There are various ways of studying with the application. For most of the learners the most suitable way would be to "listen and repeat".
Appropriate audiobook. First, find a book that fits your language level.
There is no point studying with a book where every second word is unknown to you.
For the beginners it is advisable to pick a book that is easy and is read slowly and distinctly, a good choice would be an abridged book.
To read more on the topic go to Where to Get Audiobooks page.
How to listen. These are the steps to productive studies:
- Listen to a phrase from a audiobook and try to understand it.
Press button /UI_Elements/play_selected_48_normal.png)
- If you couldn’t understand the phrase – listen to it again, perhaps several times.
Press button
- If you still fail to understand it – find the phrase in a text of the book and translate it with the help of a dictionary.
If you have copied the text in Notes for File or you have Subtitles,
then select an unknown word and press /UI_Elements/translate_40_normal.png)
- Repeat the phrase out loud, if you are experiencing any difficulties with it – listen to the audio once again.
Pay attention to the grammar used by the author; try not to miss auxiliary words.
Repeat the phrase loudly and clearly – it is important to develop your pronunciation.
- Move on to the next phrase in the audiobook.
Press button /UI_Elements/play_next_48_normal_white.png)
Don’t forget that you can increase or decrease a selection suggested by the application – just drag selection's edges on the waveform diagram.
If the application selected only a part of the sentence, it is necessary sometimes to select the whole of it to be able to understand the meaning.
Also it happens that the selected sentence is too long and therefore too hard to repeat as a whole -- in this case break it in parts.
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Waveform diagram
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Subtitles. If you are listening to an audiobook with subtitles – try to avoid turning on "Show Always" mode:
As soon as there is a text on the screen our lazy brain starts to read instead of listening.
So, listen to your audiobooks with "Show Always" mode turned off. Press in the subtitles area to see a text only
if you’ve listened to it several times and still couldn’t understand it:
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Hide the subtitles away as soon as you've found and translated a difficult word that you didn’t know. To do this touch (quickly) the subtitles area again.
The most important.
Study regularly, you would not learn a language by studying occasionally!
And choose audio materials interesting for you. Studying a foreign language should be an entertaining, not a boring task!