One thing that is in my experimental box that may help you out is creating audio only Q and A cards. You can get the audio off something online or from a text book dialogue - just cut it up.
Example:
Front
Audio sentence from textbook.
Answer:
Whatever you want to produce or the reply if the textbook gives one.
Rate yourself on how 'fluent' you were in your answer. Hesitation, unplanned pauses, sentences lacking in 'ummm...', 'ahhhhh...', and so on get a replay.
All this is, is talking to yourself. There's no correction unless you want to record yourself and transcribe your sentences and add them to Lang-8. The point, though, is to build your understanding of your textbooks audio/vocabulary/structures while building fluency. Furthermore, it's probably quite fast as there is nothing but speaking involved, which would mean a 5-10 second answers + 3 seconds of really basic audio (I mean: "When's your birthday? Do you like Korean food? Where are you from? What's it like? type content - great first meeting stuff!), which means about 5-6 seconds more than a reasonable 7 second recognition card (just mark it and come back to it to save time.)
Note: I mean actual 'fluency' (ability to talk fast) not language competency (your overall skill - including correct usage and accuracy).
If you focus on phrase book like content that could build up your basic fluency fast (remembering that you need to practice your speaking not your reading/listening, which is often what happens when we focus on recognition cards with/without audio).
# If you are ABSOLUTELY desperate for audio for the sentence you can use a text to speech engine like Google Translate or http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/
Example:
Front
Audio sentence from textbook.
Answer:
Whatever you want to produce or the reply if the textbook gives one.
Rate yourself on how 'fluent' you were in your answer. Hesitation, unplanned pauses, sentences lacking in 'ummm...', 'ahhhhh...', and so on get a replay.
All this is, is talking to yourself. There's no correction unless you want to record yourself and transcribe your sentences and add them to Lang-8. The point, though, is to build your understanding of your textbooks audio/vocabulary/structures while building fluency. Furthermore, it's probably quite fast as there is nothing but speaking involved, which would mean a 5-10 second answers + 3 seconds of really basic audio (I mean: "When's your birthday? Do you like Korean food? Where are you from? What's it like? type content - great first meeting stuff!), which means about 5-6 seconds more than a reasonable 7 second recognition card (just mark it and come back to it to save time.)
Note: I mean actual 'fluency' (ability to talk fast) not language competency (your overall skill - including correct usage and accuracy).
If you focus on phrase book like content that could build up your basic fluency fast (remembering that you need to practice your speaking not your reading/listening, which is often what happens when we focus on recognition cards with/without audio).
# If you are ABSOLUTELY desperate for audio for the sentence you can use a text to speech engine like Google Translate or http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/
Edited: 2011-05-08, 10:37 am
