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Viewing How you can Find Good Audio Books in a Foreign LanguageHow you can Find Good Audio Books in a Foreign Language
By Kathy Steinemann
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Audio books are a great way to listen to a foreign language spoken by native speakers. However, audio may be of poor quality, too fast, or accompanied by distracting sound effects. Here is how to ensure that you purchase only the best audio books. One of the most important prerequisites for learning a foreign language is the opportunity to hear it spoken by native speakers. Audio books are a great way to accomplish this. However, recordings may be of poor quality, too fast, accompanied by distracting sound effects, or spoken with dialect accents. This article explains how to ensure that you purchase only the best audio books. The first part of the process is to find online audio sources. Amazon.de and Amazon.fr are good places to start if you are learning German or French. Both of these sites also carry audio books in other languages. Because the navigation menus are very similar at the North American and European Amazons, you should be able to navigate the websites even if you are a beginning language student. Find some audio books that look interesting, and add them to your wish list. For example, if you are searching for audio renditions of Harry Potter books, search for: Once you have some items in your wish list, you can start looking for audio samples. If they are available, you can listen by clicking on the appropriate links with each product description: Clicking on the Sprecher (German) or Narrateur (French) link in the product description will provide you with a selection of audio books narrated by that particular person. If Amazon does not supply online audio for a title, you will need to search the net. Look through the Amazon description for the narrator's name: Sometimes the narrator will not be shown with the details, but if you enlarge the product image, you may be able to find the person's name on the cover. The narrator may be listed as an author in some descriptions. Once you have a name, try online searches such as: With a little diligence, you should be able to locate a few websites with online audio samples. To make an informed decision, you must be able to distinguish between a bad recording and a good one. If you are still too inexperienced to differentiate between accents and pronunciations, enlist the help of a friend or teacher who can discern the differences. Do some prescreening to weed out obviously bad recordings with erratic volume variations, unnecessary sound effects, and speed problems. Bookmark the sites that look good, so that you can find them quickly when your helper arrives. Once you find some narrators you like, you can order more of their productions without having to go through this elimination process. To get you started, here are the ISBN numbers for the German, French, and English audio book versions of Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban: (c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author's note below (with active links) are included. About the Author: Kathy Steinemann enjoys writing German-English short stories and poetry in parallel translation as well as foreign language articles for A-Language-Guide. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com More free articles: 1st Rate Articles - 1stRateArticles.com |
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