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AudioBooks in Australia |
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AudioBook Information
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About the Author C S Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 189822 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an Irish author and scholar, of mixed Irish, English, and Welsh ancestry. An Ulsterman, he was born into a Church of Ireland family in Belfast, but he was resident in England throughout his adult life. Lewis is known for his work on medieval literature, for his Christian apologetics and for his fiction, especially the childrens series entitled The Chronicles of Narnia and his science fiction Space Trilogy. He was also a leading figure in an Oxford literary group called the Inklings.
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How humans build language skills
Audio recordings of language programsstreaminghave an advantage over print or academic classes because hearing is how humans learn to speak. That is how we learned our native tongues, and how we effectively learn second languages. As babies, we listened to our parents speaking. In our hard-wired desire to communicate, we learned our native language by imitating them. According to linguists, babies begin by distinguishing basic syllables, and around 3 months, start to babble, making simple sounds (ba-ba-ba or ma-ma-ma). They also imitate the tonal changes of their parents language. By sixmonths, they can distinguish the sounds of their native language fromthose of foreign languages and begin to practice its sounds, intonations, and rhythms.Most children by the age of 1 year can say a few simple words, even if they arent clear on theirmeanings. At 18months, most children have a speaking vocabulary of eight to ten words. By 2, they begin forming simple sentences. And then language fluency begins to soar.
In the early 1900s, European linguists proposed that language learning would be better if it were conducted in the target language. In this approachcalled the Direct Method (or Natural Method)all directions, explanations, and definitions
are given in the language being taught. In a French class, French and only French is spoken or read. All grammar is learned inductively. While this method most closely imitates the way we learn our first language, it is difficult to teach and can be frustrating and discouraging to learners. Most audio-based language learning programs combine both native and target languages into talking phrasebooks.
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AudioBook Use, distribution and popularity
The popularity of portable music players such as the iPod has made audiobooks more accessible to people for portable listening. This has led to a boom in the creation of free audiobooks from Librivox and similar projects that take works from the public domain and enlist volunteers to read them. Audiobooks also can be created with text to speech software, although the quality of synthesised speech may suffer by comparison to voice talent recordings. Audiobooks in the private domain are also distributed online by for-profit companies such as Media Bay, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), Spoken Word, Naxos, Audioville, Bookstolistento and Audible.com, which in 2006 generated $82.2 million USD in revenue through sales of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word content.
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Why listen to AudioBooks?
Why listen to Audiobooks?
Human Beings have long had an oral tradition. We used to sit around the campfire listening to stories. Children love having stories read to them. Audiobooks are in that oral tradition. More than that you can listen to audio books when you are doing something else. Many people get terribly car sick (well car sick, bus sick, plane sick...any kind of motion sick), and for them there is no way to read a book while in a car or a bus (or anything moving). An audio book is fantastic on along car/bus/plane/boat journey. The just time flies as you are taken away on an imaginary journey that is just like reading (except you can keep you eyes closed)
Audio Books are great when you are doing boring things. When you do the vacuuming, cleaning the house .... Take an audio book while you do the gardening, taking a walk ..
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