General FAQ
- What is an audiotext?
- Are Audiria contents free?
- Is the audiotext only audio?
- How frequently are audio texts published?
- Do the audiotexts expire?
- Which is the difficulty level of the audiotexts?
- How are the audiotexts organized? What is a channel?
- What does Audiria offer when I click on each audiotext?
- How to search audiotexts according to my preferences?
- What are the exercises associated to the audiotexts?
- Is it compulsory to do the exercises in each audiotext?
- Is it compulsory to register? How can I see my statistics?
- Why is the forum useful?
- Difficult vocabulary: what can I do if I don’t know a Word of the audiotexts?
- What kind of license has Audiria? Can I download the audiotexts? Can I use them in a class?
- What are the sources associated to each audiotext?
- If I am a teacher, what exercises can I do in class?
- How can I subcribe to the podcast using RSS? How can I listen it with iTunes?
Technical FAQ
- I can't access to the user's features
- I can't change the site's interface language
- I can't hear the audio files
- I don't know how to type some foreign characters that are not in my keyboard
- I can't see correctly some foreign characters
1. What is an audiotext?
An audio text is a text orally expressed, with a duration around 3 or 4 minutes.
This means that it has been read aloud and recorded for Audiria users.
The advantage of Audiria is that the audio text is accompanied by the written text
so that you can evaluate your comprehension level and discover new words and
expressions with which enrich your language skills.
The audio files can be listened to as many times as desired before reading the
written text or after reading it to improve your listening capabilities.
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2. Are Audiria contents free?
ALL contents are free for personal use. You can access all audio texts,
resources, etc. without any cost. See the question about Audiria license
for other non-private uses.
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3. Is the audiotext only audio?
NO, each audio text is accompanied by the written version of the audio text,
so that the user can check what he has heard and profit more from the exercise.
Moreover, all audiotexts have a number of exercises and complementary
activities related to it.
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4. How frequently are audio texts published?
Audiria offers a new audiotext from Monday to Saturday (both included).
Moreover, audiotexts are not repeated: the daily audiotexts are different
to all previous ones so that you can practice every day your understanding
capabilities. You can access easily to the daily audiotext through our home
page or through the Chapters section in the menu.
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5. Do the audiotexts expire?
NO. Past audiotexts are kept in our general database and they will
be published for long time. For space reasons there will be a time
in which we will start removing the oldest ones (approximately one
year after publication) to leave space for the new chapters.
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6. Which is the difficulty level of the audiotexts?
Audiria offers audiotexts at different difficulty levels. Audiotexts are classified in 4 levels of increasing difficulty:
- Level 1: Elemental
- Level 2: Intermediate
- Level 3: High
- Level 4: Advanced
The difficulty level is established considering:
- The chapter content
- Its style
- Grammatical complexity and vocabulary
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7. How are the audiotexts organized? What is a channel?
Audiotexts are organized into CHANNELS.
Audiria offers different types of audiotexts that have been classified into 7
channels with the purpose of offering material of varied sources and themes.
Moreover, audiotexts are read by different people so that the listener can get
used to different accents and different ways of speaking.
A weekly cycle of audiotexts has been established: every day of the week
(from Monday to Saturday) has a channel assigned and the audiotexts of that
day will always belong to that channel. Notwithstanding, the difficulty levels
of the audiotexts will change to offer, inside the same channel, audiotext
with different levels of difficulty.
Each channel has a characteristic icon that will help you to identify it.
The currently existing channels are:
-
Audiotexts of "El Quijote": Here you will find small fragments of which
is considered one of the most representative literary works in Spanish:
"Las aventuras del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha". The book
is started from its very beginning and its reading will be continued
following the same order as in the book. Thus, the first audiotext of
this channel irremediably starts with the famous "En un lugar de la Mancha,
de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme…". These chapters will be published
on Saturdays. Every Saturday you will find a new chapter in Audiria.
All audiotexts of this channel are of level 4.
-
Audiotexts of "Spanish culture": In this category we want introduce
the listener into different aspects of the Spanish culture: history, people
characteristics, touristic places worthy to visit, … and even more practical
questions like "the time that shops open and close" or which is the most popular
sport in Spain. These chapters are published on Mondays. Every Monday you will discover
a new aspect of the Spanish culture through one of our audiotexts. Spanish culture
audiotexts are of levels 1 or 2.
-
Audiotexts of "News": This channel presents small fragments from
Spanish newspapers with the purpose of making the listener familiar with the
particular language used in the written news. Every Thursday a new chapter of
this category is published. These chapters are always of level 2.
