Playable audio for "Practice Makes Perfect" series etc.

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Chung
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Playable audio for "Practice Makes Perfect" series etc.

Postby Chung » Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:04 am

As I've been reviewing my German using "Practice Makes Perfect German Vocabulary", I ended up poking around the publisher's website and figured out how to get access to the supplements (including streamed audio) for the newer edition of several of its language books. The stuff that's available is dominated by supplements for FIGS (surprise, surprise), but there is stuff available for a few other books such as Read and Speak Arabic and Practice Makes Pefect Basic Japanese.

It seems that publishers are warming to the idea of offering audio supplements of their textbooks, workbooks or graded readers on-line for free. The ideal arrangement is what you get from Routledge or Tuttle which offer course audio as downloadable .mp3 files. Lesser-known examples of such freely-downloadable audio come from Cornelsen for German adaptations/translations (the "Lextra" series) of the current generation of "Teach Yourself" language courses (at minimum the recordings of the dialogues in a "Lextra" course for a given language are nearly the same (if not the same) as those in the corresponding "Teach Yourself" course), and Darakwon for most of its textbooks and workbooks, all of which focus on Korean for foreigners.

McGraw-Hill in comparison seems to have broken ranks and wants to reinforce our reliance on smartphones by presenting its audio supplements as streamable files (i.e. no downloading) available through an app for Android or iOS to be used on Chrome or Safari. I'm an old geezer who's not interested in adding junk on my phone. The audio is also playable on a laptop or desktop but a bit of an irritant is that I need to pretend that I'm using a touchscreen. If I want to scroll down the screen/list as shown on my laptop monitor, I need to hold down the left mouse button, and then move my mouse forward on the mousepad to scroll down the list.

A lot of files (called "cards" by McGraw-Hill) are just flashcards of words from a book, and thus not that useful for many people while other files are interactive exercises or rudimentary audio exercises based on the printed content. Some dialogues are also broken down line by line with each line called an "audio card". Fortunately, dialogues are generally recorded in whole as one "audio card". In turn, many "cards" are grouped into subfolders called "sets". It's serviceable once you get the hang of things.

In the past, McGraw-Hill issued CDs for the audio component of several readers and text-/workbooks but newer editions of such books are nowadays sold as "premium" partially by having free streamable audio via an app (or the clunky-ass website). However, I concede that it's improved things a bit by now providing that streamable audio for some titles whose older editions never came with audio in the first place. I'm referring here to a few of the books on grammar (e.g. "Practice Makes Perfect Complete Italian Grammar", "Practice Makes Perfect Basic Spanish"), and even better, the books for conversation (i.e. "Practice Makes Perfect ... Conversation" for French, Italian, and Spanish). For the traditional grammar drill books, the audio recordings are simple exercises where you record yourself translating some sentence or filling in a blank on a flash card, and then compare it with the recorded answer. On the other hand, the conversation books now get streamable recordings of the dialogues in addition to those simple speaking exercises. Otherwise, I'd much rather get the older edition with CDs (for a reasonable price) as a book's content is often the same regardless of the editions (especially true when the same author wrote different editions). I'm thinking here of the subset of "... Demystified" books (e.g. "German Demystified") or some of the graded readers (e.g. "Easy French Reader", "Read and Think Spanish"). I just like the permanence of getting the book with accompanying CD(s) for private use compared to relying on a page of streamable audio links which McGraw-Hill can take down whenever it feels like it.

Here's a full list of the titles that have links to streamable audio and/or flashcards on the McGraw-Hill Language Lab (remember: only Chrome or Safari work for the site). Click on a flag, and then you'll get a list of titles sorted by language. Click on the blue arrow to the far right of every title or chapter/subset to get at the files; you may have to click a lot of blue arrows on the far right to burrow through all of the subfolders. In some instances, you'll have to zoom out on the browser to see the full list of titles/chapters/subsets. To go back one level be it to the list of book titles sorted by language, or even the home page of the "Language Lab", click on the blue square in the upper left corner of the screen which is marked "home", "titles" or "chapters". Don't click the "back" arrow button on your browser.

