Highlight the humor in books and audio books benefits : You don’t have to look any farther than the success of Dora the Explorer to know that bilingual media is popular with young children. Aside from popularity, bilingual storytelling offers many benefits to kids. The new book, Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpre, tells the story of one of the first champions of bilingual literature. Prime language learning occurs between the ages of 2 and 5.
As you learn new words and phrases while reading your e-book, compile a vocabulary list or add to the one you’re already curating. Vocabulary lists are a language learner’s best friend. They can go anywhere and are perfect for filling up empty minutes spent waiting in line or on your lunch break. I carry vocabulary lists everywhere!
The street epistemology teaches us how to do so. It consists partly in pushing the interlocutor to ask himself questions. The questions we ask ourselves do not meet the defensive stubbornness that questions asked by a third party meet. This audio guide is bilingual: that is, it presents itself as a language learning tool. The title indicates that it is a parody of the practical guides. A “serious” guide would not be concerned about helping the guru to build his enterprise. Because this bilingual audio book is often fun, offering it to a member-of-a-cult friend, or relative, is not perceived as a threat, or as a criticism of his choices.
Turn the Young Generation from Useless Stuff to Useful Literature. The young generation has become addicted to headphones. They are listening to favorite songs, jokes, TV Shows, etc. which do not give them anything productive except temporary entertainment. Audiobooks are fine temptation to divert their attention and habits. Now, some schools have understood the importance of audiobooks. They have made it compulsory for students to listen to the audiobooks. See more information at Bilingual audio books English/Chinese and English/Hindi.
One reason more audiobooks are not finding their way into classrooms is availability. Public libraries usually have a good quantity of audiobooks, but most school libraries have a limited number – audiobooks are expensive. The cost of cassette or CD players and headphones must also be taken into consideration, and though these costs have come down considerably in the last few years, schools typically do not budget funds for such purchases.
Increases comprehension. When students can hear the story or information as a whole, read by a human being, their comprehension increases. Reading books word-by-word doesn’t help create a whole experience. Kids in grades 3-8 who can finally put all the pieces of information together at one sitting, begin to make meaning of text.
The children listened…. and their parents too. Listening was not felt as a chore but as a delight. So, we decided to prepare bilingual audiobooks from “classical” works. Then, we thought we should publish contemporary short works in at least 2 languages (by the way, if you are the happy author of a work up to 25.000 words, prepare to submit it.) We propose mostly human voices, because to listen to synthetic voices feels… synthetic. But, whatever their accent, the synthetic voices offer a faultless pronunciation, which is important for the student. So, we prepare some sound files with synthetic voices. Find additional info at Language Learning for the Blind.