Lessons

Lesson Info

Listening & Reading Comprehension

I want to start with that question that we had at the end of the last segment which is how do you do generate frequency list because I totally didn't think we would ever do that on the air and that's awesome um for any of you who are completely just noting out on computerese stuff this is how this looks the website you're going to go to and I am still sort of shocked they were going here eyes lex tutor dot c a l e x t u t o r dot c a final turn on mouse pose a groups will turn off what it is on there we go well turn it on again lex tutor dot c a and you will find the complete lexical tutor and if he spelled it this way on purpose and I'm not quite sure why but he definitely did that the sky is real smart um and so you have this website that's insane I mean it has all this stuff on it is overwhelming the two things you need I can't believe we're doing this uh are the text tools and the frequency box let me show you what I basically just generated in the break the frequency list for bram...

stoker's dracula in english let me show you what it looks like uh where is it it is um in bram stoker's dracula when you take out all the most most most common thousand words the things that seem to show up are well for one van helsing but you know okay professor you'll get a lot of names in the beginning just you know professor is the name of a type of word that shows up a lot of dracula as does fear window harker I think is another name whilst madam strange I believe god downing's got to be a name quincy again a name lord spoke way oh yes so they got you know, ship horses brain like these are some of the nave the words of castle asleep tomorrow on the morrow see, like these are all these these air words that show up in france does dracula and so if you learn the top let's say coffin teeth if you learn these words first you just sort of go through and say okay, I'm gonna pre learn some of these words these top I don't know the top hundred top two hundred then as you go through dracula you'll find that the book will be a lot easier how do you get this? Well, it's a little silly uh you need the text of the book in digital format, so if you've downloaded e book of your book then you could get that okay, you need to paste that into a text file I did this with project gutenberg says I'm using a public domain book for legal reasons so I went to dracula project gutenberg I found dracula project gutenberg I downloaded in plain text and so here is the text of dracula now I'm copping all of this text to a text file I don't even need it's honestly not that important that I get all of it I just need some expert because if it's these air frequency that frequent words it's like they're gonna be frequent it's not like oh no I missed the last paragraph who cares? It doesn't matter if you're just looking for some of the words that he used very often I'm gonna paste this into a text file and I need that text file and so in my case I've opened up text at it I'm going to go a little faster because it's so off topic and if if you are able to follow this I mean if you want to do this you should be able to follow this because this is such a nerdy thing it's awesome I mean I love you guys are asking this question but all right I'm saving this to my desktop going to say this is dracula original now I could make a frequency list out of this and I would do that by just going teo I'm going to this uh lex tutor dot see a I'm going to frequency I'm going to the complete lister store the big gold thing the complete lister and I'm gonna this is for a tech you can paste text into here and you khun get a frequency list from there but it's too small I'm trying to get the whole book somebody is input method b and I'm gonna get dracula original and so I put in dracula original here oops already did that and I'm going to submit the file I believe I'm going for and just sort of check all and check all I don't know just check all the boxes I'm not like there's so many things that this website does that I'm not exactly sure what it does it must be a text file it wasn't expired dracula original submit okay so this is analyzing my text I'm going to give me a thing the problem is that when this fits out a text is going to be really, really common words it's going to be usually basically the top thousand top two thousand words in english plus a few of these little dracula words like teeth and coffin kind of hidden in there it's not gonna be the list we were just looking at and so that's one of the problems is that we use the most frequent word so frequently that you can't actually see the specialized words the specialized dracula words in this kind of text if it ever finishes doing its thing and so what you need to actually do is take out the most frequent words and so to do that there it is like the first common words and think yeah, of course, but and so china trying to find something like coffin in here is actually very difficult. So the first actual step is that you need to go to the tech stripper sounds more exciting than it is uh you're going over the text tools you're going to the proper stripper, you're going to the complete stripper and ur pasting the entire text of dracula into the text river, and then you are getting a frequency list of the language that you're doing in this case I've gotten a frequency list from english is now the top words from tv apparently I'm taking the top thousand words of english or whatever top nine hundred ninety who cares top thousand going back into my tech stripper, putting those words there in the remove words box I also get rid of all the punctuation and all the extra spaces and then I will remove all the words and what you get is this you get this text that has been just just destroyed, you get dracula that is now there's no longer director you could see how money this these air with the top thousand words were moving you can see that this used to be a whole bunch of sentences and I was just begin added kisses, lay eyelashes, agony I think this is sort of poetry of dracula like this is dracula without all of the abstract everything in it just cool that this can exist. Um, and then you want to copy this new text? This text that is no has been stripped of all of its grammar of all of its abstract vocabulary and it's just the, like, the essence of dracula as it is different from english, you're copying that you're putting that in the new text file, you're saving that as dracula