Playing It by Ear How to Use Radio to Learn Absolutely Any Language

Playing It by Ear How to Use Radio to Learn Absolutely Any Language So, youve started learning a language. Good for you!You may be finding that learning curve to be pretty steep, but youre going at it with all youve got.Youre collecting textbooks by the dozen.Youre hoarding foreign  novels  like nobodys business.Youre loading up on target-language movies and TV shows, guilt-freeâ€"because hey, theyre  educational.  You might even know what  SRS is and how to use it!And youre listening to a few radio stations here and there, right?If not, you really should start. And if youve already started, you may want to consider seriously upping your intake. But well get to all that in just a minute.The point I want to make first is, with language learning, its important to amass all kinds of tools.Sure, some wont work for you and some will, but its like throwing spaghetti at a wallâ€"you just have to try it to see if it sticks.Reading is essential for comprehension and vocabulary acquisition, those fancy-shmancy textbooks break down grammar and hand you useful, everyday vocab up front and TV and movies provide you the opportunity to listen to casual speech in context (all while picking up important cultural mannerisms).And SRS (spaced repetition software) can seal it all together by ensuring that youre maximizing your memory!So with all that written language, technology and information put together by experts, why is it so important to fit humble, old-fashioned radio into the mix? Why Radio Is so Important for Language LearnersYou may already know that listening to native resources in general is great for listening comprehension.Thats why FluentU is built around authentic resources, giving you access to the same stuff native speakers enjoy every day along with neat learning features like interactive captions and SRS.FluentU makes it possible to learn languages  from music videos, commercials, news, inspiring talks and more.With FluentU, you hear languages in real-world contextsâ€"the way that native speakers actually use them. Just a qui ck look will give you an idea of the variety of FluentU videos on offer:FluentU really takes the grunt work out of learning languages, leaving you with nothing but engaging, effective and efficient learning. It’s already hand-picked the best videos for you and organized them by level and topic. All you have to do is choose any video that strikes your fancy to get started!Each word in the interactive captions comes with a definition, audio, image, example sentences and more.Access a complete interactive transcript of every video under the Dialogue tab, and easily review words and phrases from the video under Vocab.You can use FluentU’s unique adaptive quizzes to learn the vocabulary and phrases from the video through fun questions and exercises. Just swipe left or right to see more examples of the word youre studying.The program even keeps track of what you’re learning and tells you exactly when it’s time for review, giving you a 100% personalized experience.Start using Fluen tU on the website  with your computer or tablet  or, better yet,  download the FluentU app from  the  iTunes store  or  Google Play store.Radio comes with its own set of benefits, and there are tons of reasons why it should be a cornerstone of your language learning.Its free and plentifulSo much in this world comes at a cost, and language learning can get pricy. We might fork over whatever it takes for textbooks, programs and classes. Novels, movies and TV shows can come a  little cheaper, but not by much if you want a vast second-language library. This isnt all badâ€"a lot of these essential resources are worth every penny.Radio, however, comes free.You dont need subscriptions to pay for radio. Whether offline or through online sources, its just a matter of finding stations that appeal to you!On top of that, theres a multitude of radio out there, just waiting to be discovered. Live in a region that doesnt speak the language? No worries! Online radios got you covered.Are you learnin g a somewhat rare language? Say, Navajo, Icelandic or Welsh? Well, radios going to be your very best friend, because other resources are in short supply for these languages. Even if there isnt a station dedicated to your particular language, various communities often have local radio shows in a minority language, like Yiddish, for example.With all this availability, theres nothing stopping you from tuning in to your favorite station. Which brings me toRadio is convenientWhen youve got your textbook out for some serious study, thats where your focus is going to be. When youre glued to a movie or TV show, guess what? Its not easy to split your attention.Radioâ€"either music or talkâ€"is hands-off. All you need is an Internet connection (or, you know, an actual radio).Unlike a lot of other learning tools, radio is super easy to have on while doing chores like washing dishes or folding clothes. Even if youre doing something that requires higher attention, like working or studying, you c an still benefit! Even with radio in the background, youll tune in every now and then and pick out words and sounds. Even with split