language learning

Rapid progress with language learning

Oliver Brown
— This upcoming video may not be available to view yet.

Thought I’d offer a quick status update regarding the language learning app. After a short break I’m back at it. Appart from enough Finnish content to generate ten 15-minute lessons the biggest progress is outputting MP3 files. My original plan was just to output M3U playlists but it seems iTunes and therefore iPods don’t support M3U files (as far as I can tell iTunes can only create playlists of files in it’s library - who wants hundres of files in their library consisting of a few words each?).

The sample MP3s should be available “soon”…

How much fluff is needed?

Oliver Brown
— This upcoming video may not be available to view yet.

I’ve been sorting out exactly what needs recording for the language app (which I finally have an idea for a name for) and I was trying to decide how much extra instructor speech is needed. Situations aren’t described for instance (no “Image an English man sitting next to a French woman”) and you aren’t asked to say things explicitly (“How do you ask someone if they speak English?”). Will this harm the process at all?

The best thing to do perhaps would be to avoid trying to be Pimsleur quite so exactly.