The Story Home

In this post I'd like to introduce The Story Home.  It is not free to download mp3 files of the stories for you can listen for free.  I think the quality of the reading and the audio is quite good.

Audio books

I have introduced Librivox on this blog. It's a very useful site because it provides the audio and text of many books for free.  However, it can be a little bit difficult to figure out how to find books on it that interest you. In this respect, I think Books Should Be Free is very useful. Most of the audio books on this site are Librivox recordings but the organization of the site is easier to understand. Also, Books Should Be Free provides an "Audio book preview" function that makes it very easy to check the quality of the recording and narration before you download a book:

Books Should Be Free also makes it very easy to find the text for each book.

Another site I would like to introduce is LoudLit.org. "Lit" in the title means "literature." The "About" part of the website says "LoudLit.org is committed to delivering public domain literature paired with high quality audio performances." I agree that the sound quality and the quality of the reading performances are very good. Librivox has some very good recordings but some are not very good. LoudLit.org is much more consistent in presenting high-quality audio books. The number of books, however, is smaller. Another feature of LoudLit.org that I think is very nice is the Read & Listen function. (Click on the link to try it out.)

Finally, verkaro.org also provides very high quality recordings. Unfortunately, verkaro.org does not provide links to the texts that they have recorded but you should be able to find all of the texts on the web if you search for the titles.

British Council

The other day I found that the British Council publishes stories with text and high-quality audio on their website.  Click here to read and listen to a story called "Scarlett."

NPR

Those of you who are interested in listening to news in English should check out the NPR website.  "NPR" stands for "National Public Radio."  You can read the news programs and also listen to the audio.  There are several different ways to listen to the audio.  First, you can listen through your computer's browser by clicking a button that looks like this:

 Second, you can download the audio as an MP3 file and then either play it on your computer or put it in an MP3 player that you can carry with you.  Right click on the download arrow to get the file.

Third, NPR also lets you listen to many of their programs as podcasts.  Click here to look at the NPR podcast directory.

Your grades

Most of you need to do more work to get a good grade in this class. I will give you credit for the work that you do until the end of this month.

There are three kinds of work that you can do online to get credit for this class: blogging, Lang-8, and EnglishCentral. Be sure to send me an e-mail to toward the end of January to ask about your grade. In your e-mail, explain what you have done this semester and how much time you have spent doing it. In order to get a good grade in this class, you need to convince me that you have spent an average of two hours or more per week studying for this class.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Wall Street Journal ビジネス英語

One of the students in our class introduced me to the Wall Street Journal ビジネス英語 web site. In addition to text, they also have some video with subtitles. Please check it out.

Good work

Click here to see an example of the kind of work I would like everyone in this class to be doing.

Are you doing enough?

Attendance has been poor recently and few of you are working outside of class. Be careful. You may not receive a grade that you are happy with. Be sure to check with me if you are concerned about your grade.

EnglishCentral

Today we will practice English on EnglishCentral. Click here to join my class on EnglishCentral.

No Class

I cannot come to class on Tuesday, November 2. Please continue your reading and update your blogs. If you like, join EnglishCentral and then send me an e-mail telling me that you would like me to follow your progress there.

English Central

I recommend the site English Central. I will try to demonstrate how to use this site at the end of today's class.

About Podcasts

I made a video in which I explain what podcasts are. Click here to see the video (it should open in another window). To download a copy of this video that you can put in an iPod or other device that can play mp4 files right click here. If you have an iPod or mp3 player that cannot play video right click here to download an mp3 of the audio.

Next week I will give you a quiz on the English in the video. I will play a recording of the audio and you will have to write down the sentence that I played and translate it into Japanese.

Here is the text of the video. Please use this to study for the quiz. If you would like to print out the text in order to studying it, please click here to get a pdf file of this text.

Hi! In this video I try to help you understand what podcasts are and how they work.

Podcasts are audio or video programs that you download with a computer and can enjoy on your computer or on a portable device, such as an iPod. Many people use a program called iTunes to download podcasts. There are other ways to get podcasts but let's begin by looking at iTunes. If you don't have iTunes on your computer you can download it for free. Just type "iTunes" into Google. It doesn't matter whether you have a Mac or a Windows computer. You can use iTunes on either one.

After you start iTunes, click on "iTunes Store." Even though it's called a "store," don't worry. Almost all podcasts are free. Next, click on "Podcasts." Now, let's look at the podcasts in the "英語を学ぶ" quick link that is in the Japanese iTunes Store.

There are two types of podcasts: audio and video. The audio podcasts are like radio programs and the video podcasts are like TV programs. Let's look at this one to see what it's like.

