Language Learning in Second Life

Introducing the Earworms Musical Brain Trainers

Learn Italian - Russian - Spanish - Greek - French - German - Japanese - Chinese - Arabic - Portuguese in Second Life, your Ipod, your iPhone and PC for the new year!

200+ essential words and phrases anchored into your long-term memory with great music.

Your Earworms SLCD will play the tracks inworld, can be downloaded as mp3 files to your desktop, Ipod or Iphone and comes with full documentation on PDF files for you to print and read at your leisure.

Come and sample Earworms at the Earworms Audio Loft - just search for Earworms inworld or XstreetSL for a SLURL

Earworms mbt puts the words and phrases you need not just on the tip of your tongue, but also transports them deep into your long-term memory.

Simply by listening to these specially composed melodies with their rhythmic repetitions a few times, the sound patterns are indelibly burned into your auditory cortex.

You will have successfully learned the phrase and have the correct accent ringing in your ears. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing: While jogging, in the car, in the bath, doing the ironing…you can be learning a new language at the same time! earworms mbt© Rapid Languages is the first language course to get your toe tapping.

You know the phenomena of those catchy tunes or earworms that you just can't get out of your head? Voulezvous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Well, earworms mbt© has put this phenomena to positive use. Gone are the days of learning pressure and frustration at not being able to remember, the experience of many on conventional language courses. In combination with music, the phrases you need are automatically anchored deep into your memory, ready for instant recall.

Music is the Key
The idea is as simple as it is old. Before the age of writing, ancient historical events were recorded in verse and song form for easy memorisation. In his book 'Songlines' Bruce Chatwin describes how the Australian Aborigines were able to navigate their way across hundreds of miles of desert to their ancestral hunting grounds without maps.

And how? The extensive lyrics of their traditional songs were exact descriptions of the routes! Rhythm and words i.e. song and verse have always been a very powerful memory aid, and this is supported by recent scientific research. The advertising industry knows only too well how powerful music can be in getting the message across with brainwashing-like jingles and soundbites.

It really works!
Developed and used over years in the classroom, earworms mbt© Rapid Languages has shown phenomenal success. In tests pupils using this technique regularly get average marks of over 90 % compared to less than 50 % with conventional book based learning. Why hasn't music been used more in education up to now? Imagine kids at school getting a CD of hip hop songs with all the historical dates they have to learn, or all the irregular verbs they have to learn! Wouldn't that make their (and teachers') school lives much easier, much more fun, much more successful? Rest assured, we are working on it!

What you get
This volume deals with the essentials for your visit abroad. It looks at typical situations: taking a taxi, at the hotel, at the restaurant, requesting, polite phrases, finding your way, numbers, dealing with problems and so on. Volume 2 will have you talking about yourself and others, past, present and future, likes and dislikes and general conversational items. The themes follow closely the Common European Framework for language learning a recognised benchmark of language proficiency, and the emphasis is constantly on usefulness to the learner.

How to use earworms: Don't think, just listen!
Sit back, relax and groove along to the melodies without trying to listen too hard. Treat them as songs you hear on the radio. Our recommendation is that you do familiarise yourself with the written words in the booklet - at least the first time you listen. After listening several times, playfully test yourself - cover up the English side of the phrase book and see how many words and phrases you remember!

For more information - contact me Mark Clarke - mark @ slevolution.com or IM inworld to Badwolf Bracken - For telephone enquiries call +44(0)7784 830 320 (UK)

This SL CD was created using Hermes - the SLCD burner

I've tried the samples before. It's interesting. I didn't buy the CD because I only had one song to determine whether the CD would be nice to listen to. I'm kind of picky when it comes to music. I would suggest to other SL users to test the sample of the exact language (and level) they want to hear what beat you get. As someone who is currently studying a language, from what I heard in the sample, it does stick and it's interesting to listen to, but it can be (I don't want to say annoying, but well...) if you're stuck with a beat you just don't like. And there's a lot of chit-chat in them like ""new word"? yeah, "new word" *chuckle* ahh..."new word"" think sesame street for adults. It's all personal preference. Great for learning, though :3 Be sure you know how many tracks you are getting and what type of material you are learning.

I wonder if it will be able to be bought inworld or if they will add a link on their site. I wonder if it is cheaper in SL since we could just buy the CD and play on the computer without need to stream in SL. An interesting thing would be to sell them by songs. :3 We tend to make many small purchases on SL, and I think they would have more success that way.