I have been using French for Beginners, a podcast series of French lessons for adult beginners, for the last three weeks. This podcast is offered by the French Ecole, a London-based language center specializing in teaching French. New lessons are available for download almost every week but recent lessons have been updated less frequently. The lessons are available for free under the donationware model. In other words, you try it for free and if you like it you donate whatever amount you like.

So far, I am very impressed by the podcast. Each lesson is moderated by language instructor Alexa who makes the lessons incredibly easy to follow. The pace of the lessons suits me perfectly - not too overwhelmingly fast or boringly slow.

Language learning is mainly consists of two parts - perception and production. The more one listens, the better one gets in recognizing the phonetics of that language. This is where the podcast shines. With digital audio compression, I can load hours of lessons into my iPod and listen to it whenever and wherever I want. I have been carrying the iPod with me and listening to the podcast repeatedly whenever I have time. I am not putting any major efforts in learning the language (yet) but repetitive listening has made the learning process effective and pleasant.

7/25/2006 11:05:55 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Personal