Audio files information

The first ten lessons have audio files embedded in them. The purpose is to assist you in learning English by hearing the actual pronunciation of the words.

There are two ways you can listen to these sound files:

1.                1.      Individual words

Words in each lesson which the student may have more difficulty in pronouncing have a audio file attached to it. The purpose being that the student can hear the word pronounced and then practice speaking the word.

These words which have a sound file attached are marked by the symbol X immediately following it. Press this symbol X to hear the pronunciation of the preceding word.

The sound file format is a Windows Audio file (WAV). This is a very common format and should play on just about every computer. 

2.                2.     Full lesson 

There is a audio file attached where you can hear the full lesson read for you. Most of the lessons take about ten minutes to be read. Sound files can be extremely large especially when they get up to ten minutes in length and would therefore take a long time to download to your computer so that you can listen to them. To get around this problems we have used compressed file formats. We have compressed the files only to a certain point, as too much compression can reduce the quality of the audio.

In each lesson you are offered two options to listen to the full lesson:

a.                a.     Non-streaming compressed file

Non-streaming audio files means not being able to hear the sound until the entire audio file is transferred to your computer. As the lessons are roughly ten minutes in length you will have to wait around three to four minutes for the file to download if you are using a 56k modem (there is very little wait time if you are using Broadband). The file format we have used is the popular MP3 format. So after the file has downloaded, the audio you will hear will be clear and easy to listen to.

If your computer does not have a MP3 player then you can either download a MP3 player off the internet (there are many free MP3 players that can be downloaded) or you can try option “b” below.

In each lesson you can play the MP3 file by pressing this black symbol:     

b.                b.     Streaming compressed file

Streaming files means that you can listen to an audio file while it is being transferred to your computer. In other words, you can start to hear the reading of the lesson a lot quicker this way as you do not have to wait for the full file to download like you do in option "a" above. We have used the "RealAudio" format for the streaming files. This format is very popular and many people who use the internet have downloaded the RealAudio player from the RealAudio website. If you do not have it on you computer then we recommend going to www.real.com and downloading the free player so that you hear the lessons being read.

In each lesson you can play the RealAudio file by pressing the blue symbol:  

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Last Updated: Sunday, 20 August 2006