Recording Your Voice

Have you ever tried to read and record your voice when learning new words? This article is about the benefits of this language learning method.

1- It is Fun!

I had read that if it gives you a feeling of sounding unnatural when you listen to yourself, then you are succesful at speaking that foreign language. You will understand what this means when you try it. The stranger you will feel, the funnier and more satisfying it will be!  

2. It is a good way of practice speaking!

We all know that the languages first serve for communicating with others. So it is very imprtant to be able to speak in a way that your audience can understand what you sayand vice versa. In other words, you need to have a proper pronounciation to communicate well.

Let's say you are trying to learn Swedish and you took notes for the new words and phrases you just read on Internet, maybe a notebook or a simple notepad file you used. If you also record your voice reading all those new data then it will give you the opprtunity to practice your speaking skills and also you it will be saved to check it later to review your process or mistakes. 

3. You can review yourself

After a while you can listen to yourself again and perhaps you catch some small mistakes and correct them. 

4. You can share it with your friends

You can send the link of your voice recording to your friends and show them how well you speak your target langauge! You can send it to your friends that are also interested in languages or your language exchange partner who can give feedback for you. Or just have fun and show people how well you're doing!

One of my recent records was in Thai. In Thai, every syllable is pronounced in one of five tones: low, mid, high, falling, or rising. The tone must be spoken correctly for the intended meaning of a word. So it is really so different than any language I studied before and even if I listen to it alone I'm enjoying it. I also had a friend -who is speaking Thai at intermediate level- listen and I was so happy when he said I sounded very well.  

5. Repeat and Memorize

You want to build vocabulary, you opened InternetPolyglot.com, mylanguages.org or Wikipedia and made a list of words you want to learn. What you can do is that you can read those words first in your language and then the target language. In the ends you have your own mini audio dictionary that you can download to your smart phone and listen while walking outside. 

The researches show that we remember more when we hear. So I believe that it would not hurt to make a list of 50 words weekly and listen to it everyday like a song on PC, what you think?

HOW TO RECORD?

There are three ways that I can recommend.

i. Windows Recorder

You can record your voice using the sound recorder of Windows but if you have Windows XP, it is limited with 1 minute.

Windows XP işletim sisteminde 1 dakikadan uzun kaydedilmiyor. Fakat daha yeni bir Windows kullanıyorsanız, muhtemelen o prgram yeterli olacaktır. Dosyalar Wav. şeklinde kaydedilmektedir.

ii. Audacity

You can download it from http://audacity.sourceforge.net and it is completely free.

iii.AudioBoo

On this Website you can record your voice up to 3 minutes and there is no limit for record count. You can record as many as you want. http://audioboo.fm You can also be a premium member if you want to record more than 3 minutes.

This is my favorite. Because in my opinion 2.5 - 3 minutes is already optimum time length to memorize and listen the same words over and over again without forgetting and being bothered. You can also upload your files to your audioboo profile. You can add or share your feed on Google Reader and even on itunes! And if you are a blogger, you can embed your file with the player!

Şimdi sizden iki ricam var! 

I hope this method will help you, too. I would like to hear your opinions and experiences. Happy studying!