Following up with the last post on creating a foreign language listening environment, today I’m presenting the system that I use to create a flow of new listening material. I do it via iTunes and smart playlists, and have been quite pleased with how the system has worked.

What we’re building

This is the skeleton of what we’re going to have when we finish this post:

Don’t worry, it’s really not as complicated as it might seem. Also, though setting it up the first time is a bit of a pain, once you have it set up you can pretty much forget about it and let it do its thing. These are the kinds of systems I like best — upfront costs, but then minimal long-term pain.

Level 1: Individual language playlists

First, we need to set up smart playlists for each of the languages that you’re listening to. To do this, we’re going to take advantage of the seldom used Comment field. Start by creating a new smart playlist (File … New Smart Playlist). Your smart playlist should look like this:

Of course you’ll want to change “Chinese” to whatever language you’re creating the smart playlist for.

Once you have that set up, you need to tag tracks as “Chinese” so that they’ll be included in that smart playlist. Do this by right clicking on a track and selecting “Get Info” (or, on a Mac, pressing ⌘-I), and then clicking on the “Info” tab. In the Comment field, you can enter freeform text. The playlist we just created will automatically include any track with the word “Chinese” in the comment field (and it doesn’t have to be the only thing in the Comment field, it just has to be in there at all).

This is, incidentally, the only thing you’ll have to do on an ongoing basis (so that new content you add into your iTunes collection is fed into the system). Easy peasy, no?

If you’re listening to more than one language at once, you’ll want to repeat this step for each of the languages.

Level 2: Intermediate collection

If you’re only studying a single language, you can skip this level and use the single playlist you created in Level 1 as the intermediate collection.

Now that you’ve created smart playlists for each of the languages you’re studying, it’s time to bring them together into a single smart playlist that will then feed the rest of the system. This smart playlist is pretty straightforward, and looks like this:

A couple of important points about this playlist. One, make sure that you have the dropdown selection set to any in the upper left “Match [any/all] of the following rules.” This way any track that is in any of the specified playlists will be included in this playlist. Two, make sure you add all of the playlists that you created in Level 1 to this smart playlist, as it is the source for all of the following steps.

Level 3: Filters

This level is optional. If you don’t want to filter your intermediate collection, then you can skip this level and Level 4, as the final collection won’t be any different than the intermediate collection you just made.

For the most part we’ll want every single foreign language track in our iTunes collection to be part of our mix, but there may be some exceptions. For eliminate these exceptions, you can create smart playlists that have all of the tracks that you don’t want, and use them in the next step to remove them from the content stream.

Exactly what you want to eliminate is up to you. Below is a filter that I use to eliminate very long items after they’ve been listened to once (I don’t see any real benefit in repeating a one-hour news podcast over and over — it’s just too long and takes up to much time).

You’ll see that first I’ve selected that I want to “[m]atch all of the following rules.” This way, only tracks that satisfy all three criteria will be included. Second, I have my intermediate collection playlist (I call it “Language (Source-Intermediate)”) selected. Only tracks with Play Count greater than zero (i.e., have been played once) and lengths greater than 25 minutes will be caught, so that after a single play the big news podcasts that I listen to will fall out of rotation, preserving space for other, more interesting to repeat things.

What I’ve done is collect all of my filters into a filter collection smart playlist, akin to the intermediate collection playlist we created in Level 2. This way I can add and remove filters to that playlist instead of having to add and remove the filters individually elsewhere.

Level 4: Final collection

Now that we have our filters ready, it’s time to make our final collection. This is basically the intermediate collection that we made in Level 2 minus all of the tracks in the filter collection we made in Level 3. The smart playlist is pretty straightforward:

First, we’re matching all rules. Second, we’re taking all of the tracks that are in the intermediate collection and not in the filter collection. Simple as falling off a log.

Level 5: Play count lists

This level is also optional, but strongly recommended. If you don’t want to split your final collection up by play count, then you’re all done and can skip this level and Level 6.

In Level 4 we created a single playlist with all of our foreign language tracks, but there was no order to it — everything is lumped in together. The problem with this is that, given the amount of material you’re probably going to be listening to, some tracks are going to be repeated frequently and some aren’t going to be repeated at all. This isn’t a huge problem, but one that’s not too hard to solve by taking a page out of the spaced repetition concept and implementing in iTunes.

In this level we’re creating a series of smart playlists that will break the final collection up into smaller parts based on the number of times various tracks have been played. By making the playlists full of less often heard material bigger than those full of frequently heard material, you’re biasing your collection toward new stuff, which will keep your listening material fresh while still giving you the opportunity to hear things more than once.

I’ve created four of these playlists:

• Unheard items (play count == 0)
• Play count between 1 and 3
• Play count between 4 and 6
• Play count greater than 6

All four of the playlists are pretty similar. Notice how, for the first time, we’ve set the “Limit to [...] selected by [...]” options. This is very important. The size of the playlist should get smaller as the play count increases (inversely related). This way there will be more new content than old content, and the more times a track has been heard the less chance there is that it will be heard again.

How long should each playlist be? This is up to you. As you can see I have my playlists doubling in length from one hour to eight hours. This works for me, and makes a final playlist of just about one gigabyte of content that easily fits on my iPhone.

Second, see how in the first playlist (the unplayed tracks) the playlist is ordered by “least recently added,” whereas the others are all ordered by “least recently played.” The first is so that the oldest material you’ve never heard is presented first, so it is less likely to be lost in the rush of new material. The others are set the way they are so that an item that has just heard doesn’t immediately reappear in your playlist.

While this doesn’t do let you do “real” spaced repetition, it’s a pretty satisfying simulation, and in general you’ll be listening to lots of new material interspersed with older stuff at increasing intervals.

Level 6: The final playlist

This last level is just a housekeeping level. Create a new smart playlist (I call this playlist “Language”) that contains all of the playlists that you created in Level 5. This way you’ll only have to sync a single playlist. This final playlist is created in the same way that the intermediate and final collections are.

And we’re done

I know the above seems really long and complicated, but, as I indicated in the introduction, once you’ve set it up it basically runs without maintenance. All you have to do is remember to tag new material as you add it to your iTunes collection, and it will automatically enter your listening flow.

Now all you have to do is listen, a lot.

Related posts:

1. Creating a foreign language listening environment
2. Using your iPhone to create a language immersion environment
3. Maintaining one language while learning another
4. How to read in a foreign language
5. How I study foreign languages

Tagged as: itunes, languages, learning, listening, smart playlists