Israeli Hebrew for Speakers of English

Free Audio on the World Wide Web

Audio exercises to accompany Israeli Hebrew Book I and Book II were first produced and sold by the University of Illinois Language Learning Laboratory, and in recent years have been made available to the public by the Indiana University Language and Computers Laboratories. (The audio tapes have never been available from Duben Books.) We are now pleased to announce that the same materials are available FREE on the World Wide Web from two sources: in real Audio format, from the University of Florida Language Learning Center, and in MP3 format, for download. The URL for the Real Audio materials is http://www.clas.ufl.edu/llc/IsraeliHebrew/index.html and for MP3 it is http://www.ling.udel.edu/pcole/MP3/.

 

As we mentioned, the UF audio materials make use of Real Audio, a WWW technology which requires the use of a small application and a browser plugin called the RealPlayer Basic 8, which can be downloaded free from http://www.real.com/player/. (There is also a commercial version of the Player called RealPlayer Plus that costs US$29.95 to download.) Versions are available for both Macintosh and Windows. Once the RealPlayer has been installed, you can play the UF audio files by clicking on the desired file. Each file accompanies a chapter in Book I or Book II.

 

With the RealPlayer is installed, you can control the audio lessons via an onscreen device that gives you all the usual controls of a tape player, including Pause and Rewind. The result is very satisfactory, an improvement on audio tapes, and it is completely free.

 

N.B.: if you experience any trouble playing the audio material on your computer, try first running the RealPlayer as an application separate from your browser, and then, while the RealPlayer is running, click on the desired Hebrew lesson in the browser. This works better for us than simply clicking on the lesson and waiting for the browser to call RealPlayer.

 

The MP3 materials require different software, an MP3 player. There are many MP3 palayers available on the web, both free and for purchase. Also, many CD players now play MP3 files. Sound quality is fairly good and file sizes are small. MP3 files can be downloaded to a pocket MP3 player and they can be converted by software available on the Internet to audio CDs.

 

Are you a Hebrew teacher or the director of a Hebrew program? The authors are willing to authorize additional websites with the same materials (in order not to overload the present sites). Contact Peter Cole (pcole@udel.edu) for permission. The authors will provide mirror sites with a non-exclusive, revocable license like that provided to UF, and will post the URL on this website. We are also willing to license you to produce audio CDs for your students and/or for sale to the public. We do ask that you that you write to us and request a license to do this.

 

The Authors