-
Audiotexts of "Radio": In this case, we offer small fragments of different radio
programs that will allow the listener to increase his listening capabilities related
to this difficult media. These chapters are published on Sundays. Radio audiotexts
are always of level 3.
-
Audiotexts de "Daily scenes": These audiotexts have a very practical purpose:
they reproduce characteristic conversations in different situations and contexts. A market,
an airport, a hotel, … are scenarios where it is necessary to say certain sentences and where
a very specific vocabulary is used. In this case, we reproduce different scenes so to help
the listener to easily handle these contexts. The assigned day for this channel is Friday.
The audiotexts of this channel can be of levels 1 or 2.
-
Audiotexts of "Language": This channel provides small explanations about
the language: grammar, orthography, frequent expressions, idioms, … In Audiria, grammar
has an important place and that is why a whole channel is completely devoted to it. But,
in the same way as the rest of contents, this is transmitted in an oral way, that is, you
can listen to the explanation and as in any other audiotext you can have access to the
corresponding text. Language audiotexts are published on Wednesdays. The levels of these
chapters can be 1 or 3.
-
Audiotexts of "Books": In this case, audiotexts are extracted from
different books: from an adventure novel to a technological book going through a biography
or an historical assay. This will allow the listener to come into contact with different
expression styles and, overall, with specific vocabulary of each field, or characteristic
of an author. These chapters are published on Tuesdays. Audiotexts can be of levels
1, 2 or 3.
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8. What does Audiria offer when I click on each audiotext?
When you access any audiotext you will find:
- The possibility of listening the content
- The possibility of reading the content (written text)
- The source used to prepare the audiotext
- A collection of bibliographic references or web pages that are related to the audiotext content
- A collection of exercises related to the audiotext
- A forum for all those users wanting to practice the language writing about the topic of the audiotext
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9. How to search audiotexts according to my preferences?
Audiria allows you to access any published audiotext at any moment,
for free and as many times as you like. For that, you have to enter into
the Chapters section in the menu on the left.
You can search your chapters using different criteria:
-
Criterium "Text": this option is very flexible since it allows you
to search for audiotexts whose title contains the word or words that you have specified
in this field. Thus, it is a free text field that will allow you to find audiotexts related
to a given topic (for example, "Baile flamenco"), or to access an audiotext that you heard
a long time ago about Madrid but you cannot remember the date nor the exact title.
-
Criterium "Channel": using the list of channels you can specify the
channel on which you want to search.
-
Criterium "Level": equally, you can use the list of levels to select those
audiotexts you want to hear.
You can introduce one or several criteria. The search will show all the audiotexts meeting all the conditions.
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10. What are the exercises associated to the audiotexts?
Each audiotext is accompanied by a collection of exercises that can be performed
by the listener to test his degree of understanding of what he heard and fix those
expressions learnt during the audiotext.
In all cases, the user will have the option of "listening" (resides "Redding")
the questions, i.e., to receive in audio format the questions to benefit as much
as possible his use of Audiria from the point of view of listening.
For each audiotext several exercises are provided:
-
Test exercises (Chapter’s test): it is a series of test questions
with several answers hmong which you will have to choose the right one considering
the auditotext. Only one answer is valid.
-
Exercise "Complete with words": in this case you will see incomplete
sentences (some words are missing) and you have to fill in the gaps with the missing
words. You can regenerate the exercise and try to solve it with different missing
words as many times as you like.
-
Exercise "Place the phrases": In this exercise you have to determine
which is the sentence missing in each of the gaps. Again, you can regenerate the exercise
and try with different sentences.
-
Practice in the forum: Each chapter has an associated forum in which
users can practice their Spanish writing. The Audiria staff as well as the rest of the
users can correct the language errors committed by other users. In this way they can
improve their writing skills in Spanish.
The exercises have different buttons among them:
-
Regenerate the exercise: most exercises are random so that you can generate
many different exercises on the same audiotext. Press this button to solve a new exercise
of the same kind.
-
Give me a clue: this button will visualize which of the answers is correct
and which is incorrect. When pressing the button the true answers are not given, however
since the wrong answers are marked, the user can pay more attention to these questions
to correct them.
-
Correct: when pressing "Correct" your exercise will be evaluated and you
will see which questions were right, which wrong and the final mark of the exercise.
If the user is registered and logged in, this mark will become part of his collection
of marks and they can be seen in the Statistics.
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11. Is it compulsory to do the exercises in each audiotext?
