There is no better way to improve your English than to listen to it WITH UNDERSTANDING. Having the texts of what is being said available can be a great help. This is what we like to do in this project. We collect the texts of the audiomaterials and make them available so you can listen and read at the same time. Not only that, but by double-clicking on a word, you will be taken to the Cambridge Learners' Dictionary, where you can look up the meaning of a word. Click here to get instructions as to how to best set up the required Windows Media Player.

We'll start you off with a completely free audiobook:

The Emperor's New Clothes (by Christian Andersen)  

Our second item is an other free audiobook, a 3 - minute ghost story

A Room for the Night     

The third audiobook has 4 stories in it:

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

Puss in Boots

Cinderella

Dick Whittington

Our next audiobook consists of  4 short stories by Conan Doyle, well known for his Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Horror of the Heights by Conan Doyle

The Terror of Blue John Gap by Conan Doyle

Lot No. 249

The Sealed Room

READING and WRITING are very important in our modern societies, yet they don't make a Language a Language. Long before man invented the written script (about 3000 BC) , language was spoken and understood. Truly learning a language therefore crucially depends on AUDIO. It means that we are able to listen to it with understanding and learn in turn to speak it ourselves.

When it comes to listening and speaking, we can learn from how we ourselves as babies and young childeren learned our mother tongues. All we could do at first was listen and listen and listen.

In learning another language, we best learn from this natural model. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and speak when we feel we can. It means that we should put an awful lot of importance on listening. The better you are able to listen and understand, the better you will be able to speak a language.

In this project we are going to listen to Audio-books. To listen and not understand will not help. This is where the written word becomes a really handy tool. We will provide you with a trandscript of what you hear and a quick way to consult a dictionary. The idea is to first listen to a passage and read along. Then listen again, now without looking at the written text.

To listen to the Audio books, you need the Windows Media Player. It simply comes with your Windows version or can be downloaded from the Microsoft Site.

We recommend setting it to Compact mode. You can switch between Compact and Full mode by clicking on the symbol at the bottom on the right. You will also find it convenient to keep the player on top. Right click on the Player, then choose Tools (or whatever it is in your language) and Options. There, under Player settings, you can select to Keep the Player on top of other windows

To take part you can play the free sample, if you like, but to do it right you will have to buy the Audio book. We get a small percentage of what you pay, which in turn helps us to keep this service going and you will build up a collection of audio books that you can enjoy and turn to again and again.

Enjoy it.