Learn the top five tools for learning the language
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Medina: Hamjamboni! Welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com! I’m Medina. |
| Joshua: Hello everybody, I’m Joshua! This is All About, Lesson 11 - Top 5 Most Useful Tools for Learning Swahili. In this lesson, we have a great list of tools to help your Swahili studies. |
| Medina: We sure do! |
Lesson focus |
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| Joshua: These are tools that, when put together, will do wonders for your Swahili. |
| Medina: And they will save you a lot of time! |
| Joshua: Ok, let’s get right into our first tool...entertainment! |
| Medina: Listeners, we should always remember that language is not just an academic pursuit. |
| Joshua: The purpose of any language is to communicate with others, and that’s more often done through stories and video than through academic papers. Besides, entertainment provides excellent examples of how the language is actually used by native speakers, which is something no textbook can copy. |
| Medina: Some great resources for Swahili learners of all levels are YouTube, and the Swahili TV and radio channels’ web pages. Like Sayare or the NTV Swahili Station. |
| Joshua: I know many people who’ve used movies and TV shows as their main way to stay in contact with a culture. |
| Medina: But just remember, you are what you watch! |
| Joshua: Exactly. Watching a professionally produced feature film will give better and faster results than watching people doing dumb stuff! |
| Medina: (laughs) It’s true. Our next tool is a dictionary. |
| Joshua: Using bilingual dictionaries is useful when studying Swahili. There are many feature-rich dictionaries out there, and an English-Swahili dictionary in particular is a treasure trove for Swahili learners. |
| Medina: These days though, web-based and electronic dictionaries are becoming popular. They are complete enough to help you with your assignments, faster than paper dictionaries, and available on any web browser or smartphone. |
| Joshua: But be careful. Using a translation service like Google Translate might help you understand a Swahili sentence, but it should not be relied on completely. |
| Medina: True, although when I use Google Translate to translate from Swahili it is pretty much always spot on. Also, remember there is a difference between web-based dictionaries and translation services. |
| Joshua: That's right. Web-based dictionaries will give you the dictionary entry of the word you're looking for; an online translator will offer you a machine translation that is not always accurate. |
| Medina: Ok, Joshua, what’s our next tool? |
| Joshua: Swahili -speaking friends and loved ones! |
| Medina: Those are tools? |
| Joshua: Of course! And can be the most efficient and most rewarding sources for learning Swahili. Friends and loved ones who speak to you in Swahili can give you more insight, understanding, and help you feel the heart of Swahili. |
| Medina: That's true. Swahili is always changing because of increasing vocabulary, and the only way you can keep up, is if you can feel the language the way they do. With their help, you'll learn to express yourself in Swahili and understand others in ways that none of the tools we’ve already mentioned can approach. |
| Joshua: The more time you spend negotiating meaning from natural native speech, the better. Alright. What's our next tool? |
| Medina: Social networking websites. |
| Joshua: Ah, yes. Sometimes, talking with Swahili-speaking friends and family isn't really an option. If you dont know anyone who speaks Swahili, you might not feel comfortable randomly calling people in Kenya to practice speaking! |
| Medina: Many people, probably most people, are in a similar situation. That's why social networking sites can be so useful when you are learning a language. |
| Joshua: One of the best is Lang8.com – l-a-n-g dash eight dot com. |
| Medina: This site is different from other language-learning sites because it provides a free connection for native speakers of a language to correct the writing of people who are studying that language. |
| Joshua: For example, a native English speaker can correct a Swahili person's English writing and a native Swahili speaker can correct a native English speaker who is studying Swahili. |
| Medina: It's a great place to see how a native speaker might write a particular sentence, paragraph, or short writing sample. |
| Joshua: And if you want to meet even more Swahili speakers, the best place is Facebook. |
