New audio for English by the Nature Method

[jonm]

Luke Ranieri, who's recorded audio for Lingua Latina per se illustrata and the first couple chapters of L'Italiano secondo il «Metodo Natura», has just posted audio of the first chapter of English by the Nature Method.

For those who aren't familiar with these books, they all follow the same format. They're entirely in the target language, and they start with very basic sentences and build from there. There's a sidebar with a few pointers, but apart from that, the idea is that you learn entirely through induction. And there are a few helpful review exercises at the end of each chapter.

In addition to the Latin, Italian, and English books I've mentioned, there's also Le français par la «Méthode Nature». The Latin book is still in print with lots of supplementary material available. The Italian, English, and French books are out of print, but pdfs are easy to find online.

I've done the first few chapters of the Latin book and I'm currently working my way through the Italian book, and I find it to be a very effective approach. If I was learning English as a beginner, I would absolutely use the English book along with this new audio. Of course, if you're reading this, you're probably not a beginner in English, but you might know someone who is. And actually the books progress well into intermediate territory. I don't know how far Luke intends to go, but hopefully he's planning to do more chapters.

One could read and then listen to the audio, or another way to make use of this material would be to make Anki cards. That's what I did for the first few chapters of the Italian book, and I felt like I ended up with a really solid grasp of that material. Here's what I was doing, in case anyone's interested in trying it. I like making dictation cards, where I hear a sentence and type what I hear. Then I flip to the back, compare what I've typed to the original, and also replay the audio once or twice and practice saying it. In the time I spend with each sentence, I notice things about the way it's put together, and along the way I practice listening, spelling, and pronunciation. I think these cards would help a lot with English spelling and pronunciation and the irregular ways in which they correspond.

For the audio, I was using Amazon Polly TTS, which is pretty impressive, but I ended up deciding that I prefer to stick to human audio recorded by native speakers. So at this point I'm just reading the Italian book, sometimes silently and sometimes aloud. But I miss the audio component, so I think what Luke's providing here is really valuable. Anki or no, having the audio to listen to really enhances the experience of using these books.

One caveat: These books are from the 50s, and here and there the language is a bit stilted or antiquated. For example, "persons" instead of "people," or "Has Mr. Smith a wife?" where I would say "Does Mr. Smith have a wife?" (or "Is Mr. Smith married?"). I don't think it's a big deal, but it might be worth complementing with something more modern.

[Cainntear]

It's potentially slightly confusing to have a reader with a rhotic accent (all Rs pronounced) when the phonetic transcription is in a non-rhotic accent (Rs at the end of the syllable dropped and/or incorporated into the preceding vowel).