essence, and then you're gonna get a frequency list from the dracula since, uh, we're going to lex tutor dot c a we're going to the frequency list, we're going to the complete lister, and in this case, we're going to in shoot, insert the essence of dracula, um into everything's checked, and then you will find that list that we talked about in the beginning, that one that has coffin and all that fun stuff. If you use the list of the top two thousand words, you have amore interesting list, it would it would probably not have words like, actually, this is pretty good this this looks like the top thousand really took care of most of it, things like upon, or probably not in the top two thousand, but you know, it has a bunch you're really weird interesting words like tears and veins and weak that are kind of cool so thank you for the really weird question that's awesome anyway let's get teo listening and reading actually reading this is good this is actually right on topping su what is the role of reading let's turn off my expose well most people show up in languages and they want to be able teo moved the mouse out of the way uh they want to be able to speak most people they're a lot of people who do come into this and say okay I love you russian literature I want to read war and peace in the original it's just it's inspired me forever uh and that's I don't need to convince you to read you kind of do it anyway um but look a tte english or look at your native language or in england late of languages in the case as the case may be um you generally have a vocabulary of around fifteen thousand to thirty five thousand words word families I mean when you've brought it out to be and were and are and all this sense of being a lot of words but when you count word families you have fifteen thousand thirty five thousand words in your native language ornate languages it's a lot a lot of words and where did you get those words? Where did you find the time to learn those words and what you'll find that's kind of weird is that when you speak, you don't use the vast, vast, vast majority of those words. We use a very, very, very small, small small vocabulary to speak. We talk about food, you talk about politics, but you have probably never said the word excavate in your lives, maybe once when do you use the word excavate? And you all know exactly what that means, you know, this is these are words that you actually know, and so where did you know that from? Did some teacher in elementary school going to say like, okay, this is the word excavate it means to dig, but like a lot, no one ever explained that to you, so where'd you get it? What ends up happening is that we learn most of our vocabularies from reading that's where most of the words exist anyway, they show up in books, they don't show up and spoken vocabulary, so they have to you have to get it from there somehow, and you don't get it by reading definitions because for one that takes a really long time and to its no one's telling you the definitions. Onus, explaining what excavate means every once in a while early on, when you're with your parents and you're like, what is this gunk? And they're like, oh, it's the thing with the stripes and smells bad like, yes, you will get a few explanations in your life about what some words mean, but generally you won't. And so you're getting this from context. You are reading sentences in which you'll see something like the something through, uh, walk down the street and was striped black and white and sprayed, and it smelled terrible and I had, you know, dip myself in the tomato juice to get this the stench off, and then you think, what was that first thing? Those rude? Oh, that must be that thing that I've seen before, that must be skunk, that skunk thing must be connecting with all of those other things. What if you look at how often you will pick up words just from the context alone ends up being ten percent of the time every time you encounter a new word in a sentence, you roll the dice and one out of every ten times you're gonna have enough information to figure out what it means on average, through the course of an entire book, just usually around a million words. Your average sort of harry potter is like a million words not a million it's like a hundred thousands and one hundred thousand my book is one hundred thousand would be really long it was a million uh out of hundred thousand words when you keep rolling the dice like this and when you keepin keep track of well, how many words am I likely to already know? So how many times I got to run in towards that our new truly knew uh you end up picking around three hundred to five hundred words every time you read a book your vocabulary increases by three hundred, five hundred words without going to a dictionary once without looking at a dictionary it's like not like you're going through harry potter in english and then you're going oh, wait what does this word mean? Broomstick and then you pick up your english dictionary like no one does this just read someone says avada kedavra and then the person dies and you're like, well I guess that means the thing that kills people you just learned a word you just learned a word from harry potter it's a new word never existed before and then you learned it um context is enough to do this book will give you this money words and the book will give you this many words whether it is shakespeare or whether it is some random gossip magazine that is one hundred thousand words long, so a lot of gossip magazines uh, if this is you know, if you were reading tolstoy in the original or you're reading a russian translation of twilight, you're getting the same benefit in terms of your vocabulary, which means that generally you go into language classes and people hand you get handed this like tone by your teachers like this is art, you should read it and it's hard and you don't necessarily like this genre of literature, and so why should you read it? Generally, what you should do with reading is that reading is so beneficial for your vocabulary it's such a it's like free you read it and then poof here for cabral is bigger when you're talking about vocabularies of, you know, two thousand to five thousand words, just kind of what you're aiming for getting five hundred words is great like it's a significant boost uh, so reading a book is a really great free bonus cheer vocabulary why read something you don't want to read? What you should be reading generally are books