How to Level Up Your Skills with the Best Foreign Language Audiobooks

How to Level Up Your Skills with the Best Foreign Language Audiobooks How to Learn Faster with the Best Foreign Language Audiobooks Want to level-up your language skills?First tip: give your headphones and speakers the workout of their life.Now listen up while we convince you that audiobooks are an awesome  language-learning tool to get you on track with those ambitious goals youve set.Think about it! Audiobooks can help you:Take advantage of wasted time. You can listen to them while doing  almost anythingâ€"commuting  to work or school, walking the dog, cleaning the house, even shopping.Learn new vocabulary words and everyday phrases you can put to use right away.Practice your listening  and speaking skills at the same time.Improve your pronunciation.Learn more about the culture  of people who speak your target language.And the best way to learn with audiobooks is to choose a book that interests you and is at the level that suits you the best.Need  some hints?All right, you win.Here are some tried-and-true tips on how to get the most from learning with audiobooks, along with some guidelines  for finding the best foreign language audiobooks at the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. 5 Study Tips  to Make Audiobooks Work for YouFirst, a  few general tips to  give you a great head start.1. Take notes. If you hear new words you want to remember, write them down. This will help you retain information and make it easier to reference in the future. Its much easier to find a word in a notebook or computer document than it is to search through an  entire  audiobook to find the place you heard it!2. Get a hardcopy. Choose  an audio language course with an accompanying hardcopy book, or try to find a hardcopy of the childrens or adult book you are listening to. Even though you shouldnt get into the habit of reading along every time you listen, having  the hardcopy material available is helpful when you come across  new words and  phrases that you just cant catch.3. Listen first. Written material can help you learn and retain information, but it can also be a crutch. One of the advantages of an audiobook is that it forces you to learn by listening, a skill you need in order to communicate  that a lot of people underestimate. Use your notes, a hardcopy book and a dictionary as you learn, but try to listen to an entire section or chapter before you start to rely on written material.4. Repeat again and again. The more you listen, the more  youll learn. Most audio language courses are designed to repeat material for this reason. If youre listening to  a childrens or adult audiobook entirely in the foreign language youre studying, you will  need to repeat sections for yourself. Listen several  times so that  you grow  comfortable with what youre hearing.5. Practice in real life. If youre taking a class or meeting with a conversation partner, bring along your list of new vocabulary words, and practice using them with a native speaker. Engage your friends in conversation about the audiobooks youre listening to, and learn more about what they think. When you practice words in different contexts, you help yourself remember them better.How to Learn Faster with the Best Foreign Language AudiobooksBeginner Level: Audio Language CoursesThe best type of audiobook for a beginner is an audio language course. Theyre  typically tailored for beginners and travelers  who need to learn phrases quickly so that they can  communicate on a  trip. Youll find that an audio course teaches you useful everyday words and phrases in a pleasant, enjoyable format, while giving you lots of practice listening to native speakers.Youre probably familiar with audio language courses, since these are the most common and accessible foreign language books available. Youve probably even impulse-bought  an audio phrasebook of some kind  before!To choose the best audio language course:Check out your favorite library, bookstore or website. Its easy to find audio language courses for most of the commonly studied foreign languages. Look for titles like Spanish for Dummies, Pimsleur, Collins or Earworms.Take advantage of  textbook CDs or audio files.  Many textbooks offer access to online audio files for practice listening. Investigate this option if youre already using a textbook to study.Ask your friends for recommendations.  If you know someone who has studied a foreign language (even if its not the one youre studying), ask which audio language course they liked best.Once youve got  your audio language course, turn it on and start  learning! But before that,  here are some more little tips to ease the process.Make it work for you:Supplement with grammar materials. The everyday words youll learn with an audio course will help  you ask simple questions and understand the answers. But most audio courses focus on stand-alone phrases and dont provide detailed grammar instruction. If you find yourself wanting to say not  just, Im going to the museum, but, Yesterday I went to the museum, you may have to look further than your audio course.  Build on the phrases in  your audio book by supplementing with a grammar book or website that explains grammar rules.Dont be afraid to skip ahead.  If you discover that the material most important to  you is in one of the later chapters of an audio course, skip right to it! Although most audio language courses build on the material taught in previous chapters,  theres no reason why you need to wait if what you want to learn most is 45 minutes into the audio course. Go ahead and listen to what youre drawn to!Make an  audio course part of your larger language-learning routineâ€"not the entire routine.  Most of us retain information best when we get it from a variety of different inputs. Look up new words in a dictionary, use a textbook for additional learning, watch videos online and talk with a conversation partner for a complete picture of how the language is used in different contexts. The more varied your language inputs, the better chance you have of retaining information and learning how words are used in differen t situations.Intermediate Level: Childrens BooksIntermediate-level language learners are ready to move beyond the basics and will probably enjoy the challenge of authentic audio materialsâ€"the type of audiobooks native speakers might use themselves.An adult audiobook in a foreign language can  be daunting even to the most confident language student, so its best to start with childrens books. Youll find that they are approachable, fun and remarkably useful for learning.To choose the best  childrens book  for you, follow these suggestions:Have fun! Childrens books are meant to be fun. Luckily, most are designed to be engaging, educational, and interesting, so it shouldnt be too difficult to find a good one.Ask native speakers which books they like best.  What do native speakers read to their children? What books do they remember from childhood? Choosing books that are beloved by native speakers is a good way to ensure you dont pick a dud and may mean that youll find an audience inter ested in discussing it with you.Avoid archaic language. Some of the best childrens stories are folktales, poems and stories passed down for centuries. While these provide wonderful opportunities for cultural learning, its best to avoid archaic language when you first start out. Archaic  language is likely to be confusing to language learners and will not be as useful if you plan to use phrases you learn to speak with people on an everyday basis (you probably dont want to tell your friend the equivalent of, I bequeath you this piece of cake). Start with more  modern stories, and work your way up to stories with more complex language.Of course, the easiest  way to start learning with  an audiobook is to simply turn it on and listen. But having a plan and some resources will help you keep on track.Make it work for you:Focus on the story.    Dont worry about looking up every single word. Instead, look up a few key  words and then listen again to see how much more you can understand. It might  be overwhelming if you try to look up every word you dont know.Learn like a child. Childrens stories form the basis of language and reading development. Children usually pick up phrases from books and try them out in new settings.  This is exactly what you should do.Emulate the narratorâ€"but not too much. Childrens book narrators are fantastic storytellers. Emulating the narrator is great practice, but just remember that  you dont want to sound like youre talking to children every time you speak!Advanced Level: Novels and Non-Fiction for Young Adults and AdultsWhen youve got the hang of childrens audiobooks, its time to start listening to novels and non-fiction.Give a little thought to what you plan to listen to. It will likely be much longer than a childrens book, so its important to select something that will hold your attention.Here are some things to consider:Choose  a book  native speakers are reading. Look for lists of top-selling books in your target language, and as k  native speakers what they like to read. A book that native speakers have appreciated is more likely to be interesting and will offer more opportunities for discussion with native speakers than an obscure book will.Consider starting with a book youve read in your native language.  Youll already be familiar with the characters and plot, so you may be able to follow along easier without looking up as many words. If youve read a book in translation that was originally written in your target language, this is an ideal book to start with. Reading the book in the language it was written in will provide you with a new and more complete perspective of the story.Take a gander at young adult novels.  Young adult novels often have mass appeal and are written in plainer language than adult novels. These can be fun to read and a little bit less daunting than starting with an adult audiobook.Avoid classicsâ€"at least for a while. Classics are enduring stories and have great cultural value, but they can be difficult to understand, even for native speakers.  Unless you know that a certain classic novel is written in language thats easy to understand, its best to start with books written in more colloquial language. After youre familiar with the audiobook format, then you might start trying to listen to classics.After youve selected the audiobook youre going to read, its time to get started!Make it work for you:Get a hardcopy in your native language, if possible. Although you shouldnt rely on the book in your native language, having one to consult may help you feel confident you are following the story correctly and getting all the nuanced information. Just  remember not to attempt to translate word-for-word or even sentence-for-sentence because the exact phrasing may be different.Move on!  Listening repeatedly improves your comprehension and helps you memorize new words, but a full-length book is too long for you to spend too much time on any one section. While you may be able to listen again and again to a childrens book, an adult book is much more about flow and overall comprehension than it is about the specifics of any single section.Focus on the big picture. Your goal should be to understand the story and learn a few new words in the processâ€"not to look up every single word you hear. You will hear some of the same words repeated again and again and will begin to form an idea of what these words mean and how theyre used in different contexts.  Recognize that its okay to get the gist of it without understanding all  the nuances.Audiobooksâ€"whether language courses, childrens books or adult booksâ€"are a great way to learn and practice your language skills. Theyre fun, inspirational and may  fill a void in your language-learning routine.As you begin to listen and become more comfortable with the best foreign language audiobooks, consider trying increasingly difficult  ones. You may surprise yourself with your level of comprehension and will lear n a lot in the process.Time to level up! And One More ThingIf youre digging these learning strategies, youll love using FluentU. FluentU makes it possible to learn languages  from music videos, commercials, news and inspiring talks.With FluentU, you learn real languagesâ€"the same way that natives  speak them. FluentU has a wide variety of videos like movie trailers, funny commercials and web series, as you can see here:FluentU App Browse Screen.FluentU has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.Didnt catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.Interactive transcript for Carlos Baute song.You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentUs learn mode. Swipe left or right to see  more examples for the word you’re learning.FluentU Has Quizzes for Every VideoA nd FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.Start using FluentU on the website  with your computer or tablet  or, better yet,  download the FluentU app from  the  iTunes  or  Google Play  store.