attention, youll get used to the speed at which  real  speakers talk.And speaking of convenience, quite a lot of stations are available to you 24 hours a day, as long as you dont mind listening to late-night call-in shows and some repetitive new stories. If you dont live in a country in which your target language is spoken, this makes up for regional time differences. No excuse to slack off now!Radio is full of varietyCompared with other learning tools, radio is chock-full of options. Hand me a bored learner, and Ill lead them to the nearest radio-emitting machine. Radio reigns as king of variety, primarily because all of the options available come at the low, low price of  free.Now, when I talk about using radio as a learning tool, I mostly mean talk radio because its conversational and this makes it unique (unlike music, which you can easily obtain f rom lots of other sources) and less formulaic (unlike sports).But even just within the universe of talk radio, there is oh-so-much variety. You have news channels, comedy shows, interview shows, shows on subjects like literature or film (maybe you can even get some good recommendations), documentaries and call-in shows. Besides all that, you can of course still catch up with sports or relax with some musicâ€"the options are nearly endless!Radio is all talk (in a good way)TV and movies are fantastic resources for learning a language because you get the talk along with mannerisms that are essential to mixing in with a new culture, but theres still something to be said for talk and talk alone.With movies and TV, youll find yourself picking up words and meaning through situational context, and thats great!  But radio is an exercise in listening with minimal context to  really test yourself. Youre forced to figure out meaning by parsing what the speakers are saying based on  only their w ords and tone.Of course, this isnt at all like what youll encounter in the real world. Its good and useful to use context, body language and other non-verbal communication to understand others and express yourself!Nevertheless, listening to radio is a great exercise for challenging yourself, and stretching your skills now can make TV, movies and real people easier to understand in the end.Radio is naturally repetitiveAs the Romans were fond of saying:Repetitio est mater studiorum.(Repetition is the mother of skill.)And radios got repetition in spades.For one, youll hear commercials  ad nauseum  (get it?), and they tend to be more repetitive than their TV commercial brethren. Why is this desirable? Well, soon youll have them memorized word for word. And what good does  that do you? Any memorized snippet of language helps you remember vocabulary and grammatical patterns.Moreover, having a particular word or grammatical pattern attached to an irritating commercial will help it stick in your mind  much  more easily than if you had simply learned it from a textbook.Commercials arent the only repetition youll find, either. Radio shows often have introductions that the speakers will say periodically through each show, usually word for word. Longer shows are made to be listened to in the car, and so are written for people who could tune in at any time. Thus, the speakers recap everything multiple times! Like commercials, this is potentially irritating to your casual listener, yes, but gold  for a language learner.The news in general is repetitive by nature. All jokes about the current state of news media aside, the news is a wonderful learning tool. Heard a bit of a news story a while ago, but didnt quite  catch the meaning? No problem! Theyll talk about it again in about an hour. Sometimes, a big news day will come along, and theyll be talking about the same story for a week. For you, that means the same vocabulary over and over, and abundant chances for you to get i t right.So, How Can You Start Using Radio to Learn Your Language?First, find stations you loveAs mentioned above, this has never been easier. If youre lucky enough to live in a country that speaks your language, then simply crank up the radio in your car, or even buy a small handheld radio. Why do that in the age of the Internet, you may be wondering? Well, not all radio stations have online streams, and if you live in a country in which your target language is spoken, you can have access to all sorts of great local radio!For the rest of us, theres still trusty online radio to help out. But where to start?TuneIn: This is a general online radio site. The front page will show you local stations, but if those arent in your target language, thats not what were after. Instead, click By Location at the top of the page, and youll see a list of continents. Click through until you find the country youre interested in, and then browse the radio stations as you see fit. Each station has a brie f description of the kind of content it plays, but these arent always accurate, so every stations worth a shot. If you cant find something you like through this search method, try clicking Talk on the front page again. Click through to World Talk, where TuneIn has archived streams of talk shows from many of the larger world languages.Multilingual Books: This site is mainly a resource