N.B. "PMP" = "Practice Makes Perfect"

French
Easy French Reader
French Demystified
French Grammar Drills
French Illustrated Dictionary
French Verb Drills
French Vocabulary Drills
PMP Basic French
PMP Complete French All-in-One
PMP Complete French Grammar
PMP French Reading and Comprehension
PMP French Conversation
PMP French Vocabulary
PMP French Vocabulary Building with Suffixes
Read and Think French
The Ultimate French Review and Practice

German
German Demystified
German Grammar Drills
German Verb Drills
German Vocabulary Drills
PMP German Verb Tenses
PMP German Vocbaulary

Italian
Easy Italian Reader
Italian Demystified
Italian Grammar Drills
Italian Verb Drills
Italian Vocabulary Drills
PMP Complete Italian Grammar
PMP Italian Conversation
PMP Italian Reading and Comprehension
PMP Italian Vocabulary
PMP Italian Verb Tenses
Read and Think Italian
The Ultimate Italian Review and Practice

Spanish
Complete Medical Spanish
Complete Spanish Step-by-Step
Correct your Spanish Blunders
Easy Spanish Reader
Easy Spanish Step-by-Step
PMP Basic Spanish
PMP Complete Spanish All-in-One
PMP Complete Spanish Grammar
PMP Spanish Conversation
PMP Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions
PMP Spanish Verb Tenses
PMP Spanish Vocabulary
PMP Spanish Vocabulary Building with Suffixes
Read and Think Spanish
Spanish Demystified
Spanish for Healthcare Providers
Spanish Grammar Drills
Spanish Verb Drills
Spanish Vocabulary Drills
Stories from Latin America
Stories from Mexico
Stories from Spain
The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice

Other Languages
Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar
Japanese Demystified
PMP Basic Japanese
PMP Basic Chinese
Read and Speak Arabic
Read and Speak Korean

Similar to what I suggested in that thread about Tuttle's downloadable audio, anyone could get some value from McGraw-Hill's streamable audio by buying a cheap, used copy of an older edition for any of the textbooks listed above without worrying about getting that book with the CD(s).

McGraw-Hill also offers some bonus audio and samples of several of its textbooks in the online Study Player. This site needs Adobe Flash to work, and is a bigger disappointment than the Language Lab above mainly because it offers just streamable sample tracks from many of the language books published by McGraw-Hill including most of the titles in the "Teach Yourself" series. In many instances, the relevant titles are sold with a CD or two anyway containing all of the audio.
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Re: Playable audio for "Practice Makes Perfect" series etc.

Postby tomgosse » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:44 pm

Chung wrote:In the past, McGraw-Hill issued CDs for the audio component of several readers and text-/workbooks but newer editions of such books are nowadays sold as "premium" partially by having free streamable audio via an app (or the clunky-ass website). However, I concede that it's improved things a bit by now providing that streamable audio for some titles whose older editions never came with audio in the first place. I'm referring here to a few of the books on grammar (e.g. "Practice Makes Perfect Complete Italian Grammar", "Practice Makes Perfect Basic Spanish"), and even better, the books for conversation (i.e. "Practice Makes Perfect ... Conversation" for French, Italian, and Spanish). For the traditional grammar drill books, the audio recordings are simple exercises where you record yourself translating some sentence or filling in a blank on a flash card, and then compare it with the recorded answer. On the other hand, the conversation books now get streamable recordings of the dialogues in addition to those simple speaking exercises. Otherwise, I'd much rather get the older edition with CDs (for a reasonable price) as a book's content is often the same regardless of the editions (especially true when the same author wrote different editions). I'm thinking here of the subset of "... Demystified" books (e.g. "German Demystified") or some of the graded readers (e.g. "Easy French Reader", "Read and Think Spanish"). I just like the permanence of getting the book with accompanying CD(s) for private use compared to relying on a page of streamable audio links which McGraw-Hill can take down whenever it feels like it.


I'm in agreement with you. I have a terrible time using McGraw-Hill's web site. It seems I can never find the links to a book's audio. This is especially true of the French Demystified series. I always look for books with CD's.
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Re: Playable audio for "Practice Makes Perfect" series etc.

Postby lingua » Sat Apr 07, 2018 9:48 pm

Thanks for that information tomgosse.

I have most if not all of the Italian ones you sited and about half the German ones. I've always liked the Practice Makes Pefect series though I bought a couple Latin ones and don't think there as well done.
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