subject: Utilizing Audiobooks To Learn A Foreign Language [print this page] Utilizing Audiobooks To Learn A Foreign Language
Like most college kids growing up in the UK within the 1970's I attended French classes at college - 2 lessons a week, 40 weeks a year, for 3 many years. In the course of all this time, I don't actually know what I learned! I know that I did not take the subject particularly seriously, but after a total of 240 lessons I need to have had a greater command from the language.
Just how poor my command of French was, was illustrated in a family journey to France in 1978. As an eighteen year-old, I joined my parents on a automobile trip to France. The ferry trip was uneventful and we hopped into our automobile at Calais.
My dad, being a typical pom, assumed everyone drives on the left hand side with the road - and inside of 5 minutes we had a head-on collision! Fortunately no one was hurt. But, as expected the other diver was pretty angry, hurling abuses to us in French.
As someone who had taken French for three a long time, my parents looked at me to speak to this chap in French and calm him down. To my embarrassment all I could say was "The sky is blue". Not extremely helpful!
Some thirty many years later, I decided to give French an additional go. This time, I basically wanted to speak the language and made a commitment to learn French inside three months.
As a seasoned user of audio books, I found and then bought the "Teach Your self French" series of audio books. I listened to these books even though walking the dog each and every morning and driving to and from work each day.
Initially I didn't pay that significantly attention and it all seemed too hard. Then, it began to get much easier and less complicated.
Inside of 8 weeks I became very comfortable with hearing French and could follow most of what was becoming said. Within 12 weeks, I'd say that I was practically fluent! All this from just an hour a day listening to my audiobook throughout "down" time!
I'm please to report that on my newest journey to France, I could say a lot much more than "The Sky is Blue". And no, I didn't drive on the left hand side in the road and did not have a collision!