for people to buy books and media from other countries. However, like TuneIn, its radio section allows you to search by language  for online radio stations. You have to download the streams here, so make sure you have the appropriate software to play each file type!Omniglot: Omniglot is a great resource to learn about languages and writing systems in general. Luckily for our purposes, they also have a wonderful section with resources for a huge number of world languages. These include radio stations, so check them out!Apps: I recommend checking out radio apps in your target language for iOS or Android. There are plenty of them for most major languages, but they vary widely in quality. Personally, I use Radio Netherlands for Dutch and Radios France for French.Then, listen, listen, listen!Now that youve got your radio by the basketful, listen to as much as you can, wherever you can, whenever you can. Whether youre listening to it in the background or hanging on to every word, listening is important! Try listening to a show or station you like on a regular basis, like whenever you walk to class or drive to work. If you can tie language activities to your daily life, it can help to keep you consistent.Need some more targeted listening tips? Try these.Pick up new words and remember them.While youre listening, youll end up picking out and reinforcing words you already know. Keep that up! But how do you retain the  new words you learn through radio?As you listen, the speakers will most certainly repeat words over and over. Wait till you hear one that stands out to you. Look it up in a di ctionary to make sure you have the meaning right. (This can take a few tries if spelling or writing is tricky in your target language!) Then, enter it into your SRS or whatever you use to store new vocab. For added context and retention, enter one of the example sentences from your dictionary along with the English translation. After that, mosey on back to your radio!Watch for linguistic ticks, like filler!Whats filler? Linguistic filler includes words like um and uh Theyre placeholder words for when were collecting our thoughts or hesitating. However, they often dont work between languages!Using English filler in Spanish or Zulu will immediately mark you as a foreign speaker. This isnt the end of the world, but its  incredibly easy to fix.  Filler  words can be hard to come by without listening in on native speakers conversations. But with unscripted conversational  radio, filler is very easy to pick out, because itll be used over and over.Sometimes filler is more obvious, such as when Spanish speakers say eh  and French speakers say euh. Sometimes its less obvious: Japanese speakers say ??  (ano) and Icelanders say hérna.  Either way, just keep listening to unscripted radio, and the filler will become readily apparent, mostly by its frequency alone. So easy!As you listen, use the variety of content to tackle specific linguistic problemsIts always good to keep tabs on your weak areas when learning a language, as well as to be aware of your strengths. Maybe you have plenty of native speaker friends, so youve got casual conversation down pat, and its formal language that trips you up. Or maybe youre the opposite, and slangy, off-the-cuff conversation sends you running. Radio can help you bring these weak areas up to speed!News is great for formal language. This can range from a news recap on the hour, to an interview with a leading expert on some topic, to the most formal of speeches given by heads of state. Become a real news junkie, and youll see improvement in your formal tone as well as some complex vocabulary. News is unlikely to stray into the realm of informal talk.For that, youll want to listen to interview shows for more informal conversational give-and-take. Call-in shows provide much of the same, with the added benefits of odd accents and terrible phone connections! For an even deeper comprehension of informal language, listen to comedy. Comedy obviously provides jokes (they dont always translate well!), swear words and crucial cultural references.Finally, use different accents to exercise your earBecause radio stations are easy to find and cheap, theres no reason you should only be able to understand the standard accent of your chosen language. Most popular world languages include a wide variety of accents and dialects. Even if you never want to  talk  in a particular dialect, listening to different manners of speaking can help you roll with the punches when you come across them in the field.While accents from within a certai n country can be harder to find (national standard dialects and all that), accents  between countries are relatively easy to find in terms of radio stations.So for example, use TuneIn to compare Canadian French with Haitian French, Spanish from Madrid with Colombian Spanish, Taiwanese Mandarin with Mainland Chinese Mandarin. You get the picture! As an added benefit, after youve struggled awhile with a strange accent, listening to the standard language will be like a hot knife through butter.And there you have it: all about why and how radio can bring your language skills to the next level.Now go blast that German/Spanish/Icelandic talk radio!