NO. Exercises and activities are completely optional, the user can do them or not.
Exercises allow fixing vocabulary, expressions, idioms, etc. and provide a better
understanding of the audiotexts.
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12. Is it compulsory to register? How can I see my statistics?
It is not necessary to be registered to use Audiria. Without being registered you
can equally do the exercises.
However, Audiria offers to registered users a personalized tracking of their performance
in Audiria. By identifying yourself, we can associate to each user the statistics of
the exercises associated to each audiotext. This will let you know your evolution and
establish some general statistics using information from the whole set of users.
Once you have registered you can consult your statistics by introducing your user and
password in the menu located in the top part of the screen. From this moment on, the
Statistics section is activated for you.
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13. Why is the forum useful?
The forum has been created so that Audiria users can express themselves and practice the
Spanish language by talking to other users. With this purpose, each audiotext has a forum
thread associated. Audiria initially places a few questions related to each audiotext and
the users wanting to participate can write about them. These questions are intended as a
starting for the conversation. From that point on, users will enrich the forum with new
aspects and topics that may come up.
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14. Difficult vocabulary: what can I do if I don’t know a Word of the audiotexts?
In each audiotext difficult words have been linked to the Wordreference dictionary. Another possibility
is to go to the Multimedia resources section and lookup the word in any of the online dictionaries that
you will find there. We strongly recommend to install the Wordreference toolbar that helps a lot in the
understanding of new words.
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15. What kind of license has Audiria? Can I download the audiotexts? Can I use them in a class?
Audiria audiotexts are under a Creative Commons license for non commercial use. Therefore,
they are free as long as you use them for personal purposes or for the non-commercial
diffusion of the Spanish culture. Audiria audiotexts and exercises can be used in Spanish
classes. In any case, you must acknowledge the source of the audiotext and exercises, and
in the case of using it in Internet you must do the corresponding link to Audiria.
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16. What are the sources associated to each audiotext?
Once you access an audiotext, you will see comments and links about the sources that have
been used for its edition, in this way we acknowledge the original authorship and the origin
of the information used. The sources are provided either as bibliographic references or as
related links. In this way, the user can also have additional information about the content
of the audiotext and learn more vocabulary and expressions related to that topic.
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17. If I am a teacher, what exercises can I do in class?
Audiria offers the possibility of performing different exercises with your students:
- Filling the gaps where some words are missing
- Placing sentences in the right place
- Answering test questions about the audiotext
- Discussing in the forum about the topic of the audiotext
- Discussing in class about the topic of the audiotext
- In the grammar chapters, going to the wiki and giving examples of the
grammar topic
- In the daily scenes chapter, going to the wiki and completing the
conversation guide
The first three exercises are random, so that it is possible that each student
has his own exercise, different to all the rest.
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18. How can I subcribe to the podcast using RSS? How can I listen it with iTunes?
RSS is a subscribe method with wich you can check the latest content from a Web site without visiting it.
If you subscribe our RSS feed, you will be able to play audiria's audiotext files from iTunes, and synchronize
your iPod and learn spanish while going to work.
You can subscribe our podcast by adding this URL (http://www.audiria.com/podcast.php)
to your favourite RSS Feed reader.
If you want to subscribe audiria.com through iTunes you must click Advanced/Subscribe to a podcast in your iTunes menu and
type this URL (http://www.audiria.com/podcast.php) in the text field.
If you don't know about RSS aggregator you can learn more here.
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1. I can't access to the user's features
Audiria site has a session based system to manage users access. If you can't access all
your features as a registered member, this is, you can't login in Audiria, you should
check you have cookies enabled on your Web browser.
You can check this way:
-
With Internet Explorer go to Tools/Internet
Options/Privacy and
add audiria.com to your allowed sites list.
-
With Mozilla Firefox, go to
Tools/Options/Privacy,
and click on Accept cookies from Web, or add audiria.com
by clicking "Exceptions" button.
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2. I can't change the site's interface language
It could be the same problem with the login access
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3. I can't hear the audio files
In order to play audio files in audiria.com, you should have
Adobe
Flash Player © installed on your system.
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4. I don't know how to type some foreign characters that are not in my keyboard
You can select foreign characters you haven't on your keyboard using the characters table
in your operating system. In Windows © you can access it by clicking
Start Menu/All programs/Accessories/System tools/Characters Map.
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5. I can't see correctly some foreign characters
If you can't see foreign characters you should check if your operating system or browser supports charset iso-8859-1.
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