that you and show what would enjoy in english the books that aaron genres that you enjoy generally I am a huge fan of harry potter in translation in fact, the first three books are better in translation in english I mean the first three boss j k rowling was not the most famous author in the world it was not the most best paid author in the world and all these things she did not have the best editor in the world for books one through three but these books thrown into so the translations end up being are done by the best translators in the world and they do some amazing things actually in the in the german one for instance, I believe in the english they go off that the kids will go off to a bar and they all have some sort of drink like honey wine or something and in the german version they all go off and they have opera china, which is apple juice and seltzer water the thing the kids drink in germany and so they change them all to localize it. The translators have gone through and they've changed harry potter to be culturally appropriate and they've even put in slaying words I mean, this is not a word for word translation it is a german interpretation of harry potter, and so you actually like every time you read the book you're like, oh my god, they change that they changed that they that's so awesome and so it's actually fun even re reading books you've already read also you already familiar with the content so you don't get lost as much so I really harry potter stuff I recommend a lot and I also recommend it because of audiobooks audio books with a book in front of you if you are listening to an audio book while someone while you're turning the pages and following along, this ends up being a wonderful way to push you through the hundred thousand words your book and that's kind of what you want you want to get through faster you can I mean every book will give you these three hundred to five hundred words and it doesn't matter if you stop all the time so you might as well not stop and it's really hard not to stop because you don't understand everything and it's really frustrating and you're reading chapter one you're like what is going on and what you want to do is stop and look up every word and what that does is that you stop and look up every word in the new stop reading you never get through the book, which is I think many of us have had the experience of going to a language class or thinking I'm going to learn french I'm going to read some wonderful french blais and I'm going to start and I'm like, oh, this is terrible, I don't know what's going on, I'm going to look up that word you get through page one, you're done uh and what you would get if you actually got through all the way to the end is that you generally the next time you write a second book you'd be able to read books without a problem and so for the very, very first book at the very least if you are not yet read a book in your language I would highly recommend grabbing something with an audio book and just pushing your way through without stopping for dictionary um this is sometimes too hard this is sometimes overwhelming I had one student say ok I've heard your advice I'm going to do this and they picked up harry potter and they're like I hate this I don't understand anything and this is frustrating and is there any way to make this easier now what should I do? It was a really good question and answer one is that if he just stuck with it a little longer it would have become easier but why do something that's hard when you could do something that's easier what you should do that is easier is that you can find a cliff notes version of your book in your target language you find a summary usually the summaries are on wikipedia which is awesome they're free so use alert go go on wikipedia could do this right now and you search for harry potter we gotta do this right now you go for harry potter and the sorcerer's stone wikipedia when the philosopher stone because britain and you will find this whole article probably shouldn't show that in this fine, we'll find a whole article about harry potter and that's great accept this is in english, and I wanted to be in french or german, and simon switched to german, and I will find this great, great great. So simon foster on summary of harry potter paragraph, if by paragraph by paragraph he goes through the whole thing, uh, and there are other way, I mean, you can search also on, you know, online, for I'm gonna look for harry potter so simon fossil, because of this stage, you should be able to know the word for a summary or, if not, you can go to the wikipedia article and the very first word will be summary. And so if you're looking for a harry potter summer, you will eventually find it, and by pre reading the summary and actually spending the time to go through and look upwards and really understand what's going on then is you should be able to pick up the book and you'll know most the frequent vocabulary, because if you're really reading the summary and you're like, okay, what's a wizard, you know, okay, weird, uh, you find out the word for wizard if they had time that you can really handle this summer, you should be able to handle the book without a problem. He should be able to handle the audio book with the book without a problem and that's gonna be a really, really enjoyable experience and it's going to give you a thanh of language uh, exposure, you figure an audiobook is around eighteen hours of audio, just some guy yelling in french in your ear, and you have the text to follow along, and this is basically some of your first exposure to words in the context of sentences through audio input, because you've been getting a ton of word by word input. I mean, those first six hundred words, you're getting recordings of all of them by a whole bunch of different people by different people with different accents, because if you're using for bill, you're going to get all sorts of different people and that's good, the fact that the audio input is varied and you're getting it from all of different dialects and things it's really, really good means your ear gets more and more flexible, so at that point you're really able tto handle on a word by word level what's going on, but this is some of the first time you've handed handled words and sentences, and you get a lot of it. Eighteen hours straight of just sentenced a sentence the sentence sentences in the context of a story not just someone reading out french sentence is her