| Medina: Who doesn’t have Facebook these days? Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site out there. |
| Joshua: It's been around since 2005, and like in the U.S., in Kenya Facebook has skyrocketed. Almost every Kenyan has a Facebook account. |
| Joshua: Search for Swahili Facebook, which was launched in 2009, and from there, look for Swahili language pages, groups, or anything related to Swahili language learning. |
| Medina: And you are sure to find some Kenyans who will help you with your Swahili. |
| Joshua: All for free! |
| Medina Yes, but you can also still find reasonably priced services too. |
| Joshua: For example, Swahili Pod101.com. We will help you learn fast! |
| Medina: We work hard to be an innovative way to learn Swahili, in your own time, at your own pace. We have tons of material for learning Swahili, and we are constantly adapting and improving our site and system to better suit you! |
| Joshua: Okay, that's enough advertising. Our last tool is pen and paper! |
| Medina: Are you serious? You work on the Internet all day. You have more digital stuff in your office than I even know English words for. And for that matter, people barely even use paper anymore, it's all digital now! |
| Joshua: That may be true, but I have my reasons. Shall we go through some of them? |
| Medina: Be my guest! |
| Joshua: First, no digital anything is as cheap as a notebook. |
| Medina: Well you're right there. In Kenya , you can get notebooks pretty cheaply. |
| Joshua: Second, no one will mug you for a notebook. |
| Medina: That's also true. In Kenya, you always need to be safety-conscious. Smartphones or other flashy gadgets are very expensive in Kenya, and thieves might try to steal them. |
| Joshua: Third, it doesn't matter if it gets wet. You can throw it out and get a new one at any bookstore. No need to sync with a computer or a service provider! |
| Medina: That's important, because it rains a lot in Kenya and most tourists who come to Kenya go to the beach at least once. |
| Joshua: And fourth, it's faster. |
| Medina: What? Paper is faster than a computer? Now you're just making stuff up. |
| Joshua: Paper is faster. That's why journalists use paper notebooks in interviews. It's just sheer practicality; paper is faster. |
| Medina: I'm not sure if I believe you. |
| Joshua: Don't get me wrong! Computers are great and it's on a computer that I do all my 'heavy-lifting' as far as writing articles, emails, and so forth. But at least in 2013, paper is still king for speed and flexibility. |
| Medina: So how should we use our pen and paper? |
| Joshua: Well, for example, you're at the store and you have a good idea about something to study, but you can’t remember what it was when you finally have the time to study. Has this happened to you? |
| Medina: Many times. |
| Joshua: Instead, write down all your ideas and then choose what you want to study from your list. That way, you study what you want, when you want, and you aren't wasting time trying to remember your great idea. |
| Medina: Hmm. |
| Joshua: I remember talking to a friend of mine who had just started learning Swahili. He had been in Kenya for about three months and had a pretty firm grasp of the basics, but he went to a meeting and another guy got up and started talking, and he could not understand anything he said. It was very strange, because he could understand everyone else in the room, just not him. |
| Medina: The speaker must have been from a different part of the country or something. |
| Joshua: Yeah. Well, instead of wasting his time just sitting there, he took out his pen and paper and wrote down the words he could pick out. He wrote down about three pages worth of vocabulary. He then showed this list to me and we studied it together, and he learned about seventy-five vocabulary words in thirty minutes. |
| Medina: Interesting. |
| Joshua: All because of pen and paper. I couldn't have done that on a smartphone or even on a laptop. |
| Medina: I suppose not! |
Outro |
| Joshua: Alright, that brings us to the end of this lesson. We hope you will take advantage of these great tools, listeners! |
| Medina: We've tried them and we know how good they are, so that's why we're passing them on to you! |
| Joshua: Remember that the links for all of these sites and programs can be found in the lesson notes. |
| Medina: Let us know what you think of these tools! |
| Joshua: And if you have some other resources you would like to share, stop by SwahiliPod101.com and leave a comment. |
| Medina: See you next time! |
| Joshua: Kwaheri! |
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