[A short video plays here.]

If you are interested in this podcast you should subscribe to it by clicking on this button. It will take a few minutes for the last program in the podcast to download.

After you subscribe to a podcast you can find it the "Podcasts" section of iTunes. The podcast that we just subscribed to is made up of many individual shows. Podcasts are similar to radio and TV programs in that each podcast is a series of shows. In this case, "Gaba G Style English" is the name of the whole series. These are the individual shows in the series. After you subscribe to a podcast, iTunes will show you when a new show in the series is ready to be downloaded. If you click on this "Settings" button, you can change how often iTunes checks for new shows (or "episodes") and what you want iTunes to do when it finds a new show in a podcast that you have subscribed to.

Podcasts are like radio or TV shows in that they have audio and video content. However, they are like newspapers or magazines in that, once you subscribe to them, they come to you automatically. If you subscribe to a newspaper, you will find it in the morning even if you were asleep when it was delivered. In the same way, if you subscribe to a podcast, you can find the new shows when you turn on your computer. Unlike TV and radio, you don't have to worry about when the next show will be broadcast.

By the way, let me take a minute or two to explain that parts of the word "podcast." "Podcast" combines the "pod" of "iPod" and the "cast" of "broadcast." First, let's think about the meaning of "iPod." Apple has many products that begin with the letter "i": iPod, iPad, iMac, iTunes, iMovie, etc. The "i" in these products stands for "internet." A "pod" is a part of a plant or machine that can be separated from the main part. So, the iPod is part of a computer that is connected to the internet and that you can separate from the computer and take with you. Now, let's think about the word "broadcast." "Broadcast" is also made up of two parts. "Broad" means "over a wide area" and "cast" means to "send." So, "broadcast" means to send radio and TV signals over a wide area so that people. Now, I think we are ready to understand how the word "podcast" combines parts of the words "iPod" and "broadcast" to mean programs that are sent, or "broadcast," to iPods over the internet.

If you have an iPod or iPhone, it is very easy to use iTunes to copy the podcasts on to it. If you use a Sony Walkman or some other device, it may be a little harder to copy the podcasts onto your player but I think it is possible. Remember that you can only watch video podcasts on devices that can play video files. Many iPods can do this but not all. Before you buy an iPod or Walkman or some other device, make sure that it can play the kinds or podcasts that you want to subscribe to.

In my next video, I'll show you how to used iTunes to find lots of podcasts that you can use to study English.

ALCIM WORLD

Please look at this post about ALCIM WORLD.

Comments

I have been writing comments on your blogs. I would like you to respond to my comments, especially when I ask you a question in a comment.

Also, it is your responsibility to make sure that you understand what I have written in my comments. If you do not understand what I mean by something I have written in a comment to you, ask me.

Attendance and study outside of class

Today it is raining very hard. I understand that it may be difficult for some of you to come to class today. However, this morning I was surprised to find that no one (not even one person) wrote anything on his or her blog over the past week; the only new posts were those made during class last week.

There are two things that I would like to say about studying outside of class and about attendance. First, I hope that everyone understands that I do not consider merely coming to class once a week and doing a little bit of study during class time to be sufficient. You should be studying at least a couple of hours outside of class each week in addition to your study in class. Second, attendance in class has been poor. Even those of you who come to class are often coming late and/or watching YouTube or doing other things that are unrelated to this class during class time. I am afraid that the combination of poor attendance and failure to study outside of class will cause some of you to fail this class.

I understand that today is somewhat special because of the bad weather but, overall, I think most of you need to study much harder in this class. Please understand that your blogs must reflect regular study if you wish to get credit for this class and particularly if you want to get a good grade.

Easy class?

Today, relatively few people have come to class. In this class, if you work hard on your blog outside of class you can get a good grade -- even if you miss several classes. I expect everyone to work in and out of class. Your blog should reflect about three hours of study per week. So, if you miss class, you should be spending an extra 90 minutes outside of class. Since I expect about three hours of study per week, you may not pass the class even if you come regularly. You need to study outside of class too.

An example of good work

Click here to see a good example of work by a student who read about sports. This student has included a link to the article he read.

Another excellent example

Please click here to see an example of an assignment that has been done very well. The only thing this student has forgotten to do is to include a link to the web page she was reading. She wrote the title of the book (Robinson Crusoe for Children) but did not include a link. Click here to see the chapter of the book that she was reading. By the way, I have link to the text and audio of this book on the right side of this blog.

Lang-8.com

Yesterday, I learned about a site called Lang-8.com. If you would like to have native speakers check your English, have a look!

Excellent work

Please click here to see an excellent example of the kind of work I would like for you to do in this class.