Learning a new language is difficult, but it can be much easier if done interactively, in “conversation classes” or the “language labs” that I attended in the 1980s when I studied French at school.
Interactivity is a key way of learning the vocabulary and, with the popularity of computer-based learning, a language CD is ideal.
Speak Zulu With Us is produced by Cape Town company African Voices (www.africanvoices.co.za). It is designed for intermediate to advanced speakers — a follow-up to African Voices’s Zulu For Beginners.
Once installed, says schoolteacher Rae Arnott, who tested the CD for me, it lets you record your spoken attempts so that you can hear if your pronunciation is wrong and then correct it.
Everything about the CD is geared towards learning the language. All the menu items are in Zulu (followed by the English word), it is “very user-friendly, the graphics are well-suited to the theme of the lessons and the music is appropriate and fun to listen to, while giving the user a feel of Zulu culture”, says Arnott. “It’s also easy to install for a technophobe like me.
“There is interesting information given along the way — not only on the lessons — and it lets you go forward at your own pace. It is very thorough, too, and has different and interesting ways of testing you. The ‘click and drag’ instructions are an easy way of doing the exercises.”
Another innovative locally produced learning CD is Play Guitar (www.vmusiccorp.com). It offers an interactive way to try your hand at playing the instrument. Not only does it show you the basics, or strumming and picking techniques, it has back-up tracks and about 2400 soundtracks.
Like me, most children of the Eighties were forced to learn French or the guitar; if only this kind of cool technology were available then I might have actually learned one of them.