They speak too fast!I can’t understand anything! Does that sound familiar? When we begin to communicate with natives in a new language, it is often what we experience: they are speaking so fast that our heads spin! Even though we know the vocabulary and the grammar, it all goes by like a race car in the night. What can we do about this? Slow them down, of course.
When you are actually talking to a live person, ask them to slow down. It will definitely help if they are able to. What about with your recordings? There is a great free audio tool called Audacity that can slow down any recording on your computer in 1 minute . First, you will need to download the program: Audacity. (It’s open source.)
What it allows you to do is to slow down a recording (MP3 or any common format) 5, 10, 20, 50% without changing the pitch. So the speakers sound normal. They are just speaking a lot slower. Just what we needed!
So if you have installed Audacity – it takes 2 minutes – here is how to use it. ( I will assume you have an mp3 file or an iTune file on your computer that you want to play.)
1. Open Audacity.
2. Click file (upper left-hand corner.)
3. left-click Open
4. Find the file you want to play . To make it easy you could keep your files in My Documents or on your Desktop.
5. Left-click the file to highlight it.
6. Click Open.
Audacity now imports the file. If you push the play button (green triangle) it will play the file normally. Try it and then Push Stop (the square Yellow button).
Now! Let’s slow this recording down. It only takes a few easy steps.
1. In the top menu bar click on Edit.
2. In the dropdown menu click “Select/All” (or use the hotkey: type Ctrl+A)
3. In the top Menu bar click “Effect”.
4. Click “Change Tempo
5. In the “Change Tempo” Menu find ”percent change” and replace 00.000 by -20.000. (Remember the minus sign or you will speed up the recording.)
6. Click OK and wait a few seconds.
You are now ready!
Click “Play” and listen to the recording played 20% slower. You can slow it down as much as you want, but after 30% it seems to distort a bit.
There you are! You now have a recording that you can actually understand. Save it and play it whenever you want. If you like you can export it as an MP3 file and download it somwhere else: your iPod, for example.
Enjoy!
Tags: learn english online, learn french online, learn spanish online, online language classes
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