pronunciation benefit but in the context of I actually want to know what's gonna happen and in the countries of someone who's paid really well the sound good this isn't some guy who's just gonna mumble some guy who's really like expressive actor or girl er and so audio books are really really uh they're fabulous just for this sort of audio input and they give you so much written input um that you really become quite able to read because in the beginning it will be challenging. The first three chapters will be challenging I'm slightly dreading starting the hobbit and hungarians have it have the audio book it's a little terrifying. Yeah, they would use words and phrases that are not common to use today without being a bit more difficult. I mean a bit more difficult. It depends on every texas gonna have its own vocabulary harry potter's going totally it's gonna have a some vocabulary dracul is gonna have its own vocabulary and those those will be different. And yes, I suppose some older text because we're getting much of our input from newer stuff from the internet for the most part uh that yes, you'll be a little less familiar with the older words but if that's the kind of genre that you like, you're going to want those words anyway right again I mean you're trying to choose workbooks that you actually like and so if you like them you're gonna like him and so you might as well choose minds will know that vocabulary so that you can read more of them but yeah, I think that's sze true that certain books will be certain books will be more challenging the other ones I mean if you really like hardcore, you know science textbooks, your thing is he just like right reading physics textbooks and french that will be challenging and that's fine, you will sort of power through your first chapter will be challenging, but as you keep going, you're probably not gonna find audiobook of a physics textbook as you go through it will get easier and easier. I have a friend of mine who was in the german program at middlebury who started with german harry potter he started a level one with with all of us where we have no vocabulary we're starting with hello, hello and he just did it anyway he just started reading the book he's like I don't understand a word on this page page two is going to read through I don't understand a word pastry and by the end of the book you could read it just fine I mean, he was also on a program at the same time it's not like he wasn't learning other things it wasn't picking up bits of grammar but by the end of the book by just sort of jamming that it went much input into their hair kind of got it there's I know their movements in china one million words this idea that you have a kid you give a kid one million words of english too read you just make them read it by the end of it they can read it sounds kind of masochistic honestly, I I would prefer to read the summaries first and then kind of step up into this but it does actually worked that much input will get you familiar with reading yeah. How do you just trying to tie this on dh like if you if you had a time machine for when you learned german how would you have done this? How would you like with this knowledge gun back to learn german uh in a classroom? How would you adapt this too? Because it seems to apply like pre awesomely if if I did this when I was learning french I would probably be a lot further along and it could like I can relate to people that are taking english as a second language and if if they have this tip that that would be just amazing for them it's not something that comes also it's also not something that comes naturally like you don't think about like let me read the summary it's actually un encouraged us to read the summary is like but then is like if you read the summary you take all the key words and look him up it's like you're you're you're you're pre populating all this acknowledge in your head that will help you read the book so I don't know have have have there been any studies or what will you do and in this case have been a lot of studies in terms of the benefits of reading generally there are there are a lot of things talking about you know how do you how do we fix inner city schools of this kind of thing and the most successful programs have been ones that just give kids stuff they want to read because the more words they read it doesn't matter what the words are the better they get in terms of pre reading summaries that's ah that's actually and it's a new idea from two weeks ago honestly I've been doing this for film we'll talk about that in a bit um but I I got this question from that student and he was like but but the harry potter I'm not enjoying this well what would you do it? Oh yeah they're summaries you should just read those the idea preparing for a text before you actually read it will make it easier and so yeah I think that would be really helpful if I could go back in time and sort of redo things yeah, it would be nice to kind of go through summaries, get some of the text down, get some of the vocabulary down and then rocket through the book and pretty much all the subjects yeah uh this is teo by foreign books because for example I really like basketball but it's difficult on amazon to find books and italian or spanish about basketball. Where would you go for that? Um the best your best bet as far as I can tell, are the foreign amazon cos is by going to amazon that ceo that j p for japanese stuff going to amazon dot I t and just paying for the shipping it ends up being around I just tried that last night. Actually, I spent a bunch of time last night on amazon trying to figure out about audio books and movies and things like that and they will now accept your credit card which was no not the case earlier. It used to be you had to have an italian mailing address and an italian credit card to order anything italian it was just frustrating you still have that in the u k you have to have a uk address it's really frustrating uh the italy stuff has gotten better at least I know the japanese stuff I believe you can order now maybe it's ugly I mean, the idea of trying to get in content in foreign languages is still difficult, which is very frustrating because we're in the internet age we should be able to just kind of pay and download on bit's not the case it's getting better but it's not yet the case, but for now I would recommend the amazon sites the local amazon sites uh at this stage in your language of the point where