Language students - audio and video resources

Try to familiarise yourself with audio and video recordings by using and making notes on material that is not part of the course. This is valuable preparation for when you are faced with an unprepared recorded extract and only a limited listening time, perhaps in an exam.

To develop your language skills, there are a range of activities you could engage with.

• Watch a video or DVD of a film, first in your own language and then the target language.
• Watch foreign television if you have cable or satellite TV. You can also listen to audio channels via satellite: the reception is much better than radio.
• Tune in to a foreign radio station for the weather forecast, the news, feature programmes, plays, phone-ins and adverts.

• Listen to audio songs, stories or books, for example while travelling, jogging, or walking.
• Visit websites: television and radio stations often offer streamed audio and video broadcasts, games and discussion boards. You might even be able to make note of opinions that interest you, perhaps make your own contribution and, importantly, make notes of useful expressions you see or hear.
• Use adverts as a source. They are short, often fun, sometimes played with a well-known tune, and repeated so that you can eventually learn by heart the sounds and the words.

Tryr to record any programme or films you find, so you can replay them when you wish. You could hide the English subtitles, then watch again with the subtitles visible to check your understanding - or turn off the sound and read the subtitles out loud.

Resist reading transcripts for audio material before listening to it. Alternatively, read the transcript as you listen, then replay with your eyes shut to help you associate the written and spoken form.

Practicalities

Organise your work space so you have these items to hand as you watch or listen.

• the course material
• a notebook, pen and highlighters
• a language dictionary: bilingual or monolingual in the target language
• transcripts: as you watch video, you will see counter numbers in the top right-hand corner of the screen to help you find the sequences you want to go back to

Use the transcripts while you are watching and listening, and make notes of sounds, the way words are pronounced and the intonation.

For oral gap-filling exercises using audio (where there is a pause for you to speak) have either a twin-decked tape machine ready, or a play-back player and a separate tape-recorder, so that you can record and make notes of your own performance.

Listen actively

Have a particular purpose in mind. You could note pairs of sounds that need to be distinguished, or are pronounced the same but with different spelling and meaning, and how they are pronounced in the target language. Examples are

• in English - allowed / aloud
• in French - temps / tant.

Compare

Make notes of the way the vocabulary is presented in the target language compared with your own, and especially how it is pronounced and emphasised, as well as what tones are used. Note the idiomatic constructions that are unique to a language, where literal translation is no longer an option, but has an ‘equivalence’ of meaning in your own language.   

Grammar and new vocabulary

Note these down as they crop up, using colour coding for aspects such as

• different genders
• regular and irregular verbs
• tenses
• adverbs
• link words.