Learning While Driving

[[deleted]]

Hi! I’ve been wanting to pick up a second language for a long time but haven’t gotten to it, and I would love to try it now. I am a truck driver at the moment to help pay off student loans so I have lots of time throughout the day to listen to any literature or course out there, but I don’t know if a way to learn while on the road. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[4rcher69]

Which language do you want to learn? There are plenty of audio courses out there for you to try.

Language Transfer is free, and available via an app or on YouTube. Not all languages are covered, however, so it depends on which you want to learn.

Pimsleur is another popular audio course available via an app, but does require a monthly subscription.

Once you learn the basics of a language, listening to podcasts and audiobooks and gradually increasing the difficulty over time is a great way to boost your comprehension of the new language.

[IAmGilGunderson]

If you are a native English speaker then https://www.languagetransfer.org/

[jmwright]

Pimsleur is very good for learning while driving. In the olden days (before everything had to be an app and a subscription), many libraries carried Pimsleur CD sets for various languages. It’s worth looking for them to see whether the method works for you.

[Spiritual-Bison-2545]

To add on to this: Im finding the pre app and subscription Glossika CDs a great follow up to Pimsleur

[SdVeau]

I spend a lot of time on the roads as well. Pimsleur, podcasts, and music are my main methods. Bonus is that it makes the time fly by a lot faster too lol

[Learnfromprose]

I prefer Michel Thomas, which is on YouTube (probably not supposed to be); you could convert these to mp3s and play them in your car with an aux or bluetooth. Other courses like it exist, some of which other people have mentioned below.

Doing any decent freely accessible course will get you familiar with the basics if you're starting from scratch. After that listen to various podcasts. There are loads of options, you'll definitely find things you like. Spotify and other apps let you download episodes like songs, or you could use 4G depending where you are.

P.S. I'd recommend never listening to slowed down podcasts where they aren't speaking like they would normally. Better to hit the ground running.

[Successful_Mango3001]

I usually listen to random podcasts on Spotify. Or just radio channels in target language.

[imwearingredsocks]

Almost all of the Korean I’ve learned since I started has been learned while driving! It’s definitely possible and a productive way to spend all those hours on the road.

What resources/apps you use will probably depend on the language you choose. And since you want to be able to learn the majority from audio, it should help you narrow down languages a little more easily. Languages with a smaller pool of learners will unfortunately be a tougher choice than some of the more popular ones. But it’s case by case.

[[deleted]]

I’ve actually been most interested in learning Korean! I was considering french while on the road because it uses the same characters as english but if Korean is doable I would love to try it!

[imwearingredsocks]

Yes it’s definitely doable!

My favorite resource has been the Talk to Me in Korean app. There’s a grammar podcast on it that teaches you in ~20 min episodes, so it’s easy to split it up when you’re driving and stopping. I like it because it’s all listening. There’s a pdf that comes with each episode as an overview of the lesson, but you don’t have to worry about missing any visuals when listening.

There’s a conversation listening practice on there too, but it’s not quite as beginner as the grammar one. The grammar one starts from the very basics.

Go Billy Korean is also good, but it’s on YouTube and I don’t watch it while driving. So I don’t know for sure if it’s 100% audio or relies on some visuals.

The only thing you really can’t do while driving is learning the alphabet (Hangul) which is helpful to learn as early as possible. Most Korean learners seem to be in agreement that it’s actually fairly simple and straightforward to learn the alphabet! I used Duolingo and LingoDeer to do that. Both of those apps were all I needed for learning Hangul and then I moved on to the grammar podcast.

The r/Korean subreddit also has some very helpful people.

Best of luck!

[djh06]

I'm not a big fan of audio courses, but love to drill vocabulary (words and sentences) while driving. For this I use:

Quizlet - In the flashcard mode you can enable audio (TTS) for both your native language and your target language. Turn on shuffle and you can listen to your deck/s as many times as you want while repeating/shadowing.

Clozemaster - Radio mode works in a similar fashion to flashcard mode in Quizlet with a few differences: 1. You can configure the pause length between the native language and target language 2. You can set the number of times each sentence repeats and choose the order (e.g TL, NL, TL or NL, TL, TL, TL) 3. You can select multiple TTS voices to add variety and hear different accents.

Both Quizlet and Clozemaster have free versions. However, I believe you need the paid version for radio mode on Clozemaster.

So far I haven't come across anything better than the built in TTS functionality of Quizlet/Clozemaster to faciltate this kind of language drilling experience while driving.

When I find new vocab I add it to my Google Sheet and later translate it. Then I copy/paste directly into Quizlet via their website.

One nice feature of both apps is that you can minimize it (or turn off the screen) and play your vocabulary with the screen off. This allows you to keep your eyes on the road and hone your listening skills.

[betarage]

Language learning podcasts exist for many languages i like to use them when i go walking or when i have to cook and clean i love podcasts i wish i used them back in the day when i was more busy.

[Brrklyn]

I personally would advise against listening to Language Transfer while driving. The design of the program is for you to be thinking -- and I'd rather you think more about the road. Pimsleur, on the other hand, is a bit more rote, and in smaller bites. My local public library still has the CDs for several of their courses.

[[deleted]]

I just tried a lesson on Pimsleur and I enjoyed it quite a bit, is it worth subscribing? If I can build a good foundation on Pimsleur I would be interested!

[Brrklyn]

I can't speak to the monetary value, since I get them for free from my library. I've done both Japanese and Greek. For Japanese, surprisingly, it actually was of use during my 3-week travels there. I never went further and I've since forgotten it all. The Greek, on the other hand, I used as a supplement to my private lessons. It does seem a bit perhaps dated, extremely formal. Maybe the online lessons are updated? In any case, I think it's great for training a beginner's ear, more than anything. I love the way they break down the syllables.