education in small steps and full circles
Learning English as a Second Language
Many non-English speaking countries recognize that English is rapidly
becoming the lingua franca of
our world. Many students can read and
write in English with a high rate of accuracy without
commensurate listening and speaking skills. Here are some ways for
students to
address this problem in cost effective ways.
Pod Casts
First use the Internet. Search for "podcasts" in English that are on
subjects of interest to you. Find short podcasts and download them to
your MP3 player or computer and play them over and over again.
Transcribe the words into written form so you can read them and listen
to them at the same time. Play them until you have memorized the dialog
and can recite it with understanding. Let your accent change as you go.
Music
You can also search on the Internet for songs that are of good moral
quality and are easy to understand. Download these and
play them on your MP3 player or computer. Sing with them. Learn the
words and their meaning's.
Stories
You can also search for stories that are in MP3 or MP4 format. The
stories should be of good moral quality. Download these and
play them on your MP3 player or computer. Speak the words out loud as
you listen to the stories. Learn all the
words and their nuances.
TV and Radio
Listen to the English broadcasts on TV and on the
radio.
Listen to PDF Files
PDF files present another interesting possibility as the computer can
read these files to you. In order to do this you need to download the
free version of PDF reader. Here is how to proceed:
Download Adobe Reader from:
http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/
Download and install Adobe Reader.
After installation, you may configure the reading mode by clicking on: Edit | Preferences | Reading.
With Adobe Reader installed you can search the Internet for PDF files
of interest to you. For example if you are a medical student and you
are interested in cancer, you can use Google's advanced search to find
only PDF files on cancer like this:
Download the files you find and save them to a folder of your choice.
Click on one of the files and Adobe Reader will start. Then choose:
View | Read Out loud | Activate Read Out loud
then
View | Read Out loud | Read to the end of the document (or read this
page only). Read and listen to the words. Not all the pronunciation is
perfect, but in most cases it is acceptable.
Create Your Own PDF Files
You can also create your own PDF files from any windows based document
such as an RTF file, a Word Document or a web page.
To do this you need another program that is also free.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Look for something like: PDF Creator-0_9_3_GPLGhostscript.exe and click
on it.
Click on Download PDF Creator and install it on your computer.
Once it is successfully installed you will find "PDF Creator" in the
print dialog menu. With this tool you can now create a PDF file from
any English source and then using the PDF reader you can have the
computer read it to you. All you need to do is find a document and then
"print it" to a PDF file. Then you can listen to it.
Good luck to you all in your endeavor to improve your English speaking
and listening skills.
Last updated by:
Steven Fletcher
November 21, 2007