you you are able to basically kind of write and read things and stuff like that um you should be a better and better able to google in your target language. You should be able to know what is the word for book and what is the word for audio book? What is the word for harry potter? Actually that's one thing that is important that I want to talk about but we'll keep going back to is that how do I know what harry potter is called in uh in german or in french? You know what? What is the name of this? Because that's too harry potter and the uh whatever that lee hallows and quickly skip past the book picture um we're at harry potter and the deathly hallows and we want the translation in italian well should I just translate word for word harry potter what is harry and italian motor deathly hallows in italian on dh what you ended the best way to translate things like this which have no translation that's whatever they wanted translated as is that you go to wikipedia it will not show the picture and you go down to this language is sexy and you scroll down to italiano and suddenly you find that harry potter a donnie dellamorte the gifts of the of death or the things that death has given what it's totally unrelated directly hallows don't actually I might be wrong on one that's not a word I'm very familiar we'll see what they translated it they say deathly hallows that's not fair it's not true anyway um this is how you get the titles of these books and at that point you can start searching for that and you can say okay, I want you don't need a lot more than I want liberal incomparably or something look but it's always good and you find okay amazon delight harry potter you don't need a lot more and you can you can purchase this name and go through and say okay, I'm and at this point you can handle a shopping cart in your language that goes fast as I can so I don't see things you need to create an account you should be able to create an account at this stage you have the that you should have some of the vocabulary least some faculty with looking up new vocabulary, it's honest people capital you should have anyway, we're in an age in which you should be like if knowing italian is something that should give you the ability to order italian stuff so you might as well know the words for, you know, creating account stuff like that like that's this is now useful vocabulary wasn't twenty years ago, but now you should have a vocabulary of saying I'm already client in my password is this, um, let's go back to the president. So in answer your question, it's hard finding the media exactly the media you want is hard, you kind of often have to make compromises and say, well, I can't find everything but I can find this thing and I'm kind of interested enough that this will do, um especially in terms of audio books, because very challenging that's what I spent all those hours last night looking at is what is, in fact out there, um, on amazon dot com is actually quite a bit uh for german, for instance, I think there's like forty eight thousand audio books, which is kind of neat, I mean, many of them are educational, which I would not do because educational is boring uh but there's quite a bit like german has some neil diamond books as harry potter john grisham books chronicles of narnia the hobbit german has all sorts of stuff german you're set french you have harry potter you notice how harry potter is kind of the top one and all these once that's because harry potter is probably the most popular book in these languages the most popular audiobook of many of these languages er and so harry potter is very, very very available it's one of the reasons I like it so much ah and so if you can it all stomach harry potter if you don't just look at it and say I hate this use it because it's great I mean I love it but there are other options french has the harry potter the hobbit this they like the secret you want some help self help stuff uh all of these books have a ton of scientology if you want to read a scientology book you will find it in every single language endless everyone like like some of these some of these languages that have nothing we'll talk about the asian languages which are really problematic with audio books uh scientology is all over that so if you want to read dietetics sin every language audio book sure it's read very well um spanish has harry potter has a ton of self help on amazon it's just covered in self help you know seven ways to make better love to your lover you know uh like ten ways to become a better person it's just it's all self help pride and prejudice lots of john grisham stuff polish is a huge thing that amazon this is an order of how common these things are on amazon and polish is up there for some reason um italian you have again harry pottery of the great gatsby of the divine comedy of pride and prejudice for some reason the italians tend to get into more leased the stuff that sells out here is more sort of literature kind of stuff russian you have twilight all things uh like only the third one the third book in the twilight series not the first to say I don't know why gulliver's travels the davinci code is in russian on amazon they're missing harry potter on amazon dot com although I know it exists I've listened to them um and then you start getting into languages that do not show up on amazon very well um portuguese, for instance write these things down if you are interested in some of these languages right down the blue links now because they're not in the syllabus because I found them last night at pottermore dot com that is like harry potter more dot com but just pottermore dot com you will find some of these translations that you can find on amazon uh portuguese is it's hard to fight audiobooks and portuguese at least to buy them in the least in the united states but pottermore dot com you confined harry potter books one into in portuguese just call mandarin is a disaster you told me this jamiel and it's true they're they're very very challenging in many of in basically the three asian languages this is a really serious challenge and as especially if we have a nice internet audience and you guys find sources for these things please do let me know use the contact for him on my website fluent hyphen forever dot com contact me and send me links and I will put them on my website in the language resource is section uh because especially for these bottom languages for portuguese mandarin, japanese, korean, hebrew and