I had a nice surprise this week, although it took me a while to finally notice it. Audible subscribers have access to a whole load of material for free as part of the Audible Plus catalogue. And that includes a nice little stash of language learning resources!
I’ve sung the praises of Audible as a study buddy before, and not just for language learning. Audiobooks really helped me to smash an Old Norse literature assignment last term.
There’s naturally plenty of language learning proper on there, too. In fact, the bulk of the free-access Audible Plus material comes from the team at Innovative Language Learning, which you may well know from top-charting podcasts like GermanPod101. They were amongst the first really big language learning podcasts, and for that they’ll always have a special place in our hearts!
I Got The (Word) Power!
The highlight of their selection has to be the Word Power series, including titles in Chinese, Spanish and Russian, amongst others. The Word Power resources are like speaking frequency dictionaries, presenting common words in isolation, then in a phrase for context. While not the most interactive resources, they can form the basis of your own active techniques, including DIY mass sentence drilling. They’re also chunked into short-ish chapters, so you can spend a few, targeted minutes a day with them very easily.
Another huge plus point is that most of these series are available in a lovely, wide range of languages. I found materials in all the likely mainstream culprits like French, German and Spanish. But there is also a pleasing cache of lesser-spotted offerings like Greek, Hindi and Persian.
Other Audible Goodies
Of course, it’s only a fraction of Audible’s catalogue that is open for free access. The plus selection doesn’t include, for example, premium titles like Olly Richards’ brilliant easy readers series. On the other hand, that’s what subscribers’ monthly credits are for. I’ve very happily used a couple of mine on those (namely, Icelandic and Norwegian!).
Saying that, there are lots of other free titles, which, if not strictly language learning resources, are only a side-step away. This goes particularly for those with an interest in the countries and cultures of their target languages. Returning to Iceland, for example, Jackson Crawford’s Saga of the Volsungs – translated and narrated by the internet’s favourite silver-tongued Old Norse expert – caught my eye.
In short, it’s definitely worth checking out what’s available on Audible Plus. Even though a lot of premium content will still cost you credits or cash, there’s a treasure of freebies waiting to be trawled through.
