Multimedia may be misunderstood as a poor substitute for the native tutor and something to be avoided if learning can be accomplished in any other way.

Multimedia work is the core of the ALSO Program. Any attempt to skimp on practice time is a false economy. The multimedia will repeat the same material over and over indefinitely without the slightest change in pronunciation or construction. This makes it possible to receive in a relatively short time the exposure to the countless repetitions you need to imprint a foreign language utterance in your mind.

Your multimedia work should be spread evenly over the entire week. Many short sessions, even on a given day, are preferable to one long session. Incidentally, experience shown that "catching up" on multimedia work, unlike doing so in reading, is virtually impossible.

"Putting in computer time" does not mean being a sponge. Students often "put in time" by mindlessly repeating material while their attention drifts away. This is known as "multimedia hypnosis," and often results from undirected, unfocused work, or from trying to do too much at once. The cure is short, sharply focused sessions.

You cannot learn to speak just by listening. After all, you want to learn to speak this language. Silently mouthing the language (or mumbling it) to yourself or a native speaker is not the same as speaking aloud! Repeat multimedia material in a strong voice vigorously!

An hour every day of the semester is a minimum. Do not concentrate the multimedia work into a few long sessions a week. It requires such intensive concentration that it can only be effectively sustained for short periods of time. Invariably, attention span and concentration waiver in marathon sessions. Find the limit of your own "multimedia attention span." It may be as short as 20 to 30 minutes at a given time.

Keep the text closed unless specifically requested on the audio/video. The point of the audio/video work is to train your mouth and ears! Of course reading along with the audio is easy-you are letting your eyes do all the work. Unfortunately, you won't have access to a teleprompter when communicating with native speakers. As a rule, the text (dialogue or exercise) should be read BEFORE the multimedia work, but should not be open during the audio/video work. Audio work means weaning yourself from visual crutches. However, all learners are different. Learn what style of retention and repetition works best for you.

If you seem to have trouble with comprehension in the multimedia work, you will have to spend some extra time listening to utterances, and then stopping to check yourself closely on how well you really understood what was said. Did you get it the first time? Drills, exercises, dialogues--just about anything on the audio--can be used for this sort of intensive comprehension work.

Never give up on a multimedia component that you don't understand. Try listening to it and repeating it several times without the text in front of you. Then, if it is still unclear, refer to the text for an explanation. Do not be put off by differences in pronunciation between the speech of your native tutor and that on the audio. They are both within the range of permissible variation, and you should be able to understand both. No matter what your first reaction may be, the audio is not too fast, and you must be able to follow it at that speed.

Try the "backward build-up" technique: Divide the sentence into short phrases, and begin drilling the final phrase. When you are comfortable with it, add the phrase (or few words) immediately preceding, and so on, until you have reached the words which start the sentence-at which point, you will be reciting the entire statement without error or hesitation. You may need to rely on visual material initially, but do not consider the job finished until you can say the entire utterance without any help.

Also, try to duplicate precisely the utterance on the audio, and not merely to make a "reasonable" approximation in your own accent. Think of yourself as an actor learning to play a character role, and attempt to copy in every possible detail the utterances you hear.