arabic uh slim pickens difficult um but there is a sense I've been reading some articles basically saying that in asian cultures they have really good public transportation and so it's really easy to read a book with your eyes and your hands and having a book or kindle on the idea of audio books is a very american idea of I have a very, very long commute in a car and I need something to listen to and so it has not yet become very popular there now that doesn't mean they don't exist ah the mandarin stuff on amazon they have lots of fairy tales lots of fairytales, uh, soft fables and andersen's fairy tales and lots of chinese fairy tales, all sorts of stuff, but in terms of sort of popular literature, there's not much. There there is a recording of harry potter one and I believe, too, in mandarin, it was very hard to find I've not yet found a place to buy it find them it's normally in the target language, and I'm not yet ready to create a account and just plough through, and they also have, like, a bunch of children, stuff and very local stuff and very short stories. But it's it's, normally a cz you mentioned, is normally more common for people that cannot read like they they're like visually impaired or, um, they use that as a different source for their literature, but it's not very coming and it's kind of obscure, especially if it's not a language here yet fluent in yes, I think one of the things that's really beneficial at this stage is that you buy now at the point where you're really like looking for books to read, you're ready, actually pretty good at the language you're ready the intermediate level, you can write things, you can read things, you're kind of in a decent level, you're not fluent. But you're in a position where you can actually start searching in chinese s o the idea of like well I can't find it now but I only have like three hundred word vocabulary is like well that's okay it'll get there but mandarin is its own challenge mandarin japanese and korean or their own challenges because it's just not as popular to have audio books there and so there's not as big of a market so there's not as many audio books but harry potter is so huge oh that it exists anyway she's nice um japanese again there's also harry potter recordings you can find them on amazon dot co dot j p that's where they exist at the moment I cannot find them on amazon I can't find them on us websites if you can find them on us websites web audience let me know and I will put them on my website um for korean it's rough korean there is a website called audience dot com that shows sort of native korean audio books I have not seen many translated us things translated, you know, english books you were kind of like, oh yeah, I'd want to read that but let's read that in korean instead I have not seen much what one person was suggesting in one of these forms actually a lot of people suggesting were read korean drama walk korean dramas we'll get to the video section in a bit but watch korean dramas with subtitles that ends up being a reading exercise rather than write a listening exercise we'll talk about this in a bit but watching something with subtitles in your target language with subtitles in your target language is the same as what we're doing here that is an audiobook there's per people moving around but it's an audio book it's not actually listening comprehension exercise um for hebrew there is a website called sonic books dot co dot I l that has a few books not very much but has a feud has the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and arthur c clarke's three thousand won I think some self help books in hebrew so slim pickings but some mean hitchhiker's guide and hebrew probably fun um and arabic is seriously limited arabic was is in no way audio books were not popular in the arabic countries and so that becomes really challenging this company maas mode three dot com I don't they pronounce it's like the three supposed to be some pronunciation simple uh, which I should know but I don't know which one they're trying to refer to that website uh is I think the very first arabic audio book company uh and it has only showed up in the last few years I think it's like they've been around for maybe two years and it was something like the founder was really wanted that audiobook and then realize that none of them exist so he decided recorded himself and get the rights and then he founded a company uh, so this exists but is very limited most arabic sources of audio material are the koran um and so that's that's a real challenge if you're looking for something like a harry potter like that um in terms of reading there's one more thing actually turns of audio books the a c mule serious the one we talked about yesterday this guy uh, there's audio for basically all of these and it is widely available it's a little expensive the symbol serious kind of expensive but it's out there. And so if you're looking for something even for something like arabic, this I believe actually does exist for arabic. So another resource also in terms of trying to step your way up to more complicated literature, really handy because they start simple, they get complex. I want to show you a website called blue blue dot com because I really like it. Um we'll see if I remember my passwords and stuff I hope I do I'm going to log in and then I will turn the mouse posing because I don't want to tell you all my password hopefully that will work um yes um jonah from behind mexico's dish loves reading the books of the concept of the book in the target language but her target languages latin american, spanish and she doesn't want to get confused by listening to european spanish so how does that work when you have we'll spend should be the main one, wouldn't it? I think spanish will be the main one I mean arabic for instance has a ton of different dialects and that's rough uh that's a real challenge with arabic but then again arabic is such a huge challenge without e books that you take what you can get um with something like spanish you're going to give me comment yeah, so I can actually speak to that um there's there's ah, very um uh there is like basically three variants or of of spanish since uh it's been my experience is a spanish speaker that you have translations for movies. Sometimes you find a localized version of a translation of a movie like if they want to bring movie acts into spain they can translate it into local spanish like spain spanish but there's also