There are various ways of studying with the application. For most of the learners the most suitable way would be to "listen and repeat".
About writing practice read Bookmarks and Grades page.
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.
To perform the action, press "Space" key or button /UI_Elements/PlaySelected.png)
- If you couldn’t understand the phrase – listen to it again, perhaps several times.
To perform the action, press "Space" key or 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.
- 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.
To perform the action, press "N" key (Next) or button /UI_Elements/PlayNext.png)
Don’t forget that you can increase or decrease a selection suggested by the application – just click 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
/UI_Elements/ShowAlways_On.png)
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 "S" key or click in 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 press “S” key or right click in the subtitles area.
Flashcards. The application allows you to gather a list of words that you want to repeat,
and then work with this list in the Anki application. I would like to give two advices about the flashcards.
First - do not include every word in the list! Approach the issue from a practical point of view -
if you met the word for the first time, maybe next time you'll meet it only next year.
So is it worth to learn it? Add only those words that seem familiar to you, but whose meaning you have forgotten or not sure.
Second - do not include into translation the entire dictionary entry.
There are words that have dozens of possible meanings, but you've met a specific case in a specific context - so study it.
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!