Getting Custom Listening Materials From Rhinospike
RhinoSpike.com is a great resource for language learners. Like language exchanges, it is a system where you can help others and get the help you need. On this site, you can ask that a native speaker reads a text and records an audio file or you can ask a native speaker to transcribe an audio file or video. Both are very helpful for learning pronunciation and training your listening skills.
Olly Richards has said that having the transcription of a video or audio is very helpful for developing listening skills. I agree because when we read and listen at the same time, our brain already knows what words to expect and so can relax and focus on hearing the sounds and learning to hear native rhythm rather than being stressed out trying to identify the words while doing all the other things. It also makes it easier for us to learn new vocabulary from our listening practice because if we don’t know a word, we can find it in the transcript and the look it up. If we didn’t have a recording, then we would have to guess the spelling. This could be quite difficult in languages like, English and Chinese where the sounds do not correspond well to the written form of the word.
I just started learning Korean and I’m still having trouble hearing the differences between some of the consonant sounds. I searched on RhinoSpike and found a recording of some minimal pairs (words that differ by only one sound) by a native Korean speaker from Seoul. I plan to add this to my listening library as a way to help my brain learn to hear the differences between the sounds of Korean. I can also try to imitate the speaker as I listen. This will help both my listening and pronunciation skills.
The cool thing about RhinoSpike is that you can get listening materials that are related to your interests and the things you want to learn. Do you want to listen to materials about astronomy or linguistics. My guess is that there aren’t many recordings out there for language learners that would be appropriate to a A2-B2 level. With RhinoSpike you can also for a specific text to be recorded and you can ask for it to be read slowly and then again at a normal rate of speech.
Maybe your are studying children’s books in the language you are learning and you wish you could find an audio version. You could make a request on RhinoSpike for someone to read the text and record it for you. Maybe you have finished children’s books are want to start more difficult texts, but can’t find any on the Internet. You could ask for someone to record a text in slow speech and then in fast speech. Maybe your have found a song that you really like but you can’t find the lyrics on the Internet anywhere. You could make a request that someone transcribe that video or song for you.
When you sign up for RhinoSpike, they give you one credit for free. This credit can be used to unlock a recording so you can download it. After than you either have to buy credits or make recordings for other people. For every three recordings you make, you get 1 credit. Some recording requests are as short as a sentence and others are quite long. Most seem to be around 200-400 words which takes less than 10 minutes to record. You can also transcribe a recording for someone. You listen to the recording and write down the words your hear and then upload it. I haven’t done this yet as some of the transcription requests are quite long (15 minutes or as much as an hour).
If you want more listening practice with materials that are appropriate to your interests and needs, then you should check out RhinoSpike. If you want to join the conversation or make a comment, then join us on Twitter by tweeting with the hashtag #usingrhinospike.