like a more general spanish version that say like a small country like the dominican republic they never do dominican republic translation of movie block they have like a whole latin america translation for that and it's really available you can normally have that distinction between like normal spanish spain, spain spanish and latin american spanish so it's I think I would say it's very clear to find the decision um and also um for audio books uh and like especially singing like songs in in in in spanish are very, very portable I would say you're doing songs in the sink wait actually we should talk about music I usually don't talk about music and I should I will but yes, we'll talk about music in the second I don't finish this comment that you're saying that they're readily available yeah they're ready love able clear like which one is which standard spanish it's been my experience that you have you always find like latte town that's what they say latin america spanish like latam spanish blah and it's it's very easy to search um at at least from from from my experience because sometimes eyes a dominican or latin america spanish speaker I really don't want to have my content in a foreign spanish pronunciation so it's you can normally find a more generic more latin america spanish on it so it's I think I would say it's easier called rather than challenging it works completely universe as well because people learning english well look want to differentiate between american english, english, english, australian, english, south african, english or all exactly the same way so I think that that's very easy to search on yes, that must be the same around and you have the same a german german german is completely different not completely but very different from swiss, austrian german so I'm sure it works in every language. So thank you for that input there will be I mean, there will be some dialects that are gonna be harder like, for instance, in german I mean, you're there's very few austrian german programs, there are some and they the austrians loved them. I mean, they're just all the dialect and little about me, but general, you're gonna find sort of very, very official german for most your pronunciation and that's just what's out there so that this's all sort of determined by the market in terms of what options you have, you know, if your learning arabic, you're gonna have more problems finding audiobooks you know, if your learning mandarin, same thing if you're learning spanish, you got a ton of stuff and if your learning german it sounds like germans best for audio books, they seem to love that stuff out here at least quite amused to discover I'm quite a big fan of the tintin syriza books to discover that when they were originally translated in english, they were separately translated into american english in the nineteen fifties few books of the same way I found cause in australia we buy english english books and then when I come to america have seen the sign books and it's written differently it's interesting this is one last resource I want to show you for reading this is believable you dotcom I've just logged into my account um and what blue blue does is it asks you what language do you speak in what language do you are you trying to learn or languages in either case on then for the language is you're trying to learn it s it starts testing your vocabulary says okay do you know what a cat is? Ok do you know can you understand this sentence of like the cat is going down the street can you understand this sentence of like I really kind of like cats but sometimes there's like suddenly like evil or something like this uh and so you go through these sequences and you tell it what you understand and so it gets some sense of how how you are in in a language and then when it does is it starts throwing texted you and so we will go into the german jokes section because that's hilarious that there would be a german jokes section um when we will read some german jokes least we'll read whatever they tell us they're german jokes um and if this loads and it does yes yes sure love it when you get are these texts and the texts will highlight every word it thinks you will not know and it will blank out I mean we'll have in white all the words that thinks you nose so based on your level of german on the german that you've given it it will try to guess the new words for you the uncommon words and so you correct it you say sure of it's that that means a school joke and so I know this one I'm going didn't know it and the red goes away school joke in that led on studio in the religion our factor little zaina class asked the teacher asked his class and so I know religion our you know I love the but I do know it okay so in in the hour in the classroom for religion the teacher asked his class volumes eatman often building book knew marie and joseph finished yet why did this can we see in the picture of the in the book only marie and joseph and not jesus and I know joseph this is fine so so far this this text I know the whole thing and shula on voted the student answers he's a satyr spilled photograph fields jesus took the picture ha ha ha sermon for comedy eso this their german jokes apparently on what you do is you go through and you keep you keep correcting what it thinks you know in terms of vocabulary and as you go it will keep feeding you more text and keep guessing what it thinks. You know, in this case, I could just quickly go through and say, lisa, I know what that is. The name foosball, fun, that's a fan of football, I know that is inform years is, you know, informed tab ellen plots actually don't know quite what that is. I have to think about it, so we'll see if we understand this joke. Shulevitz is another school joke in the geography, our volleys. Colin where is cologne? A village and a family services thie the teachers asking lisa where is cologne? Lisa's? A football fan. And therefore she is well informed. Oh, teacher hair teacher, the professor teacher that's recency need you don't know after him. Let's antebellum platz. Naturally. Oh, yeah. I do know what this means in the bottom of the table on the homework assignment. Ha ha ha ha ha! And so this is your first encounter with german comedy. And so you get a bit of cultural thing, too. We'll talk about german comedy in the next segment, uh, and believable. You basically adapts to your vocabulary and starts handing you texts according to what you know. It's sort of game ified in