Language Reels

Just as a showreel shows video clips of you in action, a language reel (aka soundfile or voicereel) is a recording of your voice.

Language Reels are usually quite short – often less than a minute long (CDs won’t usually listen to anything more than this) – and come from a single source, e.g.

1. 1. Reading the news
   2. Telling a story

1. A radio commercial
2. Any of the above in different accents/dialects/languages

CDs listen to language reels to hear how the actor sounds and how well they speak the accent or language.

Creating a language reel

As with showreels, you should use the best possible equipment you can. But even if yo do not have a €1,000 microphone and a soundproof recording studio, you can still make an excellent language reel using just your smartphone.

1. Find some simple text to read in the target language, e.g. the beginning of a Wikipedia article or some news
2. Practice a couple of times and make sure it’s less than 1 minute long
3. Record yourself in the accent/language on your smartphone

You now need to make sure it’s in MP3 format so anyone can listen to it and you can put it online. If the file is not already MP3 you might have to convert it before you upload it. This is simple: Suppose your file is in AAC format – go online and search for an AAC TO MP3 online converter. There are many sites which do this for free: simply upload your AAC file, convert it, and then download the MP3 to your computer.

(NB this is a good free online converter: Convertio.)

To read about how to add the file to your enCAST profile, click here.