Gone are the days when students use their MP3 players and iPods in classes to mask out the sound of a particularly boring lecture on the films of Jean Luc Godard. These days students use their portable music players more productively, and to aid their studies.

Oxford University Press has launched language downloads in MP3 format to aid students in their courses, helping them with the learning of the langauge and pronunciation, wherever they are at the time.

Originally available as CD books, the products have been redesigned to make them more accessible, more travel friendly and to have less impact on the environment. The packaging required for MP3 downloads is considerably less than that required for CD audio books!

The nine language courses available are Italian, French, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian, German and Portuguese.

The sets contain access cards that students can use to access a website and download the MP3 files direct. They contain the same material that was available on the CDs, which is approximately four hours of material.

Oxford University Press’ dictionary publishing manager, Judy Pearsall, said:

Flexibility of learning has been key to the success of our Take Off In courses, and offering MP3 for the full course is the obvious next step. OUP is the first major publisher in the UK to offer the full audio content of a language-learning course as an MP3 download, which is fantastic news for today’s mobile generation.