download many more.

July 1, 2005

David McCullough

Are you bored with history? Does it seem like you should take it literally and deride it as the old news it actually is? Well you just haven’t listened to a David McCullough book man. I’ll bet you go through your day and you don’t really think about a president like Truman (our 33rd president), but you have almost daily reminders of how great someone like Lincoln was, or how good looking JFK was. Well, I swear to you, if you listen to Truman right away, your mind will totally change and your eyes will open to a history you never even conceived of existing. At one point, I myself wasn’t a true believer either. History was the domain of cobwebbed volumes that sit in the darkened basement of some underused library in some burned out burg. Then I listened to McCullough and I was totally hooked. It was like War & Peace, the best episode EVER of the West Wing, and a Tom Clancy novel all mixed into one big history mash-up. You want honesty? McCullough is probably the best American Historian currently living and we’re lucky he keeps on putting out audio books for us to learn from every few years. If you haven’t listened to Truman or John Adams, do yourself a favor and give them a shot. I promise you, you won’t want to watch some action-packed-history-by-way-of-Micheal Bay movie like “Thirteen Days” again after you hear one of these books. Need help finding them all? Well I’m really glad you asked because I just made a David McCullough Author Page for you to get started.

June 27, 2005

Great American Minds

I just wanted to announce the completion of a new topic page for Presidential Biography Audio Books. The presidential biography is becoming a fairly popular genre of nonfiction these days. I was just at Barnes & Noble today and I saw a massive display of David McCullough history books, most of which deal exclusively with the lives of the great presidents. I’m sure in the great pantheon of presidents, you wouldn’t have thought of John Adams first, right? Well now with the popularity of his biography, a president I can honestly say I never thought about once in my life is all over the place! I remember once when the President visited my College back when I was in Milwaukee (I was an um, parking attendent and Bush was there to talk to our alumni or whatnot). The first tangible sign of his prescence was this massive jet going over our heads. Yeah, Air Force One is bigger in person. I’ll admit, I listen to these biographies. This is as close as we get to royalty in America.

Expect a McCullough author page soon as well…