Almost everyone who studied English at school or university has probably faced the problem of a complete misunderstanding of spoken English, especially with American pronunciation, in the future.
After I got a job in an American company, a good knowledge of a foreign language became a professional necessity for me, as I constantly had to communicate with American colleagues. And as it turned out, it was more difficult to understand the spontaneous speech of a true American than to express the thought itself. I had to improve my English, although I never had any problems with studying at school and university.
I began to engage in self-study, found podcasts with voice acting and text, printed texts, translated and listened at the same time. It was quite laborious and long to single out unfamiliar words, write them out, and then still manage to remember them.
Then I went through the Google Play applications (I have an android phone). I tried many of them – in search of my own. It turned out to be not so simple, although there are a lot of programs on this topic.
But most of them were done poorly, as if not done well: either they were only partially satisfied, or with voice-over-synthesizer, or simply audited texts in English – without translation.
As a result, I found my ideal application for practicing English. It has been on the market for no more than a month, so its rating is not high yet, but the reviews are mostly good:
English. listening
It combines all the features necessary for learning and practicing a foreign language: high-quality, interesting texts, listening by native speakers with different accents and professional (not machine-made, as in most programs!) Russian translation.
At the start, you immediately get into the “Simulator”. Looks like a player. The principle is this: click on ‘play’ and the audiobook starts playing, while playing, audible English text is shown in the upper part of the screen with subtitles, a literary translation is shown in the lower part, and translation can be turned off by pressing the button below. Listening to the text, trying to understand it, at first I peeped into the translation. Over time, this is no longer necessary, since you yourself begin to understand what they are talking about. In general, it is similar to the method of parallel translation, which is considered the most effective in learning foreign languages.
Program remembers text and place in the textwhere you left off, in case you need to interrupt your training. Navigation through the text is done as with the help of a scrollbar or the usual scrolling.
And the most interesting feature is that you do not need to look for a translation of unfamiliar words, by clicking on any word below is a dictionary entry with options for its translation and the ability to add it to “Favorites” and repeat it from there. I met such functions in other applications, but everywhere they worked only when the Internet was on, but here everything works without internet.
Texts There are different topics, and the developers are constantly adding something new:
This is a list of headings that are in the program at the moment. Here is an example of a download from the Thematic Dialogues section. By default, each category has one already downloaded text – for example, you download the rest yourself, it downloads quite quickly, you can send several files to the download at once. After that, you can listen to any of the downloaded texts without an Internet connection.
In the future, the developers promised to add the function of adding to favorites not only unfamiliar words, but also entire phrases, idioms, which is often necessary.
In the settings, it is possible to delete downloaded and already listened to texts in order to clear the memory.
Very happy with this find! I hope it will be useful to someone.
Source: Trash Box
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
