global_jd

Walkman one-piece earset

The form of a device influences how we're likely to use it.

If you're studying a foreign language, then you know the importance of regular daily exposure. This is even more important if you're trying to retain language skills you already possess. But it can be hard to schedule review sessions throughout a week, particularly when you're also trying to learn new things as well... there's less than a thousand minutes in a day.

Any audio program in general, in fact, whether podcast or audio book or lecture series -- suppose there was an easy way you could get at least half-an-hour of it a day? Without throwing off the rest of the things you want to do?

Sony has a tool which may help, "NWZ-W202", the "W-series Walkman MP3 player". (Websearch only gives a Sony press release and PR images, but here's link with Sony product copy at Amazon.)

$60, two gigabytes, MP3 etc. Two earpieces connected by a band, they say it weighs less than two ounces. There are bigger, cheaper audio players. But the big advantage here is the form-factor.

It takes less than five seconds to set up, less than two seconds to shut down. It has no cords or separate pieces.

You can use this while dressing, washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, folding clothes, cooking, sweeping, unpacking the groceries... it is much easier to use throughout the day than any other audio player I've ever seen. It's a very practical way to claim minutes from your day.

Putting it on: Hold it so that you can see the red "R" and the white "L' on each earpiece. Put it behind your head, then hang them on your ears. Settle the speaker near your ear canal. Let your right thumb flick the job switch to the back. In two seconds you'll hear the startup tone; in five seconds you'll start hearing your material.

Taking it off: Just take it off your ears and connect the magnetic latches between the two earpieces. The device will automatically shut off when it's off your head and magnetically connected.

Comfort? Some people say they run with it. I wouldn't trust it that far myself. But it is one of the most comfortable earsets I've worn.

UI? Pretty clean. Right earpiece has a small pause/stop/forward/rewind toggle, easy to use. Pushing this in triggers "zap mode", with 3-second previews of each track -- push in again to select a track. Also has small "+" and "-" volume pushbuttons. Left earpiece has a small "shuffle on/off" button. Easy to load up through a variety of computer software.

Durability? Don't know. I break a lot of earbuds and such, but this looks a bit stronger, and less exposed to damage, than other audio players I've tried.

Most of the Amazon comments on this focus about running. None seem to make the point that it's so quick to put on and take off, that you can use it far more often than other types of audio players. If you've only got five minutes of chores, then this is still worthwhile to put on.

I've got Cantonese textbooks and Malay phrasebooks on mine, and with the way spoken-voice compresses, there's still lots of space available. Courseware which doesn't work for intensive repeated audio-only exposure becomes more useful when shuffled among other material, listened to casually as you're getting packed up for the day.

The big reason I'm excited by this audio player is that it is giving me a half hour, an hour through the day that I didn't think existed.

Brushing your teeth, without pursuing your goals... not as much fun as if you are!

An AM radio

It's harder to find an AM radio in San Francisco these days. I like to listen to SF Giants baseball games on 680am. Many pocket devices offer only FM reception. Pocket radios at Walgreens tend to be very large monstrosities. I've used smaller-than-pocket breakable AM radios from Radio Shack (who now offer none), and a thick credit-card sized Sony I bought in Akasaka which is just a little too unwieldy, but this week I picked up a new season's radio and found it changed my study habits too.

The radio is a Sony Walkman, AM/FM/TV/weather, about $35 in Walgreens. (Yeah, $35 for an AM pocket radio in 2006, something's nutty there.) It has a functional belt clip, digital tuning and presets. Instead of dialing across to see what's on the asian programming near the high end of the AM dial, now I can just press a button, no hassle. Realized I could understand a lot of the Mandarin on KVTO's 6pm show... a shock. Flip over to check out the game at the press of a button, securely right on my belt. Cool.

Progress report: Been working Penton Mandarin Vocabulary very regularly, but there are few markers to see progress being made... I'm recognizing more phrases in their Level II vocabulary, but still don't know all on Level I. Carrying a dictionary looking things up while waiting for the bus. Getting a few reading sessions each week, although fewer in the past two weeks, as I've spent some time reading on sleight-of-hand too.

Wish I could speak. I'm learning more to hear, and to extemporize, but when I get a clear marker of success I'll feel a lot less antsy.....

In heavy rotation

Productive time now... often running two hours a day Mandarin study, spread throughout the day. Here are some of the resources I've been using most often:

o Penton VocabuLearn, on Nano and cassette. The Nano's pocket size means I can wear it more often. The cassette is used around the house. I try to anticipate and repeat, out loud, and sometimes try to act out expressions too. Lately I've been going to sleep to this, repeating and acting out as long as I'm awake. (Buying tip: The CD version has been repeatedly postponed, and the Audible.com iPod purchase I made sounds like it was taken from the 1993-era tape recording.)

o KTSF Mandarin News. My DVR records it each evening, so I get five hours of new material for the week. The speaker styles vary greatly within a news broadcast -- some interviewees speak more slowly than anchors. The captions in characters help me identify what I'm hearing, particularly with regional and social differences among speakers. I watch the soap operas and children's shows too, but their evening news is big for me right now.

o The book "Intermediate Chinese" [Yip Po-Ching & Don Rimmington; Routledge] is usually in my daybag. It contains grammar, but also contains many examples, in character, phonetic, and English translation -- I can switch among study modes with a single book. I alternate with others, like the transcription books for some of the audio courses, or grammars or colloquial guides, but this particular Routledge book currently has the edge.