the sense that you feel like you keep succeeding, which we talked about in segment eight is that you keep getting this feeling of like, yes, I'm getting more words I look I have one hundred twenty eight, twenty four words I learned today what you're learning from context I really like the fact that when you voice when you put over a word, it doesn't show you the translation instantly it was actually a suggestion I gave him which I'm happy they implemented it I was one of the first beta testers, this thing and so I used to be you you put your mouth over and we'll show you immediately to the translation and as we've said, when you don't have the translation, when you learnt in context you learn better, you learn anyway and you learn with mean it's embedded in the context of other words that makes these sort of networks it does this thing that makes words stick where is just knowing the translation doesn't on so the fact that it doesn't immediately give you the translation is really nice now if you need it it's there for you and it will say voice vote part you know an understatement telephones we'll try one more yes sir would you would you say that you you're able to speak if you're not translating uh what do you mean by speak like when you were having a conversation with somebody in the in your target language um how much faster d would you say you the conversations flow and everything as opposed to using this betted of direct just directly uh, thinking or reading in the language and then as opposed to translating your saying, comparing translating in your head to actually just thinking in the target language do you you feel like that's like gonna really it is gonna allow you to have more conversations with people and people are going to be more patient with you for that are it's night and day it's the difference between knowing the language and knowing some information about a language if you can think in the time I mean our goal here in terms of learning languages is can you think in some new way? And if you can't if you're learning how to decode german into ok a voice in the telephone inside of telephone says my son can today not the school towards school and you're like, okay, I'm gonna arrange that all in my head and be like, okay, my son today the school so he can't come to school today the conversation just ended like that person just stared at you for a while while you're thinking about this and then they're like you're crazy, what are you doing? And then left and then you're like, oh, you didn't come to school today and the person's gone like that that's it's night and day this is the difference, treat actually learning a skill and not learning a skill translation there's a reason why simultaneous translators were talking about this at lunch simultaneous translators this idea of like, I'm you know you have a political official in any of the guys speaking for everything he's saying, uh and they're paid two hundred, four hundred bucks an hour and they should be translation is the hardest one of the hardest things you could do in the world. I mean, I've tried to translate some german book for my dad is a gift that ended up being a father's day gift two birthday gift, the next father's day vision, the next birthday gift and the next father's day gift, and it was the most agonizing experience of my life trying to translate, and I spoke to him just fine, but translation trying to get can you get the sense of this into another language is a brutally the difficult thing that is not something you can do on the spot unless you are being paid for it and trained for it and are getting I mean, getting paid a lot for it so that you can handle like the coffee intake that you need and the like rest you need afterwards this is wonderful story of someone translating I believe gadhafi who speaks in poetry and his his simultaneous translator the u n was supposed to be a five minute speech he spoke for eight hour an epic poem for me and the translator fainted after thirty minutes it's the most stressful thing in the world translation is brutal so anyway it's incredible I can't do it but it's incredible yeah moscow with an interpreter and not only was she I don't know how she was hearing because she was speaking simultaneously so I don't know how she was hearing what I was saying next but then she has to translate your humor so everyone was laughing at my terrible joke I mean I was so impressed by this lady I wanted to take a home just have her with me it's an incredible thing that people can do I mean this is you talk about you know, do you have the language? Jean do you have this? I don't know if there is a language gene, but these people who can do this our gifted if they have trained it if it is a skill that they have learned that great if it's something they were born with and and and then refined is a skill that great but this is not a skill that I am attempting to teach here I mean, I think you can use this to get kind of there, but that is not that is not an aspiration. I have it's, not desperation. I think most people have in terms of where you want to bring your language, the goals that we've been talking about throughout this course, if I want to go order in japanese and I want to go watch felt french film being a simultaneous translator and trying to do all that stuff in your head that takes fluency and then something it's not like you go to translation and then get to fluency the other way around. So you would say it's critical that you avoid the english translation of athens? Lady, I would say that that's that's that is the first ingredient to being able to get to the simultaneous translating. So this is about you. I like this. This, uh, interface. I like you just kind of getting lots of lots of random texts. It's a fun sort of thing to do on a daily basis. If you want to add a little bit of reading to your day and it also it ends up being kind of a game. You see how many words can I add to my vocabulary and since it adapts to you the whole time, just kind of fun. And since the text or so silly that as you're going through, it does it like, um, how does it does it let you progress further? Absolutely. If I don't know, the word stimuli can leave it blank, leave it red and it's fine, and I'll just bring it back in another, no, yeah, it'll still it'll. The next time I see steam, it will still say, you still don't know stillman. And then I keep reading, and eventually I'll be like, oh, from context, I get it on the market.