o For dictionaries, I've been reading the Oxford Starter more again recently, particularly to look up terms from the Penton vocabulary course while going to sleep. I've been carrying around their Mini version when my pockets have allowed, but I picked up a smaller Langendorf pocket dictionary today. (I'm still trying to dope out the electronic dictionary I picked up in Shanghai... finally found the different parts of the house where the manuals and the unit was... first time I tried reading it outside, I think I lost the manual. Gotta learn it.... ;-)

o Other audio materials I've used recently are the Living Language recordings, the "Learn to Speak Chinese 2" (publisher name is not on lid, but it's a burgundy box I bought on Clement St), the cassette phrasebooks from the General Language Record Co. in Kowloon (many Chinatown & Clement bookshops), "Living in Beijing" from Sinolingua (although I don't like all that initial talk about filling out forms in the proper order ;-)... I've got the Language/30 cassettes here that I haven't listened to for awhile, and there's one or two others around the house, but these are the materials I've used over the last month or so.

o For devices, it's a nice Sony tape cassette in a leather waistbelt with earbuds while doing chores, exercising, odd times. The Nano has about a gigabyte of CD courseware -- the "Making Connections" on Cheng & Tseng is great for natural conversation, or I could switch to progressive courseware with dialogs and drills, or go straight vocabulary, or music. On my office PC I have some old courseware in various languages, but I have difficulty listening to language instruction while trying to think of what I'm reading... it's on my list to update, though.

If I had a comfortable place to read, particularly outside, then I think I'd read a lot more... best place I've found so far is the SF Brewing Company that's 'way out in North Beach. I wish there was a place near here where I could get good kimchee, too.... ;-)

Top tips

Learning a new language requires two things: learning this language, and learning how to learn any language. Additional new languages are easier than the first one. Over the past two years I've started study in Mandarin, Hindi, Korean and Cantonese. Here (in comments) are some of the learning strategies I wish, in retrospect, I had focused on more at the start.

German Sims

Ravi Purushotma writes of  newer language-learning tools, such as foreign-language computer games, audio assets, and browser-based flashcards.

Learning devices

New York Times has a story on a school which requires iPods for its French classes. They use both prerecorded material (stored on the school server), as well as recording abilities. One advantage is the variety of speakers which can be accommodated through this delivery channel.

Meanwhile, I've been wondering why we haven't seen combinations of MP3 players and electronic dictionaries yet... seems like it would be great for audio flashcards, for instance, particularly if a remote control had buttons for "i got it" and "i missed that one" for live ranking of repetitions.

More Pimsleur Tips

Now that I've gone through two of their Comprehensive language series, as well as a Quick Start in Hindi, here's the advice I would give myself were I starting again (and could talk to myself as two different people, of course ;-) :

• Carry a good pocket dictionary and use it while listening. Seeing helps remove audio amibiguities, and locks in the learning with a secondary sensory modality.
• Ignore that "Tomorrow, please start with Lesson 2" business. I still don't know what they intend by that.
• Use spaced repetition of lessons. With Japanese and the later Chinese lessons I was able to review yesterday's lesson before starting a new day's lesson, giving two days in a row to each. With Chinese I ran through each lesson from the week a third time. I'd still like to do a quick review of all sessions after finishing, giving me a four or five week review.
• During reviews, use a variety of vocal tones to dramatize the repetitions... high voices, low voices, loud, soft... break it up. Imagine speaking in different situations.
• During reviews, elaborate the spoken replies. Make longer sentences, tie them in with your own questions, negate assertions, change the tense of speech... use their questions as a trigger for a range of different replies.

This material is great; I would definitely rely on it again. Pimsleur doesn't do everything -- it ignores formal grammar, vocabulary accumulation, and only touches on cultural communication issues -- but for an ability to hear and respond easily, with a range of pattern sentences and assistance in pronunciation, it's definitely, definitely useful.

(And if you came to this blog because a search engine told you that you might be able to find various Pimsleur materials here (I get "free Pimsleur downloads" and "Pimsleur MP3" as frequent incoming referrer terms), then please spend some time looking at the other articles I've written here, which give you the best actual links. It may take some time, but just keep looking.)

Character dyslexia

This article in Nature describes how different areas of the brain handle symbol-to-meaning compared to alphabet-to-sound. Takeaway: reading difficulties in one language may or may not be extrapolated to reading difficulties in another language.

Eartraining & priorities

Neil Bartlett writes a short piece about how he is learning German. He contrasts what doesn't work for him (going sequentially through a textbook), with what does (listening for common phrases during his daily life in Vienna, and focusing on practical daily communication). I can see that, and I can also see a textbook's approach to laying a foundation of cognitive understanding before going to ear-training and frequency exercises. Lots of ways to learn more....

Pimsleur tip

This seems obvious in retrospect, but it took me awhile to dare to do it... while walking to work, listening to Chinese drills, a pocket dictionary lets me see the pinyin and characters that I'm hearing. This is particularly helpful with Chinese, where I'm not always certain of my spelling of the non-English sounds or tones, and especially in ideographic languages where the written word shows the etymology. Japanese might be the same... Hindi or western languages probably not as much, because the written word and meaning don't tie as tightly as in Chinese or Japanese.

Previously I had tried to write down words to research at home, but this didn't work out. I look like a dork walking around with a book, but it has been a great help, and I've already noticed greater retention. I have five different pocket-sized Chinese/English phrasebooks, but The Rough Guide seems to work best... their English->